Once a Bat, always a Night Person [Open]

[ichoosefight]

🧙 WHO: Stephanie Brown and YOU
⚔️️ WHAT: Settling in
🕒 WHEN: Around arrival: after midnight, 6am and afternoon
🗺️ WHERE: Around town, the breakfast buffet and outside a cafe
⚠️ WARNINGS: None

1. Old Habits
Steph has been staying up all night since she was 15 years old. That's 4 years of getting most of her exercise well after dark, and 1 year of night shift that may well have been more work than being a vigilante. Her arrival had been hectic and tiring, but she just couldn't force herself to go to bed at what society generally considered a 'normal hour'.

Instead she wanders the town after dark, taking a meandering route and keeping an eye on the rooftops, just out of habit. She has some of her weapons, but she has no intention of taking up the cowl again here. It's fricken Camelot, how much crime can there really be?

She barely notices anybody that might be on the streets. She has a lot on her mind, and not just deciding whether or not she's dreaming all of this.

She makes it across almost every inch of town before the sun rises.

2. Continental Breakfast
She happens upon the hotel's breakfast entirely by accident, and while she's actually on her way to bed she can't say no to free food. For a few days she's there every morning at 6am, hoarding muffins and keeping a half-full cup of coffee as close to her face as she can without looking too weird. She doesn't drink it, she just likes to keep it close. She's missed this smell. Given, it's probably not very good coffee, but it's a hell of a lot more coffee-like than what she's been drinking for the last few months.

Every now and then she takes a deep whiff of the untouched coffee and quietly sighs in satisfaction.

3. Magic was easier in books
Steph sits at a table outside a cafe, a truly gigantic mug and an assortment of coffee-condiments in front of her. The mug is full to the brim with latte, but it's already her second cup. Four packets of sugar and three wooden stir-sticks are pushed to the outside of the group, glowing brightly enough to be noticeable in the middle of the day.

She was trying to make them invisible. She hasn't had any success. Maybe she should try reverse psychology, she thinks. If she tries to make the sugar packet in front of her glow, maybe it will vanish instead.

She's been at it long enough that she's scowling as she focuses on the packet, making fists with both hands and splaying her fingers at the thing every time she makes an attempt.

"Glow," she mutters under her breath. "Glow! W...olg? Wolg. Lumos!" Unconsciously raising her volume, she makes a noise of frustration and tries one more time.

That final attempt has some effect at least. A dozen needles made of light pin the packet in place, stuck at all angles as if they had circled it when she wasn't looking. For a moment she just stares at it.

"...What?"

[ooc | brackets also accepted! ]

Comments

[ichoosefight]

"Three days," she answers with plenty of appreciation for the irony. She may not know a lot about this world specifically, but she knows a hell of a lot more about sentient life than this poor woman.

"Long enough to almost get killed by a minotaur. I'm not sure 'peaceful' is really the word."

[yorhaberserker]

"So you just got here too then it seems." She said as she walked with her. "What is a minotaur? How many types of people are there?" She couldn't help but be curious, after all, she needed to learn in order to adapt to this new environment.

"Though you're right, almost getting killed would not constitute peaceful." She let out a little chuckle at that.

[ichoosefight]

"It's a giant hairy dude with a bull's head," explains, using her fingers to imitate horns on her head.

"Nothing's really happened since then, but it wasn't the greatest introduction to the city."

[yorhaberserker]

She chuckled a bit at the description. "I've never heard of anything like that before. That's quite unusual, and I can imagine that it wasn't the greatest introduction." She agreed as she looked up at the night sky. She was finding she enjoyed seeing the stars from the ground. "What other kind of lifeforms have you encountered in your few days here?"

[ichoosefight]

"There're myths about them where I'm from." The same can be said of a lot of the things she's seen in the few short days she's been here.

"Let's see... I definitely saw a tiny dragon, and what might have been a phoenix. I have a talking bat for a familiar. Oh, and apparently there are duck people."

[yorhaberserker]

"I would really like to learn more about your experiences and myths, if you felt up to sharing." She said, finding having a simple conversation quite pleasant and relaxing. Especially how quiet it was out there.

"Familiar... oh yes... I have this strange three tailed cat thing that follows me around." A2 said as they walked, then blinked confused. "Duck... people? Is that possible? Well, I assume you've ran into one for you to bring up such a strange combination as that."

[ichoosefight]

"Yeah, it was super weird. They're definitely ducks, just like, huge, and somehow they have hands on the end of their wings. I couldn't figure out how they make their beaks move like lips, either, but they definitely did. I didn't want to ask too much, since I was already staring way too much for good manners."

She's fixated a little on the duck thing. That revelation came at the end of her first day, the last in a long line of unbelievable nonsense that she ran out of mental fortitude to just accept and move on from.

"Going into a ton of detail about my world might take a while. It's mostly pretty normal, but something insane happens at least once a year. More, depending where you live. And the world's almost ended like... 5 times in the last 15 years."

[yorhaberserker]

She couldn't help but laugh at the description. "That is unbelievable... how is that even possible?" She asked, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know if I'd have as good of manners myself, but who knows." She was chuckling a bit. "Duck people, who would have thought." She shook her head in disbelief. If she ran across one of them she'd probably be fixated on it too.

"Almost ended five times in just fifteen years?" Her eyes went wide. "We've just been at war with machines for thousands of years ourselves." She said. "So endless war... and world ending stuff every three or so years..."

[ichoosefight]

She nods sympathetically. There's just enough normalcy in her world for her to appreciate how completely bananas it can also be.

"Let's see..." She starts counting incidents on her fingers.

"There was the time an alien ate the sun, the time zombies tried to kill everybody, the time that satellite-AI went haywire and turned a bunch of people into cyborg-zombies to try to kill everybody, the time demons showed up and tried to kill everybody, the time a guy with mind-control powers took over a ton of people and tried to kill everybody... No wait, that last one was more than 10 years ago. Or, wait, did I say 15 years?"

[yorhaberserker]

She listens in disbelief hearing all of the incidents and what they were. She'd never heard of any of this. But she was quickly learning, partially because of her talking with Stephanie that there are so many other things that she never knew about.

"Yes, you said 15 years." She reminded her, giving her a smile. "Hearing all of this goes far beyond my imagination, given I wasn't programmed with much of one to begin with. How do your people handle it without going completely insane?"

[ichoosefight]

Steph smiles back and shrugs.

"I dunno. A lot of it we don't hear about until after the fact. Some gets contained pretty quickly. We've got the Justice League-" It occurs to her mid-sentence that if A2's world doesn't have humans, then it definitely doesn't have metahumans.

"Do you know what superheroes are?"

[yorhaberserker]

"So the higher ups hide the fact that your world has been threatened multiple times until after the fact?" She asked looking at her, her head tilting to the side inquisitively.

"Superheroes? No, I can't say that I know what those are." She told her. "But I am willing to learn what they are." She added with a small smile.

[ichoosefight]

"Superheroes are people with powers, super-powers, that use their powers to protect people." She frowns, and clarifies:

"Powers compared to normal humans, I guess. Though there are a couple of those people who don't even have powers. The Justice League is a team of heroes. They're not really official or anything, and they all use secret identities, but they pretty much patrol the whole planet."

Hopefully that helps explain her answer to the first question.

"It's not that the higher ups hide it, it's just that the media can't figure out what's happening when the people with the answers are up in the sky fighting space-squids or whatever."

[yorhaberserker]

A2 was having a difficult time comprehending this particular information. It clashed with what she had learned from the Old World records. It just felt like a very large error. "If they had those kind of humans, why would they need us? They should have been able to take out the aliens and machine lifeforms." She answered quietly. "But then again, we are all from different types of worlds...It seems that these heroes would have been a good thing for my Earth."

She did have to laugh a bit though with the sky fighting space-squids comment. "Sky fighting space-squids. That's funny." She said, her face lightening up nicely with the good humor.

[ichoosefight]

Steph chuckles herself, shrugging broadly this time. It hasn't happened yet, so she can laugh about it.

"Probably your world doesn't have them. There's a group called the Green Lantern Corps., they're like the space police. They'd definitely have been involved if there was some kind of invasion."

[yorhaberserker]

She shook her head. "Definitely a hard no, we don't have that back home." She said laughing, her smile brightening. She was liking Stephanie and it felt good to laugh with someone again. She had a hard time remembering the last time she genuinely laughed.

"Green Lantern Corps? What kind of name is that?" She asked. "It's rather... uh, creative. Space police hm? That's a weird concept." The android replied, having a hard time understanding it.

I am coincidentally explaining GL in 3 separate threads simultaneously

[ichoosefight]

The laugh is infectious, and an even better distraction from her own dark thoughts.

"Seriously! They have an actual green lantern. They use these magic rings to make stuff out of light, I think, and only people with extraordinary willpower can use them. There are other colors, too! Blue is hope, red is anger... the non-robot zombies were Black Lanterns. If I ever knew the others I've forgotten them."

Oh my... lol

[yorhaberserker]

"They actually use a lantern?" She giggled amused at the thought of it. If she did that people would look at her like she was insane and needed to be reprogrammed. "Wow, so they just color code everything than? But how does anyone know outside their circle what they mean? Seems kind of silly to me." She said, her blue eyes sparkling in the lights from the buildings around them.

stupid space police :Y

[ichoosefight]

"Oh, they don't. You see an alien in a monochrome suit, you just hope it doesn't barf acid at you. Not that you see Red Lanterns that often. I'm sure they're rage-puking out among the stars somewhere."

She shakes her head in amusement. She has to assume the acid doesn't hurt the Red Lanterns, or why would they keep spewing it?

"I guess in space a colored light is the best signal you could hope for. Maybe other planets know more about them. I don't know what Blue Lanterns even do, if they aren't part of the space police-force."

Re: stupid space police :Y

[yorhaberserker]

"Aliens that barf acid? What the hell?" She asked shaking her head, this woman's experiences and knowledges were so unusual compared to what she was used to. "That would be most unpleasant to contend with to say the very least." She chuckled.

She frowned a bit about the color light in space. "From my experiences in the Bunker and the flight unit during the surface descent, I don't think colored lights would do anything. Especially with all the stars." She told her. "But again, different worlds."

[ichoosefight]

"That was my reaction," Steph laughs. She's glad she's never had to fight those particular enemies. Her suit might have been kevlar, but it probably wasn't acid-proof.

"I wouldn't really know myself. Never been."

[yorhaberserker]

"Trust me, I really don't see the use of colored lanterns in space." She said with a smile. "But it is amazing being out there. But it doesn't change." She frowned a bit. "Then again, perhaps where you're from they are worth using out there."

[ichoosefight]

Steph hums thoughtfully.

"I dunno why outer space would be any different between universes. It seems like a pretty basic concept." She shrugs.

"I'm hardly an expert. Space kind of gives me the creeps, honestly. You know, since humans can suffocate and freeze to death, and have no innate ability to change direction in the infinite friction-less void." She shudders just thinking about it.

[yorhaberserker]

She smiled at her. “Who knows, safe to say I’m not all that familiar. But I have been in space.” She said looking over at Stephanie.

“I lived at the Bunker, in space during my training. It was beautiful, you could see the stars out of every window. Though they look better from the surface in my opinion.” She mused looking up at the night sky.

[ichoosefight]

Steph smiles, looking up at the stars herself.

"There are more of them here than I remember in Gotham. Too much light pollution. And regular pollution, probably."

Her smiles fades as she watches the sky. It's been a long time since she saw the real Gotham night sky, and she doesn't know if she'll ever see it again.