Hit the Ground Running 1 : Guns A'Blaze

[phaineofcatz]

Suddenly everything is dark and sideways.

She can’t see but she can hear, and there are voices. Male voices. Not boys, but full grown men, and lots of them. Shouting in the shadows all around her. Flashes and beams of light start up, and one man’s voice is commanding above the others, getting them organized, telling them to get light onto ‘the platform’ wherever that is.

The beams cast around and seem to be converging…here! Whatever the platform is, she’s standing on it!

She leaps further back into darkness, but not fast enough to keep the light from giving away her presence. “There is something on the platform! I need it at all costs! Get more light in here! Blasted power outage!”

Who even talks like that? ‘Blasted’ what is this a cartoon?

Her eyes are starting to adjust to the dark now and the flashlights are making the ‘platform’ she’s stumbling around on more visible. Oh boy, she sure hoped this is some sort of prank, because the platform is a mess of wires, smoking circuits, and runes she doesn’t have time to read. Whatever they spell, “get the hell off this thing” is what she was getting out of the situation.

The men are closing in on her now. Looming shapes in the dark with beams of light approaching more quickly than she’s comfortable with. And she’s stuck out in the middle of open darkness without much of a clue where to go.

Well, one clue where to go...

There seem to be fewer voices to her left, so left is a good start. And only just a bit more than a start as she quickly finds a wall, only just barely with her shoulder instead of her face.

A wall means no people, but it also means not a direction she can travel. Well, not unless she’s willing to out herself in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar people, and she’d like to hold that off for when she’s sure it’s life threatening…

But walls sometimes have holes in them, like doors and windows, so she keeps moving along the wall as fast as she can, hoping no one heard her scramble and thud over all the shouting.

She makes it about twice as far along the wall as it was to run into it in the first place before she encounters the downside of that whole wall thing. She is spotted by one of the figures in the darkness, already too close up on her if she’s being honest with herself.

“Hey! It’s over here!” and then light beams start finding their focus on her. The man nearest her is briefly highlighted in such a beam, and she has the good luck that this blonde haired tank of a dude is blinded by it momentarily so she can bolt passed him. “Ah, shit, watch it”

She could really use one of those doors about now…

Lights are closing in on her, and so are the men, she hears one shouting, “it’s some kid” and she knows she’s been properly seen at this point. But with more light comes more vision, and while she hasn’t found a door, she did just spot the other kind of hole walls have not far ahead. She just has to get passed the two men standing in front of it with their arms out.

They’re only twice her size…at least twice her size…for a brief moment she wonders again if this is a prank and a football team is getting revenge for her calling them something especially derogatory at a game. But these guys would have to be at least college football age, and high school girls only matter to college guys for reasons that she does not need to think about right now cause there is a window she needs to get through and she has to do it the hard way.

At least they’re slow. Probably not football then, even on the worst teams footballers are built for speed. She runs toward the center of them faking like she plans to try and slip passed, but once they group up she spins to the left and bounces off the wall they just abandoned.

Now, with a clear shot of the window, she puts in every bit of speed she’s able to and dives for it! Reaching her hands as far ahead of her as she can to touch it and cheat just a little. As her fingers make contact the glass turns black. She has a brief moment to realize she couldn’t see out the window even before it was enveloped in her shade. Barely a breath later and she slams into it full force, curling into a ball to fit through as the glass breaks in one large black chunk surrounded by a rain of tiny clear fragments.

She falls…

What, like, two feet?

OH, FIRE ESCAPE! Oh wow was that lucky, cause that looks like at least four floors down and there is nothing but concrete and debris as far as the eye can see.

She’s in a city, a really dirty city from the looks of it. And there aren’t any lights for blocks around. Okay, but she does see lights in the distance, did someone say something about a power outage?

Arms reach through the window after her and she realizes that figuring out where she is might need to wait a bit longer. She spins away from their grasp and throws the chunk of glass back at them, not waiting to watch as color quickly floods back into it and it shatters against the frame. Instead, she takes the moment of confusion it bought her to reverse vault over the edge of the fire escape and drop to the next floor. Okay, that was dumb, but she cheats a little to catch her balance, if no one notices the thing with the glass, no one will notice her black boots looking a little shady in the moonlight. Well, the smog-light? Can’t really see much moon here.

She drops again doing a slightly more convincing job of balancing her landing on the next rail and working her way to the ground. She could probably stick the landing from about two floors up, she’s been dropped further before, but it doesn’t look natural and she’s already kind of pushing it.

Up above, the confusion has given way to men climbing out the window, but they can’t fit through more than one at a time, and slowly at that. HA! Serves you right for not being a teenage girl instead of…line backers? Dock workers? Whatever, really big dudes.

Apparently someone inside is a little more put together though, cause she hears yelling to take the stairs and the elevator. She hits the ground cleanly on both feet, ready to run, but not knowing where to. It's too cold for LA, and she's only been to another city this big maybe three times. She didn't get long to look, but she doesn't think this is DC or New York. DC is kinda flatter, with some pretty obvious landmarks from even just a few floors up, and New York is tighter, restricted by the water that surrounds it. She does smell water. Okay, she smells sewage. Ick! What a time to have an oversensitive nose.

The shouting is getting closer. She bought some time with her drop, but not enough to dawdle. Both ends of the alley she’s in look like they open up, but the left one looks like it has branches in it, which means options. Uncle Lenoir always said to keep your options open in a fight, so left it is once more.

She makes it about three yards before hearing a strange series of clicks and the streets are suddenly bright.

Okay, bright might be overselling it, this city is kind of a wreck, maybe it’s Detroit? But there are lights on, so the power must be back. Unfortunately, that means she has less cover of darkness to slip away into, and when a door slams open to her left and several men start pouring out they immediately spot her and start coming her way. Well, that branch in the alley is looking better and better.

She swings a right into the branch and does her best to keep her footing as she runs on the uneven and slippery debris. All those practices doing laps out in the field are paying off, shame she’s wearing somewhat more fashionable and punky boots instead of running shoes. Fortunately the branch does seem to pass through and does even more branching up ahead. She doesn’t expect she can lose these guys in a straight shot, but some twists and turns might give her a chance to slip away.

First alley on the left is a dead end, no dice.

A little ways down an alley on the right opens into a courtyard, so she takes it.

And that courtyard has no exit. Shit.

She looks for doors and sees a few, but the first is locked. Quickly moving to the second she finds it gracefully unlocked and swings it open to…A Brick wall? Seriously? Briefly wondering yet again if she’s fallen into a Saturday morning cartoon she runs toward the third door only to find it locked as well. The men have reached the turn and can now see her so she bolts for some large loading doors across the courtyard begging them to be unlocked.

Bang!

A pile of debris in front of her churns up, causing her to skid to a stop. Ice drips through her veins as she dives behind a solid looking dumpster nearby. She feels like she’s falling backwards even as her shoulders rest against the steel of the container. Another gunshot rings through the metal behind her and everything starts to feel distant…quiet…the men are still there and shouting, but it’s like she’s experiencing the world through a fuzzy TV screen, not there in person.

With calm, vague disinterest she watches, as if from miles away, while her hand reaches out and touches a shredded tarp lying on the ground. Shade spreads out slowly from where her fingers press against it, and the now black sheet floats up to move along with her…

---

Oracle had worked with emergency services to reroute power to the district quickly, but the Bowery is a decade or two behind the rest of Gotham when it comes to infrastructure. It was only because Red Hood had already been tracking a new player in the area who was buying up quick muscle that he had a pretty good guess as to where the problem started. Normally he’d have told the rest of them to stay to their regular patrols and leave this to him, but people in this neighborhood could be ignored for days without Oracle stepping in to guide the effort.

But the more information he shared with Oracle to get the slums back up and running, the more interference he could expect. He could hear the bat mobile screeching around a corner a few blocks away even before he made it to the old industrial building. No chance of getting in and resolving the situation before they showed up then.

But maybe he had something else he could do. From a nearby roof he could see the backside of the building had goons flooding out of it, shouting something about a girl. That seems like as good a start as any.

“Oracle, the bat’s already here, I see goons chasing some-”

Gunshots ring out through the night air.

“Yeah, dealing with whatever that is.”

It doesn’t take long to find the source. A few buildings over, there is an alley that dead ends into a loading area. Bad place to get cornered, worse place to be pinned down. He’s just at the edge of the roof guns in hand when he has to take a moment to question who he’s here to help.

There are a lot of goons.

There are a lot of goons unconscious on the ground.

The girl, maybe a freshman in high school and dressed for a social event not a shoot out, looks as out of place in the Bowery as she looks at home handling a pistol. Black, short, curly hair, black clothes save for some bubblegum pink graphic on her shirt, black tarp in one hand and a silver gun in the other. She is not the only one firing, but she is doing so out in the open, with only the tarp blowing around her to obscure her shape from oncoming gunfire. The men on the other hand, the few still standing, have all retreated to cover at the entrance to the alley.

She is firing slowly, deliberately, and she catches one more in the shoulder before the gun makes a hollow click, sounding an empty magazine. She looks around at the men on the ground nearby, probably looking for a spare. Finding none she simply drops the gun and starts running for the two remaining goons, tarp billowing in front of her like a sail.

Recognizing this as a Bad Planᵀᴹ, Hood jumps in and makes quick work of them before this kid can get herself shot. He turns back to the girl who is now backing down the alley away from him like he’s the boogieman. “Hey kid, you’re crazy running head on at a gun like that, you got a death wish?”

She looks confused and out of breath, like maybe the adrenaline is running out and the cold night around them is setting in. “No” she says and bolts back into the courtyard headed for a loading door.

She makes it about half the way before Robin drops in front of the door and she freezes. “No No NO” she backs towards the left of the courtyard, tarp still billowing in hand, face a wash of emotions. “No! I-I don’t want to hurt anyone”

“That’s rich when you were doing pretty good in a shootout just a second ago” Maybe not the best thing to say, Robin didn’t see what was happening, and immediately switches to high alert. Two bat shaped flashes of metal are flying at the girl before he can tell Robin that she was the one under attack.

And hardly a moment later they are flying right back at the two of them. She spun and did something with the tarp to catch them and just as quickly threw one at Robin and the other at Red Hood. Neither connected, but both were close. Very close. Not a civilian close. Add that to the gun play from earlier and the number of goons on the ground and this situation is looking a lot more complicated than what he thought he was leaping into.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just reacted” she keeps backing towards the wall, “please, just leave me alone, I can’t be here.”

Robin takes a step forward, “If you don’t want to be here then let us take you to the authorities, I am sure the police can figure out where you belong”

There is a moment of further panic on her face and then she grabs both ends of the tarp and pulls it into a straight cylinder. It stays that shape when she lets go of the end and brandishes it like stick.

“Oookay, maybe we should all calm down.” Hood is banking on the backup Oracle just told them is coming, and sure enough, it’s just a second or two later that Orphan drops silently behind the girl in the direction she is backing up. He and Robin just need to hold her attention for a few moments and-

But then the girl turns around almost as soon as Orphan hits the ground. No one hears Orphan. This kid isn’t trained to fight, she’s trained to be hunted…

The girl spins brandishing the weird black tarp turned rolled up newspaper, trying not to let any of the three of them get closer to her. It’s obvious she knows she’s surrounded. Hood thinks for a moment that they are going to have to actually fight the kid before they can calm her down, but then she looks at Orphan one last time and lowers her improvised weapon.

“Please! Cass…I don’t want to fight you,” and then she turns her back on Orphan and lets the tarp fall to the ground. She holds her arms over her head and closes her eyes, walking backwards towards Orphan a few steps before getting down on her knees, choking down tears and mumbling incoherently to herself the whole time. She looks as nonthreatening as a sobbing teenage girl on her knees and covered in grime can look in a back alley of the slums.

“Hey, anyone else starting to feel like the bad guys here?”

Orphan started approaching the girl from behind, but Robin warned her, “Careful! She has some skill as a fighter.”

“You know me?” Orphan is close, but stops just out of reach for her quiet question.

The kid nods fervently. “I…I know like, all of you…”

“What do you mean ‘you know all of us’? Who sent you!?” Robin’s intensity doesn’t need his sword to back it up, but he already has it in hand regardless.

“Okay, okay, slow it down. I’d like answers too, but this might not be the best place to have a deep revealing chat. You afraid of heights, kid?” As if to back up Red Hood’s statement, a goon groans on the ground and tries to get up. Whatever, pistol whips for everyone.

The kid looks up and swallows a hiccup, “I uh…I promise not to run if we go to the roof?”

“As if you could outrun me in the air…” The girl seems to take Robin’s bravado as agreement and crawls forward to grab her weird tarp stick thing…and rips it in half. She looks around with another sniffle and, seeming satisfied, picks a wall nearby to walk towards, shaking out the bits of tarp like towels she plans to whip at someone. “What are you-”

She runs the last few feet at the wall and does a little setting hop before a high jump. A seriously high jump. She gets nearly twice her height off the ground before connecting with the wall, managing a few steps up before pushing off. But instead of falling to the ground she whips one of the strips in her hand and it sticks to the wall, letting her swing and run up another 6 or so feet. She continues like this, whipping and grappling up the wall several stories, reaching the roof in just a few moments.

“Okay, I’d like more answers now.” With high powered grapple hooks, Hood and the others are up on the roof almost as soon as the girl is, but theirs cost several grand and hers looks like it came out of a dumpster.

She is scrambling to clear a spot on the roof against a wall to sit down when Hood and company catch up to her. She fidgets in place like she’s trying to figure out if she’d rather sit on her scraps of tarp or use them as a shield against the wind. She seems to decide the roof being covered in wet trash and grime is more pressing and flattens out the tarp pieces to sit on and brace against the wall.

“Sooo…um, you might want to like, turn off comms for a minute or two? You’re on radio with Oracle right? I’m gonna say some things you wouldn’t want to get picked up by Calculator or whoever…Calculator exists here right? Like, that’s where I am, it has to be.” She sniffles again and hugs her knees on the ground.

“Okay, you know what, everything you say makes me want more answers. If we turn off comms for a little bit will you start answering questions?” The girl nods fervently up at Hood, “Alright, Oracle you hear that? Give us 5 minutes” Looking back down at the question of the hour, “Alright, start talking”

“Okay, so, Jason Todd is Red Hood, and Damien Wayne is Robin so, so that like, narrows us down some, but Cassandra Cain is Orphan and can talk, which like, could mean different things, but the three of you are working together? But Batman isn’t here, has Dick been Batman yet?” she hardly stops to breath until asking the question. Maybe ‘start talking’ was too open ended of an instruction. After shooting Orphan a confused glance, which she only shrugs back to, Red Hood nods. “Okay, but you look…fine about that? So Bruce is back…I think that means Orphan isn’t mind controlled anymore?” she squints at Orphan for a moment before nodding. “Okay, that narrows it down like, a lot…I think that means none of you are still all…” she drags a finger across her throat. “Murdery…sorry, that sounds mean, like, you all went through a lot I’m not judging you, I’ve had to do bad things too, and like, okay I haven’t had to kill any people yet, but like, that’s just cause I like, wasn’t forced to, not like, cause I think I’m better than you or anything.” She shivers, “Wow it’s cold, anyway, I think that means I can tell you anything so long as like, it isn’t a future thing, but I guess I don’t know when I am, so I don’t know what’s future things, so maybe I shouldn’t tell you things about here, but like, I think I have to tell you about the bubble or you don’t know why it’s REALLY bad that I’m here and oh GAWD, I hope this doesn’t mean there is a break in the barrier, I don’t know how to fix that! We only just realized multiverse theory might not be bunk, no one’s talked about how to stop cascades and crisis’s! crisisies? I don’t know which way is right, but it’s bad and I don’t know how I got here so I don’t know how to get back but the longer I’m here the more of a chance I’ve brokeneverything andohGAWD I don’t evenknow ifIcaneatfoodhere! WHat’s the chirality of organicmatter? None of you know, WHERE’S TIM?! I NEED A NERD!!”

The shivering has given way to chattering teeth and she is having a hard time speaking clearly now, not that Hood can understand what she’s saying anyway. He can tell she is cold, and DEFINITELY panicking now that she’s coming down off the adrenaline. Orphan has picked up on this too, and pulled out a compressed thermal blanket to wrap the girl in.

She looks up at Orphan startled but not resisting, “You…you shouldn’t give me this, I can use it to…oh wow you’re really pretty…uh, to like…do stuff with my shade…Like I did before”

Robin has had about enough of this by now and steps in sword pointed. “You promised answers, but so far you have only spoken nonsense and we have been the ones answering your questions, and then you think you can threaten us? You will tell us-” black spills out across the silvery foil of the emergency blanket and it snaps quickly out, wrapping around the sword, yanking it from Robin’s hand, and pinning it to the brick behind her.

“Uh…sorry, I like, get jittery when sharp things are pointed at my eyes…” she shivers again. “Can I like, have that back, it’sss cold…” the blanket slithers off of the sword and wraps itself around her like it has a mind of its own. The sword, also noticeably black now, remains firmly stuck to the wall.

“Um…My name is Phaine, and I REALLY shouldn’t be here…”

START | PREV | NEXT