15709/Just When I Think I'm Out...

Just When I Think I'm Out...
Date of Scene:	15 October 2023
Location:	Ivy's place
Synopsis:	The Black Cat has an offer Ivy can't refuse.
Cast of Characters:	Black Cat, Poison Ivy

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Black Cat has posed:
As a general rule Felicia Hardy, AKA the Black Cat tries to stay out of Gotham City.

For one thing, there are a lot of crazies in this particular city. Moreso then any of them who dress up in costumes and venture out into the night to either commit or stop crimes. Or in Felicia's case, sometimes a bit of both. And of course there is the matter of the Bats. She really doesn't need that kind of trouble.

Besides, he already has a feline-themed burglar to deal with.

While all of that might stand, this is the second time in recent weeks that the platinum-blonde thief has found herself in Gotham City. Though at least this time she isn't on a job. At least, not exactly. The job's already done. All that's left at this point is to determine just to whom she is going to turn over her latest ill-gotten acquisition.

It wasn't the kind of job that she would normally bother with. Usually she is out for herself, after various pretties that catch her eye. More for her own personal collection to sell. She doesn't do this for the money afterall; she has plenty of that. It's about the thrill.

Still, she's not opposed to the occasional good deed. And stealing a Phytokinetic Amplifier created by the military industrial complex to try and interface with plantlife and turn it into literal spies seemed like a reasonably good deed.

At least until she dug a little deeper and found out that her buyer was even worse. Oooops. No one's perfect

So here she is in Gotham, having spent the past few days putting her underworld sources to work, calling in favors, making friends. All to get a singular bit of information.

Just where one Poison Ivy is laying low these days.

Showing up unannounced, just rapping at her door seems like a bad idea. It would make so much more sense to put out feelers, to find a way to get a message to her to see if she is interested in what Felicia has to offer. It would be the sensible thing to do.

Where's the fun in that? Besides, everyone knows what they say about cats and curiousity.

Which is why a quiet tapping comes from one of Ivy's windows. See? She didn't just walk up to the door. No style there at all.

Poison Ivy has posed:
A rap on the window. Well, it's not the Bat; he doesn't knock. It could be a raven of either the tempest-tossed or tempter-sent varities, but she has no bust of Pallas above her chamber door, so such a raven would probably look for more suitable habitation. That leaves Catwoman as the likeliest suspect, and Ivy decides after a moment spent fighting down her instinctive resentment at being interrupted in the middle of her reading (Plant Systematics, by Simpson), she yells unenthusiastically, "Yeah, hang on, I'm coming, you weirdo." She marks her place in the book, throws off the covers, doublechecks that she's wearing pants--flannel pajama bottoms, these--and heads up to the mezzanine to open the ceiling window of her greenhouse. It's too dark out to see more than an outline, but the silhouette out there could be Selina, why not?

"Come on in before all the heat gets out," she grumps, then shuts up, stunned by a moment of self-reflection. She sounds like someone's grampa. Fuck's sake.

Black Cat has posed:
Suffice to say the response to her arrival is not exactly what she was expecting.

Outside, Felicia quirks a brow above her mask, a little smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. And while her still unknowing hostess doesn't sound like she's in the mood for company, she doesn't see any creepers sliding their way along the building's exterior, ready to truss her up. That's a good thing, right? Of course they could just be waiting for her to slip through the window, but what's life without a little risk?

For a catburglar of Felicia's skill it isn't very hard to get that window open and she simply slides through that gap with a smooth, undulating motion that is clearly well practiced. Then she is inside the apartment proper. Committed to her course of action.

Comittied or not, she does not immediately stray too far from the window. Generally, the platinum-blonde thief likes to know just what she's walking in on, but the chances of getting proper intel here seemed, well, unlikely. Besides, sometimes it's fun to just make it up as you go along and see where things take you. And by lingering close to the window she can always dive back out of it. It's not as stylish an exit as she normally prefers, but sometimes a girl just has no choice.

"I think, perhaps you have me mistaken for someone else," the Black Cat says, finally breaking her own silence, a hint of amusement in her words despite the circumstances that bring her here. "I do not know what other visitors you get at your window, but hopefully I won't disappoint too much," she adds, that note of mischief coloring her words.

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy scowls and thrusts out a palm, fingers splayed. The gesture is theatrical, almost McKellanesque. In response, some kind of creeper vine lifts to attention like a snake and lashes upward, fast as a trained fighter's punch and thin as a whip, growing so fast to accommodate this movement that Felicia can actually hear the creaking of its green flesh as it rockets toward her as if to seize and strangle--

--and then keeps shooting past her, straight up, toward the handle of the greenhouse's ceiling window. Ivy never breaks eye contact with Felicia as the plant, at her bidding, slowly closes the window and latches it shut again; but her facial expression is flat as a snake's eye.

Black Cat has posed:
Now that is a little bit more like she was expecting.

Felicia Hardy is not exactly a baseline human being anymore. She certainly paid a price to be something more, something a ltitle closer to those that she meets out on the streets of New York or wherever else her travels take her. In short, her reflexes are fairly magnificent.

But wow that plant -- and the woman guiding it -- are pretty fast.

While that first instinct might be to hurl herself back through the window, to take flight and write this off as a bad idea -- and who would blame her -- Felicia doesn't tend to give up all that easily. Instead she drops into a crouch, seeking to fall beneath the line that tendril is taking.

Of course in the end it doesn't seem as if all of that was necessary. The vine doesn't try to wrap around her, to restrain her or strangle her or anything else, instead shooting upward to latch the window shut. It would clearly be a stretch to call herself welcome, at least judging by her hostess' face. But it would seem that she's not going to have to start fleeing for her life.

Not yet anyway.

The wary look in Felicia's eye slowly melts away and by the time she straightens and rises to her feet once more, that playful little smile dances over her expression again and she dips her head towards the redhead in a gesture of understanding. She might have a littlerope here -- or is it a vine under the circumstances? -- but not a lot.

"Sorry for my intrusion, but you can be a hard woman to track down and I hate to do business through intermediaries. I'm very mmuch a believer in the personal touch," she says flippantly, flashing a little grin. "I go by the moniker, the Black Cat and I'm a fairly successful thief. During my last job I acquired something I thought you might be interested in. If you're not, no harm, no foul. I'll be on my way. One has to be very discrete in my line of work so believe me, I can forget all about where and how I tracked you down," she offers up, that smile never fading.

Poison Ivy has posed:
Ivy lowers her arm back to her side. Perhaps in response, the creeper lowers too, dropping to the floor and winding itself around its pot a bit like a snake. Ivy, who's glad the coldness in her face hides the fact that her heart is hammering out a Morse code message of panic, just replies coolly, "I don't know what you've heard, but I don't do crime any more, or buy stolen goods. You wasted a trip down here, Black Cat." She's tempted to stare pointedly at the Cat's chest, where a wire would be, but the Cat's costume kinda makes that pointle--

--Wait, why would anyone send someone out here to entrap her anyway? Who would bother?

Ivy's brow furrows slightly in concentration, and after a pregnant pause, she adds, "But I could maybe point you at some local buyers if you told me what you got."

Black Cat has posed:
It is certainly not out of the question that the Black Cat could be hiding a wire somewhere on her person.

But that's about the only thing that her costume might be concealling. She otherwise seems to be pretty comfortable leaving everything else out in plain view.

While she might be all cool and relaxed on the outside, there is still a part of Felicia that is ready to run at a moment's notice. This career path isn't the safest that she could follow. That's even part of the appeal. But sometimes it does mean knowing when it's time to just turn her back and run. She might not be at that moment quite yet. But she's aware that things can change rather quickly.

Still, just because things have turned a little nerve-wracking that's no reason to lose one's cool. If anything that's the time to turn things up on the dial and Felicia doesn't let the cold reception daunt her. "Fair enough," she purrs, giving a little shrug of her shoulders and casually starting to pace back and forth in front of that window, taking a few steps before turning on her heel and walking back the same way, that smiling, masked gaze never leaving the readhead, all kinetic grace and motion.

"I was hired by a third party to procure something and it's only after I pulled off the job that I found out that he was an even bigger monster then the people I stole it from in the first place," she offers up. Oooooh, story time. "In this case the device is a Phytokinetic amplifier. I guess the idea is to let anyone do the sort of thing you do and influence your pretty green friends. Not exactly your standard black market tech and since you're known to be something of an expert in plants, well, I thought I would pop in and check with you first," she offers up, flashing a smile and a wink Ivy's way.

And maybe keeps an eye on that coiled up vine nearby. You know, just in case.

Poison Ivy has posed:
"Phytokinetic amplifier?" Ivy asks. Her voice sounds blank and her mind is too, not because she doesn't know what that means--she would have, even without Black Cat's handy explanation--but because she can't instantly wrap her mind around what that meaning implies. On a personal level, it could make her way more powerful, but in someone else's hands--

"Someone's just making these things?" she asks slowly, working out the implications in her mind. "Like, any rich pervert could just buy one and do whatever they want with plants?"

She tries, and is not entirely succesful, to shove down the mental image of Elon Musk using such a device to reshape a willow tree into Grimes so he can oil it up and and hump it like an anime body pillow. A spasm of revulsion twists her face for a moment.

Black Cat has posed:
That makes Felicia pause for a moment.

Really, she hadn't considered the uses for the device beyond what was laid out in the research she stole. But really, sooner or later if a technological advancement can be turned towards sexual utility, it usually is, right?

It is not all that surprising that Ivy would know what the nature of the device would be. Even if she had never heard of it, or conceived of anything similar, she is a leading expert in the field, right? Maybe /the/ expert. "Well, I wouldn't quite say that," Felicia offers up in reply before giving another fetching shrug of her shoulders.

"The device I stole was a prototype. Based on the research material I took I can't even say for sure just how far along it really is, and how much is being... boosted to make it look like it has promise. I'm not expert," she conceeds, dipping her head towards Ivy in acknowledgement once more, that little smile still playing over the line of her mouth. It never hurts to offer up a little flattery. Even better when it's the truth.

"I can't say if the company hoped to eventually target the rich pervert market. I mean, it's a lucrative market so probably? But I do know they were looking for a military contract. Maybe to weaponize it, maybe to make all the little green plants out there information gathering sources for Uncle Sam," she says, making a face, an expression of distaste filtering over her features.

"Either way, liberating it seemed like a good idea. At least until I found out the man who wanted it was even worse then the company I stole it from," she conceeds.

Poison Ivy has posed:
Normally, there'd be a whole song and dance here: Ivy pretending she doesn't want it and talking in code to indicate she does while not saying anything that could be used against her in a court of law; reading between the lines of what Black Cat says to figure out a price and a dropoff spot; a comforting little ritual.

Ivy suddenly feels she has no time for this ritual. "Let's say I do want it, but only if you also tell me who made it. What's that gonna cost me?" She asks the question with a flat shine in her eyes Black Cat might have seen before in her adventures through the criminal underworld.

Black Cat has posed:
So it would appear that Felicia did not completely misjudge her target.

The declaration that she is out of the crime game, that she is no longer interested in stolen goods didn't exactly ring hollow. In some ways it is even reassuring to the Black Cat. She has no idea if the technology works, no idea if Ivy can make it work and doesn't think the woman necessarily deserves the bad rap that she has.

She also doesn't want to be plant food, if she happens to be wrong about that.

But it seems that her instincts are right afterall and as the redhead more or less conceeds that she is interested -- at least as far as Felicia's concerned -- her smile grows a little more. "Well now, that is the question isn't it? Truthfully, I've already received partial payment to take on the job and while my former employer is not going to be happy that I betrayed him, he's a lunatic," she conceeds. "So I can let this go at a discount," she admits.

"As a general rule money isn't that interesting to me. It's just a way to keep score. I like pretties -- memorable things I can add to my collection. So if you have access to anything like that, we can barter," she suggests. "Or I suppose I could take trade in favors, if you have nothing else," she allows.

"As to the names of those responsible for this little science project, I'll gladly hand over all the research I stole along with the device."

Poison Ivy has posed:
"Good enough," Ivy says with cold satisfaction. "I don't have any 'pretties' so you'll just have to name your price and I'll get it for you. Might take a couple of days but I'm devoted to this transaction."

You might be surprised how often Ivy has been willing to pay to kill someone.