driftfleet | one little bat

Who: Stephanie Brown
Broadcast: Fleetwide video
Action: HS Marsiva
When: 2/18

[ Focus on Steph's face as she starts to wake up. She wrinkles her nose, groans softly as she rolls onto her side... and then her eyes snap open. ]

What the...?

[ The camera pulls out as she sits up, looking down at herself. She's still in her costume, hood and cowl pulled back, not in a hospital gown, no tubes or needles attached to her anywhere. The costume's even in one piece. And-- ]

Nothing hurts. [ It's muttered, to herself - she's still a little too disoriented to realize she's being filmed. ] Why does nothing...

[ She presses a hand experimentally against her left shoulder. No pain, no blood or bullet wound... A slight lump under the fabric of her costume that might be a scar, but it seems long healed. What. The hell.

Steph rolls out of the cot, getting to her feet slowly like she's afraid she'll fall over. She's fine, though. Totally fine. At least, until she finally notices the big viewing windows looking out on the void. She exhales slowly, eyes wide, as she approaches the window. ]

Okay. So either this is random neurons firing while my brain shuts down, or... we're not in Gotham anymore.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, most of the heroes have powers. And... most of the bad guys too, to be honest. [ She shrugs, with a wry little smile. ] The rest of us just train a lot and do our best to keep up.

[ She's just having a hard time getting her head around that. ]

Nobody stops the heroes because nobody has powers... which is why nobody stops the villains either, right? How does training help?

Well... even metahumans will usually stop whatever they're doing if you hit them hard enough.

I mean, we usually leave the really scary ones to the powered heroes, but we're not exactly defenseless either.

Oh. I bet you have a lot of stories to tell.

Maybe. I don't know how much I can really tell - some things aren't really my secrets, you know?

Who's going to know? Besides, there's got to be some you can tell.

Batman always knows. [ She's joking, but only a little. Seriously, he's a little scary sometimes in that way. ] And who knows where this is broadcasting, anyway?

Hopefully not to home.

[ Because then that obviously means home is the world they're still in. ]

So, you're a superhero with no stories at all?

Well. One time I tried to strangle my dad to death with a chain.

[ Pause. ]

That's not really a good story. Most of them are just kind of depressing.

[ What? It was the first thing that came to mind. ]

[ Well. Yeah, no, that's pretty bad. ]

Shouldn't you have stories about saving people?

Oh. Well... yeah, I've saved people. I just don't if they make really good stories. [ But since you're asking... and if she doesn't mention Robin by name... ]

One time me and my... uh... friend were trying to stop some looters during a blizzard, but while we were fighting, the snow collapsed the roof and buried us in a warehouse. I just wanted to dig us out so we didn't freeze to death, but my friend talked me into looking for the jerks that almost killed us so we could get them out too.

We found a woman and her kid who holed up looking for shelter before the roof came down. We got them out alive, but we wouldn't've if we didn't go looking for the looters too.

...and then the bad guy tried to kill us with a chain saw again, which was totally rude, but it was still worth it.

See, that's a good story. Doing the right thing and all that.

[ Erin seems satisfied, anyway. ]

So, uh, how do you fight a chainsaw without powers...?

[ She snorts a little. ]

A lot of dodging and trying to take out a knee or something without getting hit. Ro- my friend had better body armor than I did, and he had these spikes on his arm, here... [ She runs a finger along the outside edge of her forearm to demonstrate. ] He jammed the chain with those and broke it so he could knock the guy out.

It helps that the kind of person who comes at you with a chainsaw doesn't usually have a clue what he's doing in a fight.

Oh, that's a good question! Do you have a weapon? [ Those spikes sound cool, man. ]

You'd have been in trouble if he did. Just imagine somebody wielding one like a sword or something.

Not really. I mean... I have these little spiky... throwing stars [ that's a close enough description for batarangs, right? ] but they're nonlethal. And I lost them when I showed up here.

[ She rolls her eyes - she's a little annoyed about that. ]

...and if I ever run into anyone like that, I will freely admit that I am running away from them. They have to run out of gas eventually.

How are spiky throwing stars nonlethal? [ Spiky things shouldn't be nonlethal, that's against the spirit of spiky things. ]

That's not very superheroic.

The shape of them, I think. Doesn't let them penetrate very deep? Batman doesn't kill, so neither do any of us.

And I wouldn't run if anyone else was actually in danger. But if it's just me and Chainsaw Samurai? My heroic image is so not worth losing an arm over.

Why not? [ Man, Batman just keeps sounding lamer and lamer. ]

If it was just you and Chainsaw Samurai, there'd be nobody to mess it up. That's true.

[ She presses her lips together, frowning. ]

Because that's part of what makes us heroes. There have to be lines we don't cross. We have to be... better than the people we're fighting.

[ Sometimes she doesn't even believe it. Sometimes she thinks things would be better, simpler, if every now and then they would just remove the threat instead of putting it away temporarily. But she tries to play by the rules, even now. ]

I haven't heard that one before.

[ She considers it, not quite sure on the idea. ]

What if someone's going to, say, set off a nuclear bomb or something?

There's usually a way to stop them from doing that without killing them. At least, that's what Batman would say.

...you can break them pretty badly though. If you have to. They can come back from that.

one little bat

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