Enter: Stephanie Brown

[newoutsiders]

Harbor duty again. These days, it's one of the most boring assignments you can get in Gotham, patrolling for crime as part of the Oracle Network. Babs's hastily formed but naturally well-coordinated alliance of Batman's allies both close and estranged has been protecting his city in his absence. And since that little terror Damian made it clear during a raid on Two-Face two weeks ago that the Network wouldn't be tolerating any shady business at the docks, it's been pretty quiet. Still, it has to be done. And tonight's Thursday night, which means it's your night to do it.

You've just settled into your favorite stakeout spot on the roof of a nearby warehouse, as behind you you hear an all too familiar *pop!*

Now, on top of everything else, her. At least she's unlikely to get in the way of anything.

"Heya, Steph!" a high pitched voice shouts way too loud, way too close to your ear. What sounds like four pit bulls start barking loudly in response, and a few window lights flicker on in the surrounding slum.

"Sorry," Misfit stage-whispers sheepishly, way too late. "But I'm just so excited! I had to tell someone!"

Comments

[stephbrown]

Steph sighs. "Batgirl," she reminds Misfit. "Especially if you're gonna be yelling it from the rooftops. Costume on, name on, remember?" She keeps herself from sighing with a heroic effort on her part, if she does say so herself. "Anyway, tell someone what? Might as well tell me. It doesn't look like anything's happening here anyway."

[newoutsiders]

"That's just it-- me too!"

You notice, as you turn around to face her for the first time, that she's not wearing her usual home made costume. Rather, you find her adorned with a black Batcowl, purple leather pants with a matte black strap down each side, bright yellow boots, gloves, and utility belt, and a very stylish purple jacket with a buttoned on cape and a big yellow Bat symbol.

She spins around on one foot, hands in the air, triumphantly, giving you a good loook.

"Ta-da! What do you think?"

[stephbrown]

"I... think..." Steph swallows and wonders if shouting is an appropriate response. "I think you're wearing my clothes. Or, well, clothes that should be mine. Why are you wearing that?"

[newoutsiders]

She looks at you like you just asked the stupidest question on Earth.

"DUH. I'm Batgirl! Like you and Cass! I bought some new stuff at a thrift shop near my place, personalized it a bit. I know I gave it a shot before, but I figured, hey. There are two Batgirls running around now. Why not three?"

She folds her cape dramatically over her face, not unlike a certain billionaire you know.

"They've been calling me... The Bat-Girl of Burnside."

[stephbrown]

"Of course they have," Steph sighs. "Look, Mis - uh, Bat-Girl. Have you talked to anyone else about this? Specifically, Oracle?" Steph wracks her brain for a way to spin this whole... thing. Babs is a lot better at dealing with Misfit than she is herself. "I mean, she needs to know there's another Batgirl, right? That way she can, uh, figure out the best places for you to patrol."

Steph crosses her fingers and hopes that Babs is feeling magnanimous, or else she's going to be pulling docks duty a lot more often.

[newoutsiders]

"Yeah, see, uh... I haven't told anyone else about this yet. You're number one! Numero uno!"

She laughs nervously, rubbing her right arm.

"I've been trying to see if I could do it. Patrol Gotham, fight crime on my own. Especially after I *mumble grumb-mumble.* And it's been going pretty good! I just stopped a mugging, like, 20 minutes ago! Well, a pickpocket. But that's, like, practically the same thing! DAAARK VEN-"

More dogs start barking, louder.

"Sorry!"

[stephbrown]

"I'm first?" Steph gives what she knows is a weak smile. "Oh, cool." She hopes that she doesn't have to be the one to tell Babs.

She can tell that Charlie's nervous, and Steph suddenly feels sympathetic. She's really familiar with how welcoming the caped community isn't when you're trying to get started, and even though Charlie's been around for a while, she's never really gotten the chance to get her feet wet on her own. With good reason, sure, but maybe Steph can help her out. A bit.

"Okay," she says after coming to her decision. "You want to patrol Gotham, let's..." A part of Charlie's speech comes back to her. "Wait, mumble grumble what? What happened?"

[newoutsiders]

She runs her hand through the hair poking out of her cowl, and her gaze shifts towards the ground.

"Well, uh. You know the 'porting thing I do? It's... not working like it used to. Like... I'm growing out of it or something. It took me like an hour to pop up here! And I was, like, two blocks away!"

She sighs heavily, letting it hang in the air for a bit.

"I dunno. I guess I... I just wanna know if I can still do this. If it goes away. Or never comes back. Like you guys do."

[stephbrown]

"Oh, wow." Steph frowns a little. Are there doctors who specialize in meta stuff? Leslie is great, but her expertise really lies in getting stubborn Bats to eat their peas, or whatever the medical equivalent of that is. Hadn't Tim mentioned that the Flashes were pretty smart? "That's something you should really get checked out. Probably. I mean, we don't want you disappearing mid-poof, or... having something else happen." She doesn't bring up what happens when Charlie tries to 'port with other people along for the ride.

"As for being able to do all of this, well, probably not right away," she continues. "I mean, you'll need more training, to make up for the abilities you lost. Right now, if you were losing a fight really badly you could just 'port out. You'd need to learn stuff to do if that wasn't an option anymore." She smiles. "As someone who never could do anything super special, well, I can tell you it's possible. It's a lot of super hard work, but it's possible."

[newoutsiders]

Charlie recoils in terror.

"Mid-poof? I... I didn't even think about that! Oh my gosh. Where would I go? I never wanted to deal with doctors before... I thought I'd end up at, like, Cadmus or something! But... yeah. If I have to go easy on the poofs..."

She folds her arms behind her back, and kind of twists one foot on the floor by her toes.

"That's... kind of what I came to you about. I know Oracle's so busy now, with the big guy off planet, and she got so mad at me the last time I tried this. And Cass... it's so hard to talk to Cass. So..."

She looks up at you, hopefully.

[stephbrown]

"I'm sure we can find a doctor who can help," Steph assures her. She has no idea who that doctor might be, but she's positive that Babs knows... someone. "And yeah, maybe cool it with the poofing for a while At least until we know what's going on, right? Better safe than sorry."

Steph... definitely doesn't feel qualified to train anyone. At least, not to Bat standards. But she can probably do some of the basics with Charlie. At the very least, she can teach her how to get around Gotham without using her meta powers. It'll be an interesting use of her skills, if nothing else, and Steph could always use more practice. Training never ends and all that jazz.

"Okay, well, I can't promise that I can teach you everything you need to know, but we can do some of the basics," she says. "Lesson one is how to not attract attention while you're supposed to be silently staking out the docks. Get down here with me and help me watch."

[newoutsiders]

"OKA-I mean, okay," she whispers, poorly containing her excitement. She crouches down next to you, bobbing up and down a little on her knees.

Some night patrolmen walk up and down the warehouses, not finding anything more than you do. It's pretty dead around here. You wait around for about another hour and a half. This is the part of patrolling Gotham no one ever talks about. All the time you waste waiting around for nothing to happen. Charlie's clearly super bored, but is being a real sport about not saying anything.

Next, you're supposed to hit up The Cauldron. It's a tiny, dirt poor Irish and black neighborhood which usually laid outside Batman's periphery. Lots of street crime, but maybe not enough of that glamorous "super-crime." Oracle wants to rectify that-- especially now that its self-appointed protector, Tommy "Hitman" Monaghan, is dead and buried.

The headlights on a tanker truck go on, and some security guy waves it out of the gate.

"Wait," Charlie whispers. "That tanker. The orange one. Is that supposed to be there? It's kind of late to be starting a delivery, right? Do you have, like, a Bat Log?"

[stephbrown]

Steph doesn't, in fact, have a Bat Log, but she's got one better. A quick call to Oracle confirms that no, there's nothing on the schedule for right now. "Good catch," she says. "There's something fishy going on for sure. And it's not the, you know, actual fish. If there are any that actually live in the water here."

She narrows her eyes and watches as activity starts to pick up. She's gonna have to investigate closer, but she's kinda worried to bring Charlie into anything. She has no idea what kind of skills Charlie has, so she doesn't know if she'd be more help or hindrance.

"Okay," she says after thinking a minute. She opens her belt up and finds a spare communicator, handing it over. "I'm going to see if I can get to a different angle. You stay here and let me know what you can see from this vantage point. No matter what happens, don't get involved unless I call for you, got it? You'll be my secret backup weapon, but you have to wait for my signal."

[newoutsiders]

Charlie looks like she's about to complain, but instead puts on her serious face and salutes her.

"Aye aye, Chief! Holding down the fort!"

The tanker leaves the docking station, accelerating way more quickly than you're comfortable with.

[stephbrown]

Okay, well, there's no way Steph is going to catch the tanker, not with the speed it's using. That doesn't mean she can't get a closer look at whatever it was doing while it was here.She makes her way closer, trying to see as much as she can as she goes.

[newoutsiders]

You stay in the shadows, watching the security guard who waved the truck off take out a burner cell phone from a dorky holster on his belt- although you guess bats shouldn't talk in this case. He dials and makes a call.

"Hey. It's done."

He laughs.

"Yeah, well. I don't wanna do this forever."

He suddenly goes pale.

"What do you mean, 'I won't be?' Hey! Don't hang up on me! I just-"

The phone starts beeping loudly. And not the kind of beeping a phone makes.

[stephbrown]

Crap. Crap and double crap, in fact. Steph dives out of the shadows and hits the guy right in the middle. She grabs for the phone and tosses it as hard as she can away from them. "Come on!" she yells, grabbing the guy by the wrist and hauling him behind her.

[newoutsiders]

You barely have time to walk ten feet before the phone explodes- catching you and your new friend at the edge of the blast radius. Dragging behind you, and being the one not covered in armor, it seems he took most of the damage. There's smoke everywhere, as lights go on all around you. Everyone at the docks comes running towards you to see what happened.

The guard is coughing, so he's definitely alive. But he needs a hospital. Now.

"Eep! Uh, don't worry!" Charlie yells. "I can handle this! I'll follow that truck!"

[stephbrown]

Honestly, chasing the truck is probably the best place for Charlie to be right now. That means she won't be down here, possibly getting in the way of the ass-kicking Steph might be about to get from the guard's buddies.

Steph takes a defensive stance as the other guarsd get near. "Okay, who wants to tell me what the hell that was all about?"

[newoutsiders]

Four of the guards are all lined up in front of you now, with seven more on the way.

"What?" One of the guards stops, confused. "But you-"

"Don't let her confuse you!" another guard barks, drawing his gun. "I saw her throw that bomb! Stand down, Batgirl!"

"Batgirl?" the first guard asks. "We can't seriously be-"

"Come on, Todd! She got Aaron!!"

"Fine," he says, drawing his weapon with the other two guards. "For Aaron. But we're looking at serious hazard pay."

In the distance, you hear a *poof!* as Charlie manages to 'port away- hopefully, towards the truck.

[stephbrown]

"Okay, Todd, you seem like a reasonable guy," Steph says, going for placating. "If I was here to hurt Aaron on purpose, why would I have thrown the bomb away from him, huh? Why would I have shown myself at all?" She smiles encouragingly, turning to Mr. Let's Just Attack. "Wouldn't I have stayed hidden ,and made sure he was in the line of fire?"

[newoutsiders]

Todd's aim wavers.

"She's making a pretty good point, Derek..."

Derek looks angrily over at Todd.

"I've been working here 6 years, Todd! You started, what, yesterday?"

"It was two mon-"

"Whatever! You don't know how things work here! Bats show up, the explosions start, entire warehouses get destroyed, and who's held responsible? Huh? Not them! Not the fucking Heroes of Gotham City!"

"I think Aaron's bleeding out, man..."

"This isn't just about Aaron! This is about taking charge of our goddamn lives for once! No more vigilantes in the Harbor!"

The third guard looks over at the fourth.

"So, do we, uh..."

The fourth shrugs, and just fires his gun at you.

[stephbrown]

Well, this situation just got a whole lot crappier. Steph dives out of the way. "Call 911 for your friend," she snaps at Todd. There's not a whole lot to hide behind; time to stand and fight, apparently. She surveys her opponents and decides to go for Derek first; maybe if she can take out the ringleader, the others will take a chill pill.

She lets out a loud "Cowabunga!" - never underestimate the power of people getting confused by that - and dashes forward, aiming a kick for Derek's gun hand, hoping she can make him drop it.

[newoutsiders]

Derek fires at you just as the kick connects, bullet going 50 degrees vertical and the gun flying out of his hands. Guy three dives at your other leg. Todd pulls back to call the cops as the other guards arrive on scene, but you can already hear sirens. Someone must have phoned in the explosion.

[stephbrown]

Steph glances around. Derek's holding his hand and howling, so he's probably not the biggest threat. It looks like the rest of the guys are madder now, though, so it might be time to exit stage left.

She pulls her grapple gun and nods. "Gentlemen." And with that, she aims for the roof of the warehouse, pulls the trigger, and braces before hitting the button that will retract the line and send her into the air.

[newoutsiders]

Some of the eleven guards shoot at you, but they all miss their mark as you speed off towards the roof. You hear the wail of an ambulance as it pulls up. If you need to question Aaron, you could probably do it later.

Derek and most of the guards start running into the warehouse, trying to catch you on the roof. But you can be long gone by then.

[stephbrown]

Steph decides that running away to fight another day is the better part of valor, and also that mixing metaphors is amazing. She gets out of there as fast as she can.

[newoutsiders]

Employing your usual acrobatics to leap across a few roofs and get to your well-hidden bike (if you do say so yourself), you check your tracks to find, to your relief, the harbor crowd seems to have lost your scent.

The next place to hit on patrol would be The Cauldron at this point... but you still haven't heard from Charlie.

[stephbrown]

Steph hopes that Charlie still has the communicator that she had when she took off. She taps her own comm. "Hey, Ch- uh. Other Batgirl?"

[newoutsiders]

You hear some fumbling on the other end, like Charlie is digging the communicator out of her belt.

"Hey, Batgirl."

[stephbrown]

She's still alive. Hasn't poofed herself into outer space yet. Steph's relieved. Hopefully she's had better luck than Steph's had. "Did you catch the truck?"

[newoutsiders]

"Well... kind of? I mean, it's definitely stopped now."

[stephbrown]

A bunch of terrible scenarios run through Steph's head, and she has to take a deep breath before asking, "What exactly do you mean by that?"

[newoutsiders]

"Well, the tank got loose, and the driver turned out to be this freaky monster dude and got away. But the truck is definitely stopped. We think it was carrying, uh. Plastic Man Juice. The stuff that makes you all stretchy. Oh! And I'm here with Green Arrow. The cute one."

[stephbrown]

"Oh," Steph replies. That... had not been one of the scenarios she'd imagined, but it's still pretty much not great. "Green Arrow, huh? Are you still with him? Where are you guys?"

[newoutsiders]

"Way uptown. I, uh, kind of overshot the truck at first. By a lot. Like, half the city a lot."

[stephbrown]

"That's not good," Steph says, frowning. "The 'porting thing is getting less and less reliable, isn't it? That's dangerous. We should really figure out what's going on." As soon as she can bring herself to break the news to Babs, that is. "Can you give me an address? I wrapped things up with our friends at the dock for now. Maybe we should group up so we can work on things together."

[newoutsiders]

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll handle it. We're on... 12th and Broome. Near where that creepy old theme park used to be."

[stephbrown]

Amusement Mile. That's not good, either, but Steph keeps that thought to herself. "Okay. I'm heading your way. I shouldn't be long."

[newoutsiders]

"Okie doke."

[stephbrown]

Steph puts her comm away and starts up her bike. She can get to 12th and Broome in fifteen minutes tops, assuming the destruction between here and there isn't too bad. She sets off, hoping she can get there before anything too crazy happens.

[newoutsiders]

You're about halfway there when you see the police have blocked off the road- beyond some barricades, you see a hazmat team cleaning up a nasty, toxic looking spill from the orange tanker. Most bizarrely of all, you can spot Starfire from the Titans floating above the crash site.

[http://thenewoutsiders.dreamwidth.org/1509.html]

[stephbrown]

"O...kay..." Steph mutters. "Time for Plan B." And a call to Oracle, but she's not going to talk and drive, not when she's taking a detour. Steph turns down a side street so she can catch another road up towards Amusement Mile.

Hopefully someone will be able to explain everything to her. Soon. Soon would be nice.

[newoutsiders]

You circumvent the hazard scene and continue towards Amusement Mile. You eventually find Connor Hawke and Charlie waiting for you near a totaled truck cab in a demolished intersection.

[http://thenewoutsiders.dreamwidth.org/1150.html]

[stephbrown]

[Tagged to http://thenewoutsiders.dreamwidth.org/1150.html?thread=55422#cmt55422]