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thejusticelounge2014-03-29 06:04 pm
bossymarmalade) wrote in thejusticelounge2014-03-29 06:04 pm
the pen
The pen doesn’t do anything until well after Kate has left.
Then, it starts to blink.
Kate spends a good two hours trying to figure out what Bruce has written on the papers she gave him and that he gave back to her, and buried deep inside her third cup of chai anyway, lost in thought.
It’s not until she has to get up—go out and tell Lian and Ramsey to please stop trying to play knights with Titus, he is NOT for riding on even if he’s ‘the right size’—and stretch her legs, that she notices. And even then not until she comes back.
"What the shit?" she mutters, staring at the pen like it might explode.
"What is it?"
Ollie’s racked out on the sofa in front of the fire, conserving his energy. The Bat armour is considerably heavier than what he’s used to maneuvering in, claustrophobic and stiff, and wearing it, doing justice to it, requires a considerable amount of energy and concentration poured into the venture. Because of course, it’s not just wearing the cape and cowl like some costume. It’s /being Batman/, and that means a whole panoply of skillsets that aren’t natural to a rough-and-tumble archer.
Plus, the kids keep looking at him funny, now that he’s clean-shaven. They’re all disconcerted.
He looks over at Kate, sitting halfway up when he sees the look on her face. “Is it dangerous?”
The beeping isn’t steady, in fact, at first it seems erratic. Starting and stopping, before it levels out and then becomes rhythmic. A pattern.
Long, short, long, short. Short, long. Short, short, short, long. Short.
It repeats.
Ollie sits bolt upright once the beeps resolve themselves into a pattern. He looks at Kate. “You don’t think he’s already got some kinda protocol for this, do you?” For all they know, the computers will have sprung to life with full instructions by the time they get down there.
Kate scribbles down the messages in dots and dashes. “Try Morse code,” she says. “And with him? Yeah, he probably does.” She frowns at it, then flicks to her phone to find a table, and then scrawls on the paper accordingly: CAVE
"Cave? What about it?"
Ollie jumps up from the sofa impatiently. “That’s what I’m saying! There’s probably something he’s got set in place in the computers, I dunno, if he goes a certain amount of time without checking in or something.” The kids have run off with Titus again, so Ollie goes over to the bookshelf and repeats the sequence of book pushing-and-pulling that he’s seen Bruce do. That Bruce has /let/ him see. When the shelf slides open, he gestures into the entranceway that’s been revealed.
"Only one way to find out," he says. "We better go down there and take a look."
Nothing happens at first, it’s not immediate—but after a moment, one of the Computer screens does light up. The rest of the enormous device remains dim, the hard drives whirring softly in the background.
PASSWORD: ?
Kate lifts a skeptical brow at all the pushing and pulling and secret chambers stuff, being not very cloak-and-dagger herself, but walks very carefully down into the Batcave, Ollie close behind. She moves a little faster once the alarms don’t go off, then settles her hands against the console, leaning forward to the screen and frowning at it.
"What do you think?" she asks Ollie, and possibly the pen she grabbed up, holding it forward in her hand.
The prompt keeps blinking on the screen, big enough to throw light on their faces with each pulse, and Ollie rubs the back of his hand against his chin. “It’s meant for you and me,” he surmises. “This message, or whatever it is. And there’s one place I can think of that’s all about the three of us.” He takes a breath and gives Kate a slanted grin. “Here goes nothin’.”
Ollie carefully, deliberately, types in: BEACHHOUSE
When the monitor flickers over, at first, it’s not one-hundred percent clear what is being fed through the monitors. The image is a bit grainy, pixellated, swoops and dips of a substance that at first glance, looks like French Onion dip. The kind that comes in a jar.
Then, suddenly, the picture is moving and there’s a hand. Two hands, and arms, thighs and knees covered in orange jumpsuit and feet in standard issue Vans.
Bruce clasps his hands together, face unseen and taps his ring finger against his leg.
The words spill across another screen, white text against black.
— prisoners talking drug movement. —
"jesuschrist," Kate murmurs, stunned and staring at the screen with a slack jaw for a moment. She blinks, then says, "Fucking—how the fuck did he do that?!”
It’s really a rhetorical question, and she shakes her head, snaps herself back to herself and types in, not sure if it will even get to him: ~ which drug~
"You think they’re talking /our/ drugs?" Ollie watches the screen a touch hungrily, soaking up the familiar contours of Bruce’s legs under the jumpsuit, the thickness of his fingers as he sends them messages. Somehow. He’d meant it when he’d told Dick that it was better if only Kate — as Bruce’s attorney — went in to visit, but it wasn’t easy staying away.
Bruce rises, and moves to the wall, where there is no mirror—not even the polished metal that passes for a mirror in state institutions, and braces his hands against the sink. He waits, but then, his ring finger begins to tap again.
He looks down at the basin, his reflection dim, but no facial features on display. Just the outline of his head in the dull, dirty sink.
— large shipments. boats. double smile —
Ollie takes the keyboard this time.
— batman and manhunter will be on it —
After a moment, he clarifies, — nightwing is elsewhere —
It takes a moment, for the words to bounce across relays, span the satellites to where he is. In the video feed, Bruce’s hand—the opposite to the one tapping—clenches. Tightly. He doesn’t hide the reaction, not from them.
— gotham, tomo —
He doesn’t finish, and turns, to look over his shoulder at the entrance to the cell, to the absolutely /enormous/ man that walks in, tongue rolling against his teeth. Bruce moves from the sink, as he goes back to the bed, rough spun gray cover nearly tucked over the thin mattress. He takes a seat. The video feed rolls out, without sound, without Bruce typing, for a long time.
Because it’s not just them he can’t reach. It’s Gotham.
"Fuck," says Kate, who has been saying a lot of that in the past fifteen minutes or so. "Shit, Ollie, we’re going to have to stop it." This is obvious, admittedly, as is ‘we’ being her and him, and no one else, which considering the size of the situation is not particularly ideal. Not with boatloads of drugs and the likely guards that will come with.
She considers, for a long moment, tense as she watches the screen, terrified for Bruce that the man who’s come in will make his life more than difficult. Her heart clenches in her chest, hard. “We should just blow it up,” she says, voice low.
Ollie shakes his head, tersely, because like Kate he can’t make himself look away from the video feed, what’s happening to Bruce with them powerless to stop it. With /Bruce/ powerless to stop it, if he wants to maintain his secret.
"We can’t do that if it’s in boats. Double Smile’s too unpredictable, too pervasive — blow it up in ships, in Gotham Harbour, and it’ll get into animals and the water supply. God knows what havoc it’ll wreak."
His jaw works, hard. “You’re right, destroying the drugs is our best bet, but some other way will have to do. Get onto the boats and contaminate them right there.”
Kate nods, frustrated a little—though really it’s because of the video feed, not because of the drugs or of not realizing what Ollie did, which she should have. Damn. “Destroy it without destroying the boats. Easier said than done, but…did we ever figure out what destroys that shit without turning it to aerosol or dispersing it?”
She looks at the screen, reluctant to ask, but finally says, “Did he?”
The view changes, to that creamy swirl, and now it’s evident it’s the ceiling. The camera focuses in and out, shutting out, and then in, with a strange.. not all black film flipping over the lens and it’s—-
Bruce is blinking.
The camera is in his eye.
The words spill across the screen.
— tomorrow, gotham harbor, wild kardz —
A pause.
— belize —
The realization makes Ollie suck in his breath hard. Especially when the camera shakes, violently, and nothing comes for a while after that last word. Belize.
"We have to get him the fuck outta there," he mutters, the words spitting out hard and angry. It’s a self-evident statement but saying it aloud gives it weight, brings it back into sharp focus. Sharper than the eye-cam that Bruce has inside himself, jesus fucking christ.
"I know the Wild Kardz. They’re an offshoot of the Street Demonz who used to deal Fever through Gotham but got run out when the city was shut off after the earthquake and epidemics. I guess they made a homecoming and wanna get back into the designer drug trade."
Kate has made a noise, she realizes, at about the time Ollie reacts, though hers is something like a choked sob. Without hesitation, she types a single word in: ~ yes. ~ before turning away, turning to Ollie.
It means a hell of a lot for Bruce to use valuable emergency protocol time for that, hit her harder than it had in their meeting, and she scrubs her face with her hands (one still clutching the pen) before looking up.
"Yes," she says in agreement to Ollie’s first statement. "We need the truth of who did this to come out, we need that evidence before it goes into public record, and we need to stop the goddamn shipment. In the next 36 hours. Fuck." If the gang were augmented, this would be even worse, she notes, and grits her teeth. "The Wild Kardz are just the conduit. Ten bucks says they’ve been bought by the person behind this, Ra’s or whomEVER."
Then, it starts to blink.
Kate spends a good two hours trying to figure out what Bruce has written on the papers she gave him and that he gave back to her, and buried deep inside her third cup of chai anyway, lost in thought.
It’s not until she has to get up—go out and tell Lian and Ramsey to please stop trying to play knights with Titus, he is NOT for riding on even if he’s ‘the right size’—and stretch her legs, that she notices. And even then not until she comes back.
"What the shit?" she mutters, staring at the pen like it might explode.
"What is it?"
Ollie’s racked out on the sofa in front of the fire, conserving his energy. The Bat armour is considerably heavier than what he’s used to maneuvering in, claustrophobic and stiff, and wearing it, doing justice to it, requires a considerable amount of energy and concentration poured into the venture. Because of course, it’s not just wearing the cape and cowl like some costume. It’s /being Batman/, and that means a whole panoply of skillsets that aren’t natural to a rough-and-tumble archer.
Plus, the kids keep looking at him funny, now that he’s clean-shaven. They’re all disconcerted.
He looks over at Kate, sitting halfway up when he sees the look on her face. “Is it dangerous?”
The beeping isn’t steady, in fact, at first it seems erratic. Starting and stopping, before it levels out and then becomes rhythmic. A pattern.
Long, short, long, short. Short, long. Short, short, short, long. Short.
It repeats.
Ollie sits bolt upright once the beeps resolve themselves into a pattern. He looks at Kate. “You don’t think he’s already got some kinda protocol for this, do you?” For all they know, the computers will have sprung to life with full instructions by the time they get down there.
Kate scribbles down the messages in dots and dashes. “Try Morse code,” she says. “And with him? Yeah, he probably does.” She frowns at it, then flicks to her phone to find a table, and then scrawls on the paper accordingly: CAVE
"Cave? What about it?"
Ollie jumps up from the sofa impatiently. “That’s what I’m saying! There’s probably something he’s got set in place in the computers, I dunno, if he goes a certain amount of time without checking in or something.” The kids have run off with Titus again, so Ollie goes over to the bookshelf and repeats the sequence of book pushing-and-pulling that he’s seen Bruce do. That Bruce has /let/ him see. When the shelf slides open, he gestures into the entranceway that’s been revealed.
"Only one way to find out," he says. "We better go down there and take a look."
Nothing happens at first, it’s not immediate—but after a moment, one of the Computer screens does light up. The rest of the enormous device remains dim, the hard drives whirring softly in the background.
PASSWORD: ?
Kate lifts a skeptical brow at all the pushing and pulling and secret chambers stuff, being not very cloak-and-dagger herself, but walks very carefully down into the Batcave, Ollie close behind. She moves a little faster once the alarms don’t go off, then settles her hands against the console, leaning forward to the screen and frowning at it.
"What do you think?" she asks Ollie, and possibly the pen she grabbed up, holding it forward in her hand.
The prompt keeps blinking on the screen, big enough to throw light on their faces with each pulse, and Ollie rubs the back of his hand against his chin. “It’s meant for you and me,” he surmises. “This message, or whatever it is. And there’s one place I can think of that’s all about the three of us.” He takes a breath and gives Kate a slanted grin. “Here goes nothin’.”
Ollie carefully, deliberately, types in: BEACHHOUSE
When the monitor flickers over, at first, it’s not one-hundred percent clear what is being fed through the monitors. The image is a bit grainy, pixellated, swoops and dips of a substance that at first glance, looks like French Onion dip. The kind that comes in a jar.
Then, suddenly, the picture is moving and there’s a hand. Two hands, and arms, thighs and knees covered in orange jumpsuit and feet in standard issue Vans.
Bruce clasps his hands together, face unseen and taps his ring finger against his leg.
The words spill across another screen, white text against black.
— prisoners talking drug movement. —
"jesuschrist," Kate murmurs, stunned and staring at the screen with a slack jaw for a moment. She blinks, then says, "Fucking—how the fuck did he do that?!”
It’s really a rhetorical question, and she shakes her head, snaps herself back to herself and types in, not sure if it will even get to him: ~ which drug~
"You think they’re talking /our/ drugs?" Ollie watches the screen a touch hungrily, soaking up the familiar contours of Bruce’s legs under the jumpsuit, the thickness of his fingers as he sends them messages. Somehow. He’d meant it when he’d told Dick that it was better if only Kate — as Bruce’s attorney — went in to visit, but it wasn’t easy staying away.
Bruce rises, and moves to the wall, where there is no mirror—not even the polished metal that passes for a mirror in state institutions, and braces his hands against the sink. He waits, but then, his ring finger begins to tap again.
He looks down at the basin, his reflection dim, but no facial features on display. Just the outline of his head in the dull, dirty sink.
— large shipments. boats. double smile —
Ollie takes the keyboard this time.
— batman and manhunter will be on it —
After a moment, he clarifies, — nightwing is elsewhere —
It takes a moment, for the words to bounce across relays, span the satellites to where he is. In the video feed, Bruce’s hand—the opposite to the one tapping—clenches. Tightly. He doesn’t hide the reaction, not from them.
— gotham, tomo —
He doesn’t finish, and turns, to look over his shoulder at the entrance to the cell, to the absolutely /enormous/ man that walks in, tongue rolling against his teeth. Bruce moves from the sink, as he goes back to the bed, rough spun gray cover nearly tucked over the thin mattress. He takes a seat. The video feed rolls out, without sound, without Bruce typing, for a long time.
Because it’s not just them he can’t reach. It’s Gotham.
"Fuck," says Kate, who has been saying a lot of that in the past fifteen minutes or so. "Shit, Ollie, we’re going to have to stop it." This is obvious, admittedly, as is ‘we’ being her and him, and no one else, which considering the size of the situation is not particularly ideal. Not with boatloads of drugs and the likely guards that will come with.
She considers, for a long moment, tense as she watches the screen, terrified for Bruce that the man who’s come in will make his life more than difficult. Her heart clenches in her chest, hard. “We should just blow it up,” she says, voice low.
Ollie shakes his head, tersely, because like Kate he can’t make himself look away from the video feed, what’s happening to Bruce with them powerless to stop it. With /Bruce/ powerless to stop it, if he wants to maintain his secret.
"We can’t do that if it’s in boats. Double Smile’s too unpredictable, too pervasive — blow it up in ships, in Gotham Harbour, and it’ll get into animals and the water supply. God knows what havoc it’ll wreak."
His jaw works, hard. “You’re right, destroying the drugs is our best bet, but some other way will have to do. Get onto the boats and contaminate them right there.”
Kate nods, frustrated a little—though really it’s because of the video feed, not because of the drugs or of not realizing what Ollie did, which she should have. Damn. “Destroy it without destroying the boats. Easier said than done, but…did we ever figure out what destroys that shit without turning it to aerosol or dispersing it?”
She looks at the screen, reluctant to ask, but finally says, “Did he?”
The view changes, to that creamy swirl, and now it’s evident it’s the ceiling. The camera focuses in and out, shutting out, and then in, with a strange.. not all black film flipping over the lens and it’s—-
Bruce is blinking.
The camera is in his eye.
The words spill across the screen.
— tomorrow, gotham harbor, wild kardz —
A pause.
— belize —
The realization makes Ollie suck in his breath hard. Especially when the camera shakes, violently, and nothing comes for a while after that last word. Belize.
"We have to get him the fuck outta there," he mutters, the words spitting out hard and angry. It’s a self-evident statement but saying it aloud gives it weight, brings it back into sharp focus. Sharper than the eye-cam that Bruce has inside himself, jesus fucking christ.
"I know the Wild Kardz. They’re an offshoot of the Street Demonz who used to deal Fever through Gotham but got run out when the city was shut off after the earthquake and epidemics. I guess they made a homecoming and wanna get back into the designer drug trade."
Kate has made a noise, she realizes, at about the time Ollie reacts, though hers is something like a choked sob. Without hesitation, she types a single word in: ~ yes. ~ before turning away, turning to Ollie.
It means a hell of a lot for Bruce to use valuable emergency protocol time for that, hit her harder than it had in their meeting, and she scrubs her face with her hands (one still clutching the pen) before looking up.
"Yes," she says in agreement to Ollie’s first statement. "We need the truth of who did this to come out, we need that evidence before it goes into public record, and we need to stop the goddamn shipment. In the next 36 hours. Fuck." If the gang were augmented, this would be even worse, she notes, and grits her teeth. "The Wild Kardz are just the conduit. Ten bucks says they’ve been bought by the person behind this, Ra’s or whomEVER."