8464/Undercurrent: One Very Bad Day

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Undercurrent: One Very Bad Day
Date of Scene: 23 July 2019
Location: A soon to be former biker gang stash house, somewhere in Gotham
Synopsis: Batman follows up on Orphan who's on a tear through Bikers. Shadow is on a tear of their own. The Bats join in and discuss tactics.
Cast of Characters: Batgirl (Cain), Shadow, Batman
Tinyplot: Undercurrents


Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Cassandra hasn't returned to the Batcave and very rarely answers comms anyways. There is a very specific reason for this... For the last few hours, literally since her field report came in on the Batcomputer, reports have gone out that there was a reltation against Triad members responsible for some manner of attack against the MC. Multiple members dead and one very pissed off Orphan crouched on a building with her hood back, elbows against her thighs to support the straight posture of her back, watching through a window as a group of bikers go about loading their weapons for another round of attacks.

She's not hiding from anyone, at least not anyone who knows how to find her, but she's clearly in a position where she has no intentions of stopping until she's satisfied a debt of blood.

And she's about to start cashing checks.

Shadow has posed:
    For obvious reasons, the bikers don't keep their weapon caches in the busier parts of Gotham, and especially this late at night traffic is not so much light as it is near-nonexistent, with only the occasional garbage truck or cab puttering past - barely worth paying attention to, especially when one's attention is focused on a bunch of thugs arming up for war.

    So it comes as almost as much a surprise to Orphan as it does to the people in the warehouse when the lights suddenly sputter and go out... But not nearly as much a surprise as the subsequent laughter echoing off the inside walls coming from no source that she can see.

    The laughter fades away, turns into words, but without being able to see the person speaking it's just babble -- although given the looks of shock, anger and no small amount of fear on the bikers, who are now pointing their guns in every direction they think the voice might be coming from, it's not saying anything nice. Not nice at all...

Batman has posed:
Batman made no effort to raise Orphan on comms. He knew well enough that she didn't like to use them, and even when pressed the software that converted her sign language to text was cumbersome at best.

Need to fix that, the Bat thinks to himself as he moves through the feverish summer's night, Last stakeholders meeting from the Thomas Wayne Foundation suggested real breakthroughs in the technology.

"Computer," he says aloud, somewhere in a subterranean cavern the Batcomputer beeps in recognition, "Download Songbird zero six two seven dot executable from tee double-you eff secure server. Load into decompiler and run."

That said, he turns his attention back to the mission at hand. He gains ingress to the building easily enough, scarcely raising an alarm and clinging to the darkness with the grace of an experienced master. It isn't hard to spot Orphan, and even easier to see the damage she has wrought. As her fist raises to brutalize yet another gang member, his own hand launches out to catch it in mid-swing and halt her. Nothing is said, no words for he isn't sure she would even understand them at this moment. Only his body language speaks for him, and it shows one word in glaring, rain-soaked neon:

Disappointment.

As the lights go out, he lets go and is immediately on guard. As the laughter begins his shoulders relax somewhat, although not too much so. Wherever that laugh is heard, gunfire often follows ...

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Orphan's face is streaked with blood, both her own and that of others, and lined through with clear marks from where she's clearly been crying at some point. That point is hours earlier because she's not crying anymore. Now there's only some cold malice in her brown eyes that borders on homicidal rage. A quiet resonance of someone resigned to get a job done, be damned what might happen in the morning.

Black hair flutters in a gentle breeze when she moves through the bikers like a systematic destructive force. Moving up from the ground floor like a battering ram, bent on smashing everything in her path to sunder beneath the righteous fury that threatens to overwhelm and out right break her beneath the heavy weight of a guilt she's not felt since doning the mask under Batman's mentorship.

This is... the whole night... is a decimation.

At the top floor of the tenement, an unpatched guard stands vigilantly at the doorway with a gun in shaky hands, but he never even sees her coming. Like a shadow darting out of nowhere, the small Asian kicks him so hard in the chest that he barrels back through the portal he's suppose to keep any from entering. Straight into the room properly, she raises her hand to strike the fallen young thug cowering in front of her with an open palm to the center of their chest when her blow is caught mid-air by a black gauntlet... Her face turns towards Batman...

And exhaustion finally hits her like a ton of bricks. Maybe it's the hours she's spent fighting... probably it's the disappointment she can read so clearly upon his body as if it were written there on a bright neon sign.. She staggers a little and struggles up against him.

Then the lights go out... and the laughter starts in the room adjacent to their own. Through a doorway behind where Orphan had kicked the prospect.. her head jerks in that direction, then up at Batman. Second wind? Fifth maybe?
'what we do?' her fingers moving to sign it out in the near darkness.

Shadow has posed:
    By the time Batman arrives the majoroty of the lecture is already over, and another peal of mocking laughter echoes through the building until one of the braver thugs tries to shout over it, racking his shotgun one-handed for dramatic effect as he stands in the middle of the room.

    "Shut the fuck up! Come out and show yourself! We ain't scared of the yaks, we ain't scared of the Bat, and we sure as hell ain't scared of you!"

    The response to that is a low chuckle, somehow even more unsettling than the previous laughter was. "Oh, Bernard, Bernard... You /should be/."

    ... And as that last is said, just for a moment a shape seems to materialize right in front of him, two blazing blue eyes visible between a black slouch hat and a crimson scarf for a half moment before a fist blurs out of nowhere and takes him in the solar plexus, doubling him over and meeting an equally blurry knee coming the other way.

    By the time every other gun in the room has turned to cover him, the figure is already gone, leaving "Bernard" collapsed and groaning in the center...

Batman has posed:
The Dark Knight lifts his hands before him, two fingers crooked into C-shapes and hooking against one another before reversing the position. 'Friend.' But there's a slow gaze cast about the darkened tenement, the eyelets of his cowl switching immediately to low-light vision as advanced camera technology picks up ambient light and magnifies it. He looks back at Orphan, a slight shake of his head before both hands curl into fists with fingers extended in a rudimentary K-shape stacked one atop the other. He moves them both forward and back in a short, sharp circular motion. 'Careful.'

The two words are straightforward enough to lay out the game plan, and he trusts the young woman enough to follow his lead.

As the Shadow emerges from nothing, strikes the hapless thug and disappears just as quickly, the Bat turns swiftly to take in the guns swinging towards the place where the Shadow was only a moment ago. He sees his advantage and presses it. Both fists raise up to his chest, little fingers extended and upraised as he knocks them together three times.

'Fight.'

And that's all the instruction needed. He immediately turns his full attention on the nearest armed gangster, hand reaching out to clutch the barrel of the gun and yank it towards himself and the man too if he's unwise enough not to let it go. The side of his other hand, palm open, falls against the man's forearm with all the crushing ferocity of an axe blade. Deconstructing, not dancing.

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Orphan watches Batman out of the side of her eyes after reaffixing her black domino mask above a slip of cloth pulled up to just above the bridge of her nose to resecure her identity behind some for of mask. Everyone to this point was dispatched with such alacrity that she scarcely needed it, but if there were friendlies involved, that meant a higher chance of visibility, which mean a need to don her hood as well. It flips into place with a jerk of her wrists, always nodding her response to the Dark Knight's silent hand gestures as her own visual field finds the necessary low-light setting..

She keeps a low profile, pushing the door open ahead of her mentor to allow him entry along a shadowy wall, while she crosses to the other to slip in behind the gunmen now aiming their weapons at the sudden appearance of a fight materialized as if straight from Hades itself. She waits for the cue and seeing those three quick fists strikes in the palm of Batman's glove, Orphan moves with the kind of purposeful intent to dispatch a swift end to a one sided fight.

She lacks the pure upper body strength of her mentor, but she makes up for it with a keen swiftness. The knife edge of her straightened fingers come up in a side strike at the lower back of one of the Bikers, directly into his kidney with such vicious force as to bruise, if not rupture, the organ. The strike is followed quickly with the downward thrust of the elbow of her other arm, straight into the back of the knee, hobbling him down onto his good knee when the other buckles. Her hardened armor covered forearm loops up and around into the side of his neck, jarringly painful, against the carotid and mandibular bone.

A palm pushes him forward like a stone towards the floor.

Shadow has posed:
    Any after-action report of the subsequent fight is not going to be complete without using the phrase "utterly unfair". The goons have numbers, yes, and they have guns -- far more guns than is healthy, in fact -- but neither numbers or guns are a sufficient counter when one of your opponents can read your body language so well she knows what you're going to do faster than you do, another opponent can only be seen when she chooses to be seen... And your third opponent is Batman.

    The fight is almost as short as it is one-sided, and when the shouting dies down about a dozen bikers are on the ground, unconscious or wishing they were, among the scattered remains of their weapons.

    And without anything else to distract them, both Bats notice a shadow moving along the far wall, cast by the faint moonlight filtering in through the window...

Batman has posed:
As the man cries out in pain, Batman lets the gun clatter to the floor already stripped of magazine and slide. He makes the slightest sound, a wordless grunt aimed at getting Orphan's attention. When he has it, both hands raise palms down and cross over one another. It is quickly followed by an upraised left palm and one finger jerking forward to point at the ground. A simple message. A credo, put in a form she can easily understand.

'Do not kill.'

But the fight doesn't last long. These are the sort of meet-ups he's been breaking apart for over a decade, and with strong allies the work goes even swifter. Those thugs who dare to tangle with him are left broken and bleeding, their wounds non-fatal but administered with the precision of a man who knows precisely where the line is and how not to cross it. Some will need prolonged medical attention, others may suffer from hurts that will never truly heal. Such is vengeance.

When the fighting has died down, the Dark Knight drops yet another deconstructed firearm to the floor with faint disgust. The shadow against the wall is spotted, and he finally speaks with an authoritative baritone that is his voice in uniform. As he does, a hand raises to tap his chin before passing one hand under the other. Signing his words as he speaks them, for Orphan's benefit.

"Shadow."

Shadow has posed:
    And even as Batman speaks, the shadow against the wall moves, shifts, solidifies, like one of those cartoons where the poor hungry coyote is smashed flat under his own trap and has to push himself back into three dimensions, and for just a moment there is a sensation of the whole universe blinking as the brain refuses to make proper sense of what's happening and the figure coalesces into solid form.

    "Batman," the Shadow responds, a nod of respect from one equal to another before turning their attention to the young Asian woman at his side, those blazing blue eyes boring into Cass', seeming to see through the cowl she wears and the flesh underneath straight into her soul, her every sin laid bare...

    ... And then the moment passes as the Shadow turns their gaze back to Batman. "I don't believe I've met your companion before."

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Orphan has no intentions of killing anyone in front of Batman, if she's not done so to this point. She's managed to toe that line, despite her anger, which exists even now in an exhausted form behind the black mask and dark hood worn up on her head. Her black hair hangs free from its usual barrier and shifts around her when she turns to look at her mentors call and silent hand motions. Her right hand comes up, all fingertips against her thumb, then shifts with her index and thumb up and middle bent out across them. The hand moves to touch the side of her head just above her right brow.

'Ok I know'

The remaining thugs are taken apart with the same ruthless efficiency, though she plays a little more dangerously close to the line than might Batman with his decades of experience. The wounds she leaves behind might well not be fatal, but they'll need medical attention and probably wont pee right right for years after.

Small price to pay for what they'd done.

What she'd done..

The guilt hits her once the adrenaline finally dies and her shoulders sag a little, bodily slumping against a wall. Nobody is indestructible, no matter how well trained. Orphan might be a machine, but she's a machine that's been going steady for most of the night, and it's catching up to her now. Even if she's got her masked eyes on the solidifying shadow moving out of... nothing. If she were only a little more superstitious... she'd be certain she'd seen a ghost.

But keen eyes track the figure.. looking over to her mentor hand up with all her fingers spread, thumb against her chin, fanning downward with her pinky nearing her navel.

Batman has posed:
"This," Batman explains to the Shadow, a finger touching down in his flat open palm, "is Orphan." His right hand lifts to chest height, fingers pinching, crossing over one another, turning in the air and then resting down upon his thumb. Despite it all, he maintains the sign language even as his eyes leave the Shadow and immediately begin to examine the room carefully.

"Need to find a sample of Hook," his hand bends into a C-shape before his face, turning into hooked finger through looped thumb and forefinger.

"Whatever all this is," he gestures around them before continuing to sign, "Hook is the cause. Do you know anything about it?"

For all the pain Orphan is feeling, he attempts to refocus it solely upon the work. The Mission. He is not one for condolence or good feeling, but he knows how to will the mind away from the dark places of the soul.

Shadow has posed:
    "Not as much as I'd prefer," the Shadow replies, acknowledging the introduction, letting just a bit of irritation at the admission slip into their voice.

    "None of my agents saw it coming; none of it came through known or suspected channels. By all indications, it seems to have simply... Showed up, as if by magic."

    The slouch hat tips down as the Shadow looks at one of the unconscious goons on the floor. "I've been following the trail back from the dealers to the suppliers, but they are maintaining surprisingly good security. The implications are... Troubling."

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Batman's redirect draws Orphan's focus out of the lethargy of her own guilt and reminds her of why they're here. Certainly she expects no condolences and wouldn't know how to respond to them if they were given. She's far more critical on herself than anyone could ever possibly hope to be and to the end, is glad for the chance to let those guilty images slide to the far part of the brain to be dealt with later when she's not on a mission.

Her fingers slide down into one of the pockets of her utility belt and come out with a small sealed vial, duplicating the C-shape, curving it out with her finger into a hook. It slips back into the pouch so both her hands are once more free, both coming up, separated with slightly bent fingers above her lightly armored chest.

much

Her palm pats the pocket indicating precisely what she means. All the while watching Shadow. Orphan is not a naturally nervous woman and doesn't startled easily, but very well may a appear to be gauging the other with eyes hidden behind a black mask. A finger comes up, slowly points, but it's angled down at the bikers laid broken around them. It then comes up to her lips.

'I asked them.' 'they silent'

The small woman's straight fingered hand touches her brow and salutes out at Natasha. "HI." She doesn't shout the word, so much as stress it in her very quiet, cracked voice, in her own way of greeting.

Batman has posed:
Batman turns his head to look at Orphan, only now responding to her sign. He says nothing, only lifting the points of his fingers with a flat palm to his temple and then slapping it down noiselessly through the air. That said, he turns his attention back to the Shadow as he rifles through the pockets of an unconscious thug. No concern nor shame for how the Batman appearing to rob the prone man may look. He has more pressing concerns, such as getting his hands on a sample of the new narcotic.

"Smoke and mirrors aside," the Dark Knight says of the Shadow, "Nothing is magic. If it's here, it's because someone wants it here. There's an agenda. New drugs don't move this quickly without someone pushing. Hard."

When Orphan produces the sample, the Bat extends his hand to take it and with a liquid motion it is concealed somewhere on his person. The sleight of hand quite startling for someone who just decried magic as superstition. His train of thought shifts tracks once again, and he speaks to Shadow as though expecting her to keep pace with it. These words, however, are not signed.

"Orphan is one of my associates. I've told her you'll cause her no trouble, and I hope I'm right about that."

Shadow has posed:
    "Indeed. And fortuitously timed just as the prices of other hard drugs spike. Someone is aiming to corner the market and do it quickly. The established cartels will have no choice but to respond with force. I'm frankly surprised they haven't already." The Shadow shares a look with Batman, acknowledging the unstated consequences. Gang violence is bad enough as it is. Once the cartels decide they have to take a personal interest to defend their interests, it might well escalate into a full on war.

    That will not be allowed to happen.

    After that, they turn back to Orphan with a nod. "I don't think she'll need to worry," is the response, and even if it's not sign language, Cassandra still reads a great deal from that one slow nod. I-see-you, I-acknowledge-you, respect-to-fellow-warrior, no-hostile-intent, no-fear.

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
It isn't so much that Orphan cannot understand words as she doesn't always pick up the particular nuances typical of regular speech patterns. Inflection changes, subtle turns of phrase, these things are alien to her as would be mathematics to a snail. She makes up for it by reading what a person says when they're not saying anything. The way the stand, the way they use their hands when they speak, or even the way they stop signing when saying something they think she shouldn't know.

Batman is not the easiest person to read.

But he's got his tells too... and if anyone knows them, it's Orphan.

She is not, however, a prattling brat and accept what is, trying to piece together the particulars by what she does know. Small pieces of vocabulary that she meals together into a passable sentence that probably has precious little resemblance to the original.

It's frustrating. Likely one of a handful of things that actually get under her skin; being unable to follow a simple conversation if all parties aren't looking at her.

Still, she acknowledges the look from The Shadow with a clipped nod, two fingers point at her white out eyes and flick out towards the shadowy figure. Simple enough sign.
'I see you'

Batman has posed:
"Death earlier tonight," Batman explains, once more signing his words for Orphan's benefit, "There's already violence. Not the sort they bother to report on the evening news, but violence all the same. It will only grow until it's contained."

Now satisfied with the evidence collected, the Dark Knight rises to his full height. He weighs up the situation in his head for a moment, barely even moving as he does so. His mouth is set in a grim line, and even the way he holds himself in the darkness makes his regular motions from breathing difficult to notice without focus.

"If you want to work together on this," he says to the Shadow, voice flat, "we can. Easier than running in to each other by chance and comparing notes."

Shadow has posed:
    The Shadow's eyes - all that's visible between the hat and the scarf - crinkle just a bit at Cass' gesture, and the girl has no problem reading the smile she can't actually see.

    After listening to Batman's analysis, the Shadow nods. "I think it would be wise. This needs to be contained before it gets any worse than it already is." A brief thoughtful pause ends with another nod. "Assembling the information I have will take some time. I will be in touch."

    With that, the Shadow half-bows, touching two fingers to their hat in a vague salute -- and turns to leave, fading from view in plain sight as they do.

Batgirl (Cain) has posed:
Orphan inclines her head, understanding the simple sentence, fingers to her thumb, index up with her middle crossing, signed ner her brow so she can easily touch the brow above her right eye. She remains a near silent sentinel near the back wall, head moving to follow the intricacies of the conversation and, as is typical, finds little to nothing visible on Batman's well trained mannerisms.

That is to be expected. If nothing, it's a challenge and likely one specifically designed by the Dark Knight to encourage her to grow. Everything is an exercise, everything is a test.

Suffice that she watches intently as the Shadow begins to vanish into whatever darkness birthed them. Eyes narrowed behind her domino mask to keep track until there's absolutely nothing left to keep track of.

Then, in the darkness of an empty room save herself and goons either unconscious or groaning, looks to her mentor. Her fingers curl and touch the side of her cheek, tapping lightly.

'Home?'

Batman has posed:
Batman remains standing where he is as he watches the Shadow go. For all the secrets he has worked out about that particular vigilante, there are a great many that still elude him. He can disappear when nobody is looking, but to do it while all eyes were on him would be a great feat indeed.

Clark may actually lose his mind ...

When the Shadow is gone, the Bat turns his attention back to Orphan. He points at her, gesturing away from himself with two thumbs. His gloved hand then raises to his chin, tapping it once. Finally, he repeats the thumb gesture more emphatically and adds two fingers extended into a claw, driving it down onto his fist. Then, finally a nod before he leads the way out into the night.

'You try. Good. Try harder.'