002

[asinisterkid]

Who: Jason Todd, and whoever wants to bother him.
Broadcast: None
Action: VRD // Waystation
When: 4/21, in the wee hours of the morning // 4/27, mid-afternoon.

{{ It's two, two, two events in one! The first will be a lovely VR romp through Gotham at night, set up for his new friends, but open to anyone who feels like crashing the party. The second, taking place a week later in honor of Jason's Death Day (4/27), will involve a lot of alcohol. OMG SO MUCH ALCOHOL. And as many fights as he can get away with starting at the nearest Waystation. }}


[ For the moment, half of the VRD has been turned into a little slice of Gotham, all gargoyle-encrusted skyscrapers and gothic splendor. There's a full moon overhead, and only the smallest shreds of cloud. Between that and the ambient light from the city, visibility's pretty good. It's a gorgeous summer night, and Jason's relaxing for the first time since he got here.

It's a cheap trick, but he's willing to be soothed by this little taste of home, especially since this place should allow him to run the way he's used to. He even went out of his way to pick a time when there would be less competition for the space, and less chance of someone turning his city into a beach mid-jump.

Robins need to fly, after all. ]



[A week later: Jason hasn't had a chance to earn much money yet, but he's spent some of the past week working security, picking up what he can. And now that he's got money to put towards things not a ship upgrade, he's gone and spent it on alcohol.

Yes, all of it.

This isn't a good day for him. This is the day that Jason Todd, Age 15, got beaten nearly to death with a crowbar and then blown up. He's been increasingly keyed up over the past couple of days, the nightmares getting more frequent, and generally he's been feeling like there's a scream trapped in his throat, getting louder and louder...

So obviously, the solution is no sleep, and lots of alcohol. He's got a few bottles of something that might be space vodka, or might be industrial strength engine degreaser with a vodka label half-assedly slapped on the bottle. It tastes foul, either way. He's sitting in the central courtyard of the waystation, already halfway through the first bottle. When not sending drunken text messages with his communicator, he's been harassing random people. ]

Hey, you. Yeah, you.

Fight me.

[ Is he talking to you? A random passerby? A potted plant and/or especially lifelike bit of statuary? YOU BE THE JUDGE. ]

Comments

[justamobster]

We have any robot invasions here, I know who to talk to, yeah?

[ Because yeah, he's gone through one of those before. Sacrosanct was a hell of a place. ]

Back home, nah. Don't have the fucked up death-don't-last rules these fuckin' places tend t'have. [ He gestures vaguely, as if addressing the whole situation they've found themselves in. ] S'easier, I guess, knowin' the end's the end. So Atroma brought you back?

[asinisterkid]

Happy to help. [ He throws a mock-salute Ladon's way and then takes another drink. ]

I don't know what brought me back, actually. It happened before I came here. Woke up in my coffin... I don't know how long after it happened. Dug my way out, walked for a long fucking time before someone found me. [ There's a certain dullness to his voice that suggests he's trying not to think too hard abut what he's saying. If he can make it sound like it doesn't mean anything, then maybe it won't. ]

[justamobster]

Mmm. [ That... does not sound pleasant. The idea of having to dig out of your own coffin is enough to make Ladon's scales crawl. He's heard of men being buried alive before, and it seems far worse than getting tossed off the pier with boots full of cement. He's never understood the point of tormenting someone who's going to die anyway, but it's a part of the culture of organized crime. "Sending a message," or something just as petty.

Regardless, coming back from the dead... No wonder the kid's drunk out of his mind. ] Not sure booze'd be 'nough to drown somethin' like that.

[asinisterkid]

[ And this is Jason leaving out the post-resurrection coma, the brain damage, and the amnesia. Oh, and how the thing that healed the brain damage may have also made him a little crazy. Yeah, he's a mess. ]

Which would be why, on this particular anniversary, I'm going to booze plus fight method. When I came back, I wasn't healed or nothin'. [ There's a little bit of a North Jersey accent creeping into his voice. Apparently he's at that stage of drunkenness. ] I was just... alive.

And brains. Brains are fuckin' weird. Wake up from a nightmare where you're dying, and sometimes there's a few minutes where you still feel it, you know? Gets hard figuring out what's real. [ And if he never has to spend another morning convincing himself he's not still in that coffin, he'll be a happy, happy man. ]

Waking up with a black eye, a split lip, some non-crowbar bruises? Makes me breathe easier. It's different, but it's not a blank canvas for my brain to fuck up for me.

[justamobster]

[ Ladon shakes his head. Hell if that makes any sense to him, but like the kid said. Brains are strange things, and so is what they go through in processing trauma. Ladon may have never died (knock on wood), but he knows what it's like to go straight back to a particularly frightening and violent moment in his past. He's done so many times, either in his sleep or on waking. That's why so many of the men in his business are drunks and drug addicts. It comes with the territory.

He finishes his cigarette, tosses it down on the ground and snubs it out with the toe of his shoe. ] Can't help you there. Roughed up my share of lugs, but that ain't a path I like walkin'.

[ And he's definitely not slugging someone who's dealt with coming back from the dead. ] Better'n puttin' junk up your nose or in your arm, but...

[ It still isn't healthy. But Ladon trails off before he can say as much. Who the hell is he to judge healthy coping methods? If he doesn't drink himself stupid, he finds a cave to hide in for weeks at time. Healthy has never been on his list of ways to recover from trauma or heartbreak. ]

[asinisterkid]

Hey, you gave me my first smoke in who knows how long, and you listened to all this shit. You've helped enough.

[ And Ladon keeps talking, and there's something in Jason's face that goes hard at the mention of putting junk in his arm. He tries not to think about his mom -- Catherine-mom, not Sheila -- but right now his head's already full of memories, and what's one more? ]

That's not a coping strategy I've ever used. But my -- I knew someone who did. Sometimes it's all that keeps you alive.

...Until it kills you, anyway. Pretty sure that goes for everything, though.

If it helps, usually I take my beatings in the process of doing bad things to bad people. Helping good people where I can. That kinda thing. Was doing that even before I died. Not a lot of people in peril around here, though.

But hey, if the job kills me all over again, at least I'll die useful. [ ...He may not have intended to say that out loud. ]

[justamobster]

Bad things t'bad people, huh. [ Ladon has a feeling that if they were in the same world, they'd be on opposite sides of the fence. Tenuous morals or no, Ladon is certainly more likely to be on the "bad people" list than on the "good people" one, especially when Joe Nason starts pushing him in directions he's hesitant to go in.

He's glad he doesn't have a zombie vigilante with a massive chip on his shoulder on his case. The cops and fellow gangsters are bad enough. ]

Space's got a way of puttin' us all on the same page, yeah? 'Specially since the ones who could really use a good beatin' are hidin' behind cameras. Hell, even shootin' at those enemy ships wasn't satisfyin'. Necessary, but nothin' like the real thing, yeah?

[asinisterkid]

I wouldn't know. I got here after all the excitement was over.

[ He shrugs. Even as drunk as he is at the moment, he notices that reaction. ]

And yeah. I mean, there's a guy from back home who I hate on principle, but other than that... We're all abductees together, right? So long as no one's preying on people weaker than them, I can be a good boy and keep the fights consensual.

[justamobster]

Shame. Got to at least put my pilotin' to use for it.

[ He shakes his head. ] Yeah, so far no dice on that front. Atroma's a buncha fuckers, but hell if they ain't at least pullin' in decent folks. No one worth gettin' gashouse on, anyhow. Had our share of trouble on the station, glad that ain't the case here. Didn't matter how much we'd put 'em down, they just popped outta the teleporters again like nothin' happened. Made solvin' real problems impossible.