2013.06.29 - Cat In The Birdhouse

If you're ever in Gotham, she had said, Oracle can give you the lowdown. The cheshire cat stands on a rooftop, looking at the burner cell in his hand. He had been putting this off for a while, but yesterday had been too much. Jimmy Olsen had been kind enough to take him away from the Joker's crime scene, dropped a whole lead he was following to help him, and he didn't seek to exploit the advantage. He had been a decent person. Imagine that. He owed it to him. He activates the phone, and dials the only number there, holding it up to his temple. His ears were a little higher than a human's in this form, but his superfine hearing allowed him to hear what was coming out of the speaker.

The line that lights up on Oracle's console is technically a business line -- one usually reserved for tipsters or informants. None of her Birds operatives would be foolish enough to give out the 'party line' to strangers. But, the tips line will do the trick.

"Engage scrambler," Babs says to the computer as a grid of the city appears on her monitor, pinpointing the call's origin point. Cameras in the area, and eyes in the sky overhead, divert to give the woman a glimpse of who it is that calls.

Well. He's not the usual tipster. He must be the fellow Helena mentioned.

The line connects and Oracle's androgynous, digital voice sounds over it. "This is Oracle. What can I do for you, Mr. Cat?"

Vorpal's eyes widen, and he looks around... but spots no-one. Okay, now he was kind of creeped out. Feeling exposed, he fades from view as he activates his invisibility... it was a natural reaction of fear. "This is the Oracle... I presume?" he asks quietly.

Given she introduced herself as Oracle when she answered the phone... yes. Good guess, there, catboy. A faint smile pulls at Babs' lips. She can hear in his voice -- and see in his image before he fades (Nice trick!) -- that he's nervous. So, she doesn't rag him about it.

Instead, she simply repeats: "This is Oracle, yes. What can I do for you, Mr. Cat?"

He had gotten rattled, he kicked himself mentally for asking that stupid question. Instead, he tries to come across as not a total idiot. "Sorry, er... Huntress gave me this phone... saying I should call it. I'm afraid I don't know who you are... or what you do." He walks to the edge of the roof and looks down. Nope, nobody there, either.

Babs cocks a brow lightly. "Why are you calling, then?" she counters. "The Huntress must have given the phone to you for a reason. What was it?"

She simply doesn't answer his questions for the moment, though she may by and by.

He tries to remember her phrasing. He slowly fades back into view, trying to see if there is any immediate threat. "She said that if I was in Gotham and I needed help... that you might be able to help me."

Babs smiles at that. "And do you need help, Mr. Cat?" the Oracle voice queries lightly. "I can be helpful, but only if I know what it is you're seeking. What you need."

"Yesterday I had an... encounter with the Joker. A reporter by the name of Jimmy Olsen helped me... afterwards. He was here in Gotham following a lead. Some sort of high tech crimes, high tech equipment being stolen and his lead led him to Gotham. I'd like to help him with it... if you have any way of finding out. He seemed to think it was either someone building something nasty, or some sort of corporate crime. Either way, no clean play."

The Joker? Ok. That gets Babs' full attention. ''The Joker's out of Arkham? $#*!!!'' And it does not make her happy. As the cat speaks, she starts entering queries into her search engine, looking both for Arkham footage that might suggest a break, and for the high tech crimes Olsen was apparently following. (No shortage of that.) Playing for time while she searches, she asks, "Right. One thing at a time, there, my friend. First: Tell me about your encounter with Joker. That he's back in town is..." There's a pause as she fails to suppress the pun: "no laughing matter. Then, you'll need to give me a little more on Olsen's investigation..." The cat sighs "... do I have to?" he pauses, and goes into his narrative... a very abridged version. Being midnight, searches would find a news item just a few hours old about Keith's encounter with the Joker- 'yesterday' technically indeed. "I was on my patrol here in Gotham and I ran into this float where he had..." a pause "It was pretty offensive, so I'm just going to say it was just wrong. And the Joker was on this float wearing a dress and a wig and knitting, with hymnals being blasted out of speakers. I read what happened to superman, so I was betting that there were some sort of canisters in that float ready to go off." The cat paces the roof, his tail swatting behind him, clearly not comfortable remembering this.

No one's comfortable remembering things the Joker has done. No one still sane, anyway. And particularly not Barbara Gordon. Her fist clenches for a moment or three as she takes a deep, calming breath and pushes both her active hatred of the man and disgust at the types of things he does aside. Like any cop, there comes a time when evidence, however disturbing, needs to be viewed with as dispassionate an eye as is humanly possible. Finding the footage isn't nearly so difficult, with the boy's direction. She winces at some of what she sees, regardless, and watches other moments out of a single slit of an eye. Dispassionate? Not so much... "You did the right thing," Oracle tells the cat, presently, "trying to stop him. The Joker's... Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how crazy he is." Batshit crazy, in fact... in more ways that one. She'll have to double-check he actually is safely back in Arkham. She has this sinking feeling, you see... That place is a revolving door for him. "And how does Mr. Olsen and his investigation tie into this?" Since it seems the Joker's apprehension is, in fact, fait accompli (for the moment), she's not entirely certain how she can help the odd fellow on the other end of the line.

"Olsen was in the neighborhood, so to speak, looking into his leads when he ran across the scene. I ... wasn't exactly in good shape afterwards." He shudders visibly on her screen, "...actually I haven't gotten a wink of sleep yet... but he approached me and took me out of there and got me some food and he was overall a decent human being. Didn't seem to want an exclusive, either, so I asked why he was there, and he told me. Now, I feel bad because he had to abandon a lead and those things can grow cold. So I wanted to do something nice for him." Vorpal sits on the edge of the rooftop, legs dangling "But you can take your time with that lead, I got the impression that he was doing discreet work on it... I'm also curious as to-- well, I can't ask you who you are, obviously, but Huntress knows you. By the name you're being called, I guess your thing is knowing things... so, I just moved to Gotham and I'm planning to make this part of my patrol. Since you seem to know the players here, I was wondering how big of an objection I'd get."

Objection? From the Bat? Oh, huge. Though Barbara doesn't say it. From what she can tell, however, reviewing the cam footage of the event in question, the cat is magical in some way -- not to mention his decidedly inhuman appearance. All of that means meta, after a fashion. And Batman hates having metas in his city.

Oracle, on the other hand, is a little more pragmatic. And the kid is, it seems, registered with the BSA -- and thus the Justice League. (Of which she's a card-carrying member... or, well, a member, anyway. She doesn't really carry the card around. Certainly not as Barbara Gordon.) "Plain truth?" she says to the cat. "You're gonna want to fly under Batman's radar as much as you can. He's not really all that warm and cuddly with anyone, but particularly not meta- or super-powered individuals. Not in Gotham, anyway." And, yeah. Vorpal qualifies.

She checks the BSA record. "You're Vorpal, aren't you?" He never actually introduced himself -- having been a little freaked when she called him Mr. Cat. "The Cheshire Cat? Frankly, kid, as long as you play by the rules you should be fine. And the rules are simple: Vigilantes in Gotham don't kill. Not intentionally, anyway. Accidents happen. We know this. But the moment you murder someone in cold blood is the moment you get added to the list of Supervillains to be apprehended by any means possible and turned over to the police for due processing. And, trust me, you do not want that. That is the fastest way to get on Batman's -- and my -- bad side." How's that for laying down the law?

She gives a wry smile, her digital tones softening somewhat. (It's hard to tell, given the computerized nature of the sounds.) "I'll keep an eye open for something that might help Mr. Olsen. If I find anything, I'll send it along to him, in your name." No way is she giving a reporter direct access to her databanks. "As for you... Keep that phone. Call me, if you need anything. I can't promise I'll always be able to help, but if you scratch my back and keep me updated with what you see and hear around town or wherever you happen to be, I'll return the favor."

He listens to what Oracle has to say, and nods "Vorpal, yes... though you can call me Keith, I guess. I don't really have a secret identity. How could I?" the smirk in his voice is rather evident. He's fuzzy, he's purple, he has a tail. He's in the Nightcrawler league of public attention. "You don't have to worry about me killing anyone. My methods are strictly non-lethal, though not exactly painless." He had, after all, shredded the Joker's wrist with his claws, but that had been an attempt to disarm him and keep him from killing innocents. "I'm registered with the BSA, I'm very conscious that there are lines I simply can't cross. Not that I would cross them, anyways. I know what it's like to be killed- I remember what death feels like."

"Thanks for looking into it... if you know of anyone that needs assistance here in Gotham... well, I don't really have any group connections or anything like that. Booster Gold and Daytripper occasionally give me training on how to use my powers creatively, but I'm pretty much by myself. So feel free to call on me if there's ever the need..." a pause "... I guess you can tell I'm a meta, do you know what my abilities are, just in case?"

Oracle chuckles softly. "I'm a member of the JLA," she tells him, "and I have access to the BSA database. That's why I know who you are." Among other means, of course. "So, I do have an overview, in front of me. Is there anything you'd like to add to it?"

"Well, I seem to be getting a better handle on creating illusions that are dynamic... and up to now it seems that I can't create any actual constructs that are bigger than fifteen feet... but when they get to that dimension they're very, very durable. I've learned to create floating ones, too, that's how I travel around - by swinging on them." He pauses, trying to remember, "I don't remember if it's listed there or not, but I have had about ten years worth of training in Hei Hu Quan." He lets the humor of that sink in- Black Tiger First. Oracle makes notes as he's talking, adding them to the BSA file and her own. "Nice set of tricks," she says lightly. "Good to know." No, the irony in his chosen martial arts form isn't lost on her. But, virtually ever vigilante she knows has some sort of serious MA training of some sort -- most of them forms in keeping with their masked persona. So, it's fairly de rigueur, in her world.

The cat hops off the roof, but ends up seemingly walking in mid-air across the street. Careful zooming might show that he's creating tiny foot-sized platforms of glowing purple... something as he walks, vanishing and creating them as he walks. This being South Gotham at midnight, there's almost no chance of there being someone down in the streets... except for troublemakers. "I don't know if they are, but they nearly weren't enough. The only reason the Joker didn't kill me was because he caught on to my illusions and started ignoring them. I created this enormous cheshire cat head over him that released an illusory anvil as he was about to blow my brains out. He ignored it, as I thought he would. But I hid a real anvil construct inside the illusory anvil, and that's how I nailed him. That's something else I've learned to do, hide real constructs in illusions."

Oracle's cameras track the cat's movement and she extrapolates what he's doing from what signs are there. "Makes sense," she says in response to his continued overview. Again, more notes are entered into public record, and the footage is recorded and added to her files. "It's what I would do." Misdirection is a vigilante's best friend. Especially with someone like the Joker.

He settles onto the next roof and looks over. "Well, I think I've been wasting enough of your time as it is, Oracle. If you've anything you'd want me to look over, please let me know... and I'll do my best not to be visible to Batman. I don't think I made a good impression on Huntress, either." Then again, she gave him the phone, so who knew? Damned stoic people with unmovable faces, you couldn't read anything.

Welcome to the vigilantes in Gotham: Not a single one of them is nearly as forthcoming as the naive feline. Including Oracle. "I wouldn't worry too much about Huntress," she says lightly. "After all, she forwarded you to me." H doesn't do that for everybody, after all. "Find yourself a safe place to shelter, when you're not out fighting crime, and try not to get yourself killed when you are. We'll be in touch, I'm sure."

"I've got a place... rinky dink apartment. I'll be fine. And don't worry... I'm not fond of being killed. Been there, got the purple fur." He looks around and tries to remember which direction he was going in before making the call. Perhaps he would cut the route short. He hadn't slept since the encounter and he was getting tired. He just wasn't sure he was going to like the dreams that were going to come. "Goodnight, Oracle."