Hit the Ground Running 10 : Mice and Men

[phaineofcatz]

If it was hard to wait for news yesterday, today is going to be agony. Neither she nor Tay can focus enough this morning, and they gave up on doing any serious aerial stunts. Instead, they are doing flips and tumbles, Phaine in their body and Tay in the shell. The shell is so much more flexible than their body, no mass fight against, but it also doesn’t have any inertia. Tay has to keep applying pretty consistent force to keep flips and cartwheels going, but the tumbles often overshoot. It’s enough of a difference that it keeps them occupied until nearly lunch, but they keep finding they are distracted catastrophizing about tonight.

They are given some reprieve when Jason rolls in yawning. “It’s weird knowing you’re both the same person. Or like, is person the right word?”

“System is apparently the word. Or body, but I get that the shell makes that second one kinda feel wrong.”

“If it makes it any like, easier, either one of us can be in the body or the shell.”

“No…no that does NOT make it any easier.”

“So did you like, sleep here last night?”

“Yeah, kid, Tim had me up even after patrol going back over more details he thought up through the night. Didn’t feel like driving back when it was all done.”

“Probably safer you stayed. You uh…doing anything?”

“Not really, Alfred said he’d make us all lunch if I brought you up.”

“Sure, let me just put Tay away~” She giggles at the rhyme and runs off to the lockers with the shell.

Jason hung out after lunch, too. She could tell he was a little tense at first, but he was taking his time. She figures that meeting a person and thinking you knew them, but finding out they had another person hidden in them, was probably kinda freaky. “So, uh, ‘Tay’? Bruce says you have been in there all along. Were you the one I talked to about guns?”

“Yes. Phaine panicked, and I figured I could either convince you we were being upfront or I could deal with the fallout of you deciding we were an immediate threat. Either way, I was better suited.”

“Talked about guns? Like, when we were testing out my PK?” They didn’t so much talk about guns as he showed her some. Wait, when did Tay talk to Jason?

“I think you were too panicked and dropped out for a bit, I’m not sure you remember, sis.”

“Shoot… I’m starting to see how it took so long for me to find out.”

“It’s okay, you didn’t miss much.”

“It’s a bit weird, but it kinda makes it easier to understand you. Look kid, it’s…rough having stuff like this, but you’ll get through it.”

“Yeah, and Tay and I will help each other deal with it.”

“Damn right. Hey, if you’re gonna hang, what do you say to a rematch at nine ball?”

“What, you planning to cheat with your powers this time?”

“We won’t need to, Tay’s been coaching me for the last week! I’m a lot better than I was last time.”

“Tay’s been… How?”

“Play her and find out!”

Jason still won. But it was at least close for all the matches and she won one of the five games, so it was a dramatic improvement over the sweep from last time. It also killed enough time for the boys to get home from school. The rest of her evening went close to normal, but she could tell Duke was trying to keep her distracted. He kept asking questions she knew he could answer, but it was too sweet for her to point it out. She still wasn’t sure Jason didn’t stay the night for the same reason. For an entire family of loners, they were all incredibly kind on the inside. She guesses that you have to be kind to dedicate a double life to protecting people and still have a do-not-kill policy.

Even if it was pity, it helped carry her through the day. After dinner they found themselves waiting with Tim at the bat computer. Tay had pulled out the shell and was standing next to her. They only really told Phaine, but it’s because they are feeling paranoid and wanted to be prepared. They had taken other steps too, including making sure the cameras were charged and on hand, and that they had emptied all the fabric in their locker into the hollow inside the shell. It looked the same to anyone else watching, but to the two of them it was reassuring to have a full load of material to manipulate. Phaine had made fun of Tay about it a little, but truth was, she was anxious too.

She didn’t know why, but it just kinda felt off, like when your socks aren’t the same. Bruce was the king of plans, and Tim the prince, but it felt like they were missing something about the whole thing.

There wasn’t much time left to worry though. Tim was running over watch here in the cave, in part to keep an eye on her, but in part to let Barbara get some rest. She’d pulled a few all nighters making sure there weren’t any surprises with Sellers. On site they had a full squad at the ready, Batman, Robin, Spoiler, Orphan, and Red Hood all were watching the building waiting for the shift change to show up. After that they could follow the crew to their mastermind. A few men had shown up early, but most were rolling in at the last minute, Sellers among them.

As the last few started to trickle in Tim rehashed a few details over comms. <Alright, everyone hold steady for just a little longer. Remember, catching these guys doesn’t help us, we want to follow them to—>

<Sorry, Red Robin, Robin just burst in the north window, we’re going loud!>

Next to her Tim was doing his best to keep calm as his plan started to unravel, <Come on, Robin, you just needed to wait a few seconds more!>

<We already waited too long, your plan is a failure. I saw the target entering a machine with the rest of the crew. I went to stop them, but the machine has disappeared. The crew are gone.>

Oh, ‘if you can teleport your gear where you want it…’

<OKAY, that is unfortunate, but plan D accounts for it. We already knew this was just a rally point for them, so we placed a tracker on Sellers in case they used teleportation.>

Tay is grabbing her by the wrist, tugging her towards the elevator. “Come on, sis, we gotta go!”

“What? Oh. OH!”

<Okay, I’m locking in on the tracker it’s…it’s in HIGH TOWN! He can teleport farther than I counted on, everyone get to your transport, I’m sending new coordinates now.> Tim notices them leaving as they both start running towards the elevator and hollers after them. “Where are you two going? You’re supposed to stay with me!”

“If the machine misfires again we’ll land somewhere between here and there!”

“We don’t know where there is, but here is UNDERGROUND!” They make it to the elevator and graciously find that it’s already down in the cave.

“Oh!” Tim gets up to follow while giving an update to the team. <We are getting the target to higher ground. I’ve forwarded a path for reroute!>

Tim doesn’t make it before the doors close, but it’s not like he can help them. “Looks like you were right to be paranoid, Tay. Stupid teleporter.”

“Okay, well, I’ll save the ‘I told you so’ for after the dust settles, but we can’t go out there exposed. I grabbed all this for a reason.” The fabric of the shell unraveled, wrapping her head to toe and settling the cape and cowl in place on her. She could vaguely see herself in the reflection of the elevator doors as everything tightened up into a protective suit. They look cool.

It’s a silly thought, she and Tay may be about to be ripped apart and she doesn’t even know if they have seconds or hours. She doesn’t even know if maybe it will be permanent this time. “Hey, Tay… No matter what happens, I’m like, glad you were here with me.”

“Me too, sis, but don’t talk like that, it’s making me more anxious than the teleporter is.” They ride the elevator up to the top floor. It dings and the door opens, but they don’t get out.

“We’re not really supposed to be up here like this, maybe we just like, hang out in the elevator and hope for the best?”

“Well, we can’t go back down, that’s for sure.” After a moment or two passes the doors close again. It feels a little anticlimactic. They were so worried about getting out from underground they hadn’t thought about how long they might spend sitting in the—

Suddenly everything is bright and sideways.

She can see and hear clearly, men all around shouting and whispering. The room is full of equipment, work lights pointed at the platform. The platform where she currently stands.

“Guess he finally figured out the breaker situation.”

“OH MY GAWD, TAY!!! I was so worried I’d be here alone!”

“Is that one of the bats? I didn’t sign up to fight no Batman.” He isn’t the only goon she hears mumbling similar.

“That is not Batman! I told you all already, it senses your fear and uncertainty and takes a form most suited to deter you.” That’s a voice she’s pretty sure she recognizes. Our Saturday morning cartoon villain. Tay pulls out and turns on the cameras, sliding one to their chest to peek out through the crack in the cape they are mostly concealed in, and setting to record the scientist as he rants. “Last time it appeared as a little girl, this time it has chosen the shape of a fear you have in common. It matters not what it looks like, it is a shoggoth all the same, and I need it captured alive!”

A shoggoth? She’s not sure what part of that is craziest, that he thinks they are a shoggoth, that he wants to CATCH a shoggoth, or that him telling these goons “don’t worry, it’s not Batman, it’s just a shoggoth,” has actually emboldened them and they are starting to inch their way towards her on all sides.

They move the other camera to the back of their head. Sorry Bruce, gonna have to tear the cowl a bit, but it’s kind of an emergency. They set this one as an overlay on one eye. They are now as ready as they’ll ever be. Ready to do what is another question though.

“Do you think if we split up we can take them all?”

“What? There’s more than thirty dudes in here, they had guns last time, and it looks like that one has a freaking cattle prod in his hands. We run and look for an exit.”

“But he’s right there. And his equipment is already set up, we might not get another chance like this for months.”

<Do not engage. This is Red Robin, I repeat, DO NOT ENGAGE! We have your location and are sending a team for extraction. If you can run do so, stall if you can’t, but whatever you do, try not to get caught in a fire fight in there.>

Shoot, she forgot they left their comms set to always on. She tapped it off, but it’s too late, if they try to catch this guy now they’ll never hear the end of it… But if they CAN catch him and get him to send them home? But shit, what if that breaks the barrier? She doesn’t know what to do and the goons are starting to close in on them.

“I can’t promise not to fight, but I can promise to run. They want a shoggoth, let’s show ’em one.” She feels Tay crouch and spin with her arms flaring the cape out dramatically. Tendrils of black lash out in all directions, using a combination of her vision and the camera behind her to target the men all around them. They miss most of them, it’s not something either of them have tried before, but one man takes a blow to the gut and goes flying. “Come on, sis, wake up, we can’t stay here. Even if we want to fight this isn’t our element.”

Tay’s right, this isn’t their element. After all, Nix taught them to fight in the dark. She grabs control of the tendrils and whips them at her new targets. Her aim’s not much better than Tay’s if she’s being honest, but it’s easier to hit something that isn’t moving. She grabs the two nearest floodlights and knocks a third over, breaking it. The ones she grabbed she fills with shade, blotting out their glow. It’s not enough to plunge them into darkness, but there are a lot more shadows to work with now.

“Don’t let it get the lights! A shoggoth is most in their element in the dark, that’s how it got away last time!”

She flings the lights she had in tendril in various directions, not caring if they break or not, she can keep her shade on the bulbs even without touching them either way. Instead, she focuses on where she heard that voice and finds the cause of nearly a month’s worth of complications. Coiling the limbs around herself she launches up to the ceiling and uses the false appendages to clamber across the room towards the scientist. As she goes she catches and flings a few more lights, making it just a little harder for the goons to follow her.

“Exit on our right, let’s go!” She feels Tay fighter her for control and lurches to the right towards a pair of double doors. He’s just a little way ahead, if they just stay they might be able to get home today! “Sis, leave it, let’s GO!”

She doesn’t know how she’d even convince him to send her home, or if he even knows how. And Bruce won’t help them if she’s a loose cannon…

“Fuck!”

She stops fighting Tay and they launch themselves at the doors. They easily rip off their hinges as she throws herself into them and out into a hallway. Woops, turns out these doors were supposed to open in. Well, whatever, they must have been cheap doors, and she has bigger problems. The hall is a dead end on one side and barricaded at the other, just some equipment blocking it, but she didn’t want to have to move it. She sees a door across the hall and decides to try that first. She pushes through to find a meeting room. The blinds are closed, but those are definitely windows, her second favorite hole in a wall to go through! She doesn’t even bother shading the window, she’s covered head to toe in shade already. She just throws herself right through the window, out into open air.

And there sure is a LOT of open air! She thought they were in a ground level lab or something, why are they so high up? Why does she keep jumping out of windows she can’t see out of?

“Oh fuck, why does this keep happening?”

She’s trying to do the math on how hard she’s going to hit the ground below and if that hits harder than a bullet when she feels the cape stretch out. “Think we can do that thing from the reboot movie?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never been paragliding before, have you?”

They had forward momentum and the cape being stretched out like a glider was definitely slowing their decent. “Sis…come on, you know the answer to that.”

“I don’t know, you remember a lot of stuff I don’t!

<You’re moving very quickly, have you been moved to a transport?!>

Comms on, <Not now, Red, kinda busy,> comms off. She was going to have to change the settings for that later. Like, when they were on the ground at least.

It was awkward, and they were still figuring it out, but the hardened cape was starting to push them more forward than down. They could at least choose which direction they were going to crash.

“All I know about hang gliding is what mom told us. And we only actually saw her do it that one time when we were six.”

“Well, we could be doing worse. Maybe if we make the cape less flat we can increase our drag and slow down? I’m worried we’ll crash into the side of a building just as fast as we’d hit the ground.”

They tried adjusting the cape shape, and loosening some extra material to create more drag. It was working and gave them a little more control over their direction as well, but it was hard to coordinate their efforts.

“Hey, there’s a park up ahead, is that Gotham park? We’re going pretty fast and not losing as much altitude, we could probably make it there if we let off some drag.”

“Why is that better than a roof?”

“Because the impacts with branches will slow us down in smaller increments and I’m more confident our shade can take it. Kind of like the crumple zone on a car. The only other idea I have is to make a bubble of layers of material and hope that works as a crumple.”

“You know what, I like the park plan better.”

They started letting off the drag to try and make it to the park. They had been pretty lucky the window they chose didn’t face any other nearby skyscrapers or they’d have had to learn to steer a lot faster.

“Okay, it’ll be close, but I think you’re right, we should be able to clear the remaining—”

A familiar pain grips her brain, but more intense than the previous times. She loses focus and control, not to mention a few strips of fabric, as she grips her head. She’s tumbling through the air, but doesn’t know which way is up. She can feel Tay fighting her for control of the cape, but neither of them know what to do with it or even which way is up. She catches a glimpse of a building rushing up at them and only has time for one idea.

“TAY, BUBBLE!”

Tay gets it and they both grab different parts of the fabric to make layers of shade around them, curling up into a ball so they can wrap as many layers as possible. Barely a second later they feel themselves crash, bounce, crash again, still feel like they are falling, and then crash one last time. They wait a few moments to see if anything else happens, but they seem to have come to a stop. Dizzy and disoriented, they undo their bubble of shade and carefully retract the layers of fabric back into a suit shape. They seem to be looking up into the Gotham night sky.

“I think I’m alive, are you alive, sis?”

“Unless hell has stars, yeah, I’m alive.”

Their head is pounding and they are a little sore all over, but seem to be mostly unharmed. They work their way gingerly to their feet, and check their surroundings. What smells like garbage is, in fact, garbage. They had fallen into an open dumpster in an alley. Scratch that, they’d fallen THROUGH the lid of said dumpster. Well, probably helped soften their landing. She looked up at the walls above her, and there was definitely some damage to the side of one of the buildings near the roof.

She tapped the comms back on <Um. Red Robin, if you can tell where we are right now, maybe like, pencil in some repairs to the building we just crashed into.>

<Are you alright? Your signal was moving so fast we thought they had moved you to an aircraft.>

<Nah, we just jumped out the window of a skyscraper and squirrel suited our way across the city. No big, right?>

<Yeah, sure, no big.>

<…I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not. But I guess if you’re feeling well enough to be sarcastic you’re fine. Most of the team is headed to engage at the site, I’ve diverted Hood to pick you up and bring you back.>

<Okay, like, neat, we’ll just like, get out of this dumpster and hang here for a bit.> She switched the comm off again.

“Bleh” They did the tendril thing again and lifted themselves out of the dumpster, placing themselves on their feet on the ground. Then, for good measure, they pulsed ripples of highlight through the suit to clean any muck off. She decided to walk a ways away from the dumpster, they couldn’t really tell if they still smelled like garbage standing right next to more garbage.

They made it a few feet forward before they realized there was a man standing in the alley staring at them like they were some sort of eldritch tentacle monster. Which, now that she thought about it, that’s exactly what they looked like. “Uuuhh, hi!” She retracted the tendrils and made herself look…well, like an earth creature of the night at least.

“You came from the sky…”

“Uh, yeah, we crashed into the building and fell. OH SHOOT! We didn’t hurt you did we?” The man was dirty, but she couldn’t see any blood. He also seemed to be standing alright.

“No, I was downs by the end. You fell in a pod.”

“Yeah, we like, used it to keep ourselves safe while falling.”

“Why did you come here?”

“We kinda didn’t mean to? We like, got dragged here by some weird scientist and we’re kinda stuck. Or wait, did you mean this alley? We’re not stuck in the alley, we’re just like, waiting here for someone who’s been helping us since we got to this world.”

“You’re not here to abduct people?”

“What? No! WE got abducted, we just wanna go home.”

“Sis, he thinks we’re aliens.”

“I mean, we are aliens? Like, technically…”

“Oh, you weren’t just being a ditz.”

<Hood is approaching your position, prepare for extraction.>

“Oh, our friend is coming, he might be in a hurry, so maybe step to the side to be safe?” There is the rumble of a motorcycle behind her and she turns to see Red Hood rounding the corner into the alley on a chopper. “That’s him!”

Hood rolls to a stop a few feet away, “You good, kid? Red Robin said you fell out of a skyscraper.”

“Yeah, we’re good, just a bit lost. We didn’t bother setting up a GPS cause we weren’t expecting to go outside yet.”

“Shit, why didn’t I think of that? And I was just teasing you for being a ditz.” They hopped up on the back of Hood’s bike and held on to him, retracting the cape and making sure she didn’t have any loose material to get caught in the wheel.

“Sorry, I don’t have a spare helmet, wasn’t expecting a passenger tonight.”

“Hood, see that dent in the wall up there? That was us, BEFORE we fell into that dumpster over there. We good.”

Hood looks up at the wall and whistles, “Yeah, okay, guess that’s fair.”

Phaine waved to the man in the alley, “Bye mister, I’m sorry we don’t have any cash, not that our money would probably count for much here.”

“S’okay, space money’s probably radioactive or somefin.”

Hood pauses, then fumbles in his jacket for a minute. “Here, have a twenty, it’s from earth and everything.” He offers the bill and the guy takes it and says thanks. Then he revs the bike and starts them down the alley and out into the city.

She clicks the comm back on, <Thanks for the lift, Hood, we were headed for the park when our head started killing us and lost control of our glide. It felt a lot like when we snapped back together before, hurt more than the crash did.>

<Yeah, about that. Red says you two were both on comms together, but there was still one of you in the elevator. Duke found it, but it disappeared suddenly.>

<Oh… Fuck.>

<Yeah, that’s about right. SOoo, how you two, uh, three? Feeling?>

<A little worse now, thanks.>

---

They road in silence for most of the way back. They’d never driven anywhere with their shade exposed to the wind. It was a good feeling, but Phaine couldn’t actually pin down exactly why, it was very refreshing though. Or maybe she’d just been inside too long and enjoyed being somewhere other than the cave or the manor for a few moments, even if she was stressed and distracted. She asked Red Hood about GPS and he told her how to pull one up as an overlay in the mask so she could match what she was seeing to the maps she’d looked over of Gotham. It helped her to not think about what new thing might be lurking in her mind.

The fact that the third person hadn’t made any attempts at communication was unsettling. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but Tay had started talking within moments of them snapping back together. But maybe it was more like when they first got here? There hadn’t been a noticeable change in their system then. But then, she also hadn’t felt the snapping headache when she got here. There were too many unknowns. About the only thing she did know is it hadn’t seemed to affect her connection with Tay.

They still couldn’t talk to each other in their head, but they could feel a bit of each other’s emotions, softened, as if they were coming from a ways away, but no more than before this last teleport. It was kind of striking how comforting that was to her? Just a week ago she was going crazy about this intrusive voice that had shown up. Two weeks back and she didn’t even know it was there. Now the thought of losing Tay or even just being separated, was like thinking about losing a family member. She hopes that if they have a new voice things go at least that smoothly again…

<You good back there, kid? I didn’t really ask if you were comfortable riding a motorcycle.>

<Dad let us ride on the back of his sometimes.>

<I think we’re okay, it’s just like, a lot and we’re trying not to think about it and panic.>

<Well, we’re almost back. Just keep it together a bit longer>

As he says it, Hood turns into an overpass, but instead of driving through he slows down and turns into a wall as it slides open. The GPS says they’re still pretty far from the manor, but it looks like this leads down into some subway tunnels. She doesn’t know if they are active or not, it’s hard to tell just being in the tunnel parts, but they don’t see any trains. Hood takes a meandering path that goes through some maintenance shafts and another door that just looks like a wall and eventually she can tell they are for sure out of normal city works. It’s kind of stunning how far away from the manor she teleported, the last two times she’d moved just a few meters, and then only a mile or two. Sure, the first time she crossed entire worlds to get here, but she doesn’t even know how that works spatially, so this trip through the city feels like the farthest she’s traveled by normal means since she got here.

<Huh, I just thought about it, but if teleportation tech is so rare, how does Batman have so much of it?>

<Some of it’s just too expensive for a normal person to develop, but most of it’s alien tech.>

<That makes sense, the watchtower is also using nonstandard tech I bet.>

They pull into the cave proper and she gets a glimpse of what it’s like to drive up through the various facilities. She’s really only been in something like five percent of the cave, and a lot more of it is open air than she expected. When you’re in the smaller, regularly used areas, it feels like it’s a little bigger than the gym in the manor, but it’s actually probably bigger than the whole manor grounds. For a moment she thinks about how cool it would be to sail through the cave, grappling and gliding around with her powers. Sure, suddenly realizing she was falling out of the sky again had been stressful, and they had ended up crashing, but it was also exhilarating. She can FLY! Okay, it was really more gliding, and Tay did most of it, not her, but the idea of being able to just let loose in the sky like that still made her heart soar a little.

On the squad they always talked about what it was like to be a flyer, to be up in the air, untethered, and unafraid of the fall. She had thought the only feeling better was being out performing in front of a cheering crowd, but now? It was like she’d spent years chasing a feeling then found out that secretly, she had access to the thing that feeling wanted to be when it grew up. And all she needed for it was a bed sheet and a high place to jump off of.

And a world that wouldn’t hunt her down if she got caught.

The thought dripped in coldly. She can’t do that back home, it’d be like painting a target on her back and lighting a flare. There’s no way her powers wouldn’t attract the attention of some government agency, and Aunt Nix had only been able to protect her so far by keeping her hidden. She just got a taste of real freedom, of using her powers to their full extent, and it felt natural, like she was meant for it, but if she ever did that again she would be risking her life.

More than her life, Nix had made it clear that young shifters were extra rare and that the phenomena was still poorly understood. If she was found out people would take her, her parents, her sister, maybe even people she just spent too much time with, all to see if they could replicate and control that kind of power.

By the time they were standing next to Tim and Alfred she was firmly back on the ground, dragged by heavy emotional weights. She just tasted the sky and before she even got to finish savoring it she realized that she would have to clip her own wings.

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