| LF1M Bronx Dungeon | |||||
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| What: Oracle is looking to expand her operations into New York. Whilst scoping out real estate, she bumps into some local color. | |||||
It's New York so it's pretty difficult to 'surprise' people here and their not nearly as put off by the handicapped as other cities in America. This turns out to be a fairly good thing as Barbara rolls down the sidewalk with an easy thrust of her wrists in the midafternoon friday traffic. Her oversized bag rests on the legs of her blue jeans and she's wearing a 'members only' jacket over a simple pink blouse. Every little strand of red hair is pulled back into a messy bun and she's looking up at the addresses above doorways with a wrinkled, curious forehead.
Not exactly 'sight seeing', so much as shopping. Seriously, look at all the stores. Either way, she's got a 'listing guide' open ontop of her bag and a wireless bluetooth plugged into her right ear, "Price guide on six thousand seventy one Arther Blvd."
Oh, if only Spider-Girl was out in the Bronx for fun reasons, like shopping or baseball games. No, her reasons for being out this way have a lot to do with the growing sounds of a scuffle as Barbara continues up the street. A ways ahead of her, a man in a ski mask comes sailing out of an alley before a line of webbing snaps fast to his back, and he's yanked back of sight with a startled yelp and a clatter as the knife he'd been holding hits the sidewalk.
"You guys suck," Spider-Girl sighs, webbing a trio of thugs to the side of the building, along with their bag of loot. "I mean, broad daylight? No getaway car or anything? You. /Suck/." She takes a step back to admire her handiwork, and up comes her phone to take a picture. Boom. Time to get the cops inbound.
Well, you don't see that everyday... Of course, Barbara has heard of the spiders, they're practically celebrities of the common man here in New York, but she's never really seen one 'in action'. It's intriguing really and definately draws her closer to the dangerous situation with about as much self preservation instinct as a grasshopper in a fish market.
"Pause listing." She says into her bluetooth, guiding her chair towards the open end of the alley and peeking her head around the corner before turning the chair with a grip of one wheel so the other side rolls. Just watching for the moment, but her hand moves away from the wheel to one of the 'lock bars' on the side of the rig. The other hand brushes a loose strand of hair from her eyes and adjusts her librarian glasses all curiously while Spider-girl whips up on ski-masked goons. "That's kind of impressive..." Already sending an annonymous message to the Emergency response via a little console on her chair.
It's probably a good thing Spider-Girl's mask covers so much of her face, or Barbara might have seen the glint of recognition in her eye when she turned to exit the alley and came up short. Oop. "Allo," she says instead, snapping off a jaunty salute. "I didn't miss any of them, did I..? I could have sworn one of them had a knife, but we are distinctly stabbity-less over here," she notes, thumbing back at the trio.
For having spent most of her young adult life around people wearing masks, it is still rather difficult to decypher identities through them. That is the point after all? Babs grins and shakes her head, "Not that I saw.. Uh..." Perking her neck and looking around the alley from her perch, then pointing out the knife over by a pile of trashbags, "There it is..." Helpful and stuff. "You always out here beating up defenseless masked thugs?" Joking, truely so.
"Ah! Thank you." Spider-Girl bounds over to retrieve the dropped knife, and it gets its flat side slapped against the web-covered chest of the goon she's /pretty sure/ was swinging it around. There. Now they're all together again!
"Pretty much. If it paid by the hour, I'd be pretty loaded," Spider-Girl muses, wandering back to the mouth of the alley. She apparently has no qualms about just hangin' out and chatting, at least while she can't hear any sirens inbound. Soon. Soon. "Neither rain nor sleet nor blah, blah, blah. I need a health plan."
"The benefits certainly don't match the work load, that's a fact." Babs seems comfortable with chatting as well. Even with a masked vigilante who's just demonstrated a perpensity for beating people up. It's all relative. She leans back with her arms extended so elbows rest on the sides of her chair, "What did they do?" Jutting her chin out, "Not that it matters, really. It couldn't have been good, wearing masks and all.. I'm just hoping they weren't planning a surprise birthday party. That would be kind of sad."
Spider-Girl sniffs and lifts her chin. "Oh, I see how it is. Masks are bad, are they?" A beat, and she snickers. "They kind of are. I wish I could do this without one," she admits, picking at her own mask a bit. "They get... stuffy. But. They held up a couple stores down the way," she explains, gesturing back at the bag of loot hooked over one goon's foot. "They are very good robbers. Not very good escapers. Demonstrably."
"I'm sure they didn't expect to run into a woman in spider squence costume..." Babs offers with a little shrug, looking over the goons. "Wow.." Sheer numbers of them is, even now, still impressive to her. In her day she threw down with the best of them, but it wasn't ever as easy as this. "Yeah, masks have a certain amount of problem that come along with them.. But there's always the option of joining the JLA or Titans, right? They both have some kind of health insurance, I'm sure. And if they don't, someone should write a letter to their congressman."
"Oh, pfft. I don't wanna work for the Man, man," Spider-Girl notes with a laugh, waving her hand dismissively. "Besides, the League is a bit out of... my... league. Oh, God. I swear that was not on purpose," she groans, planting her face into her hands. Muffledly, she adds, "I still get starstruck around those guys, it would be a trainwreck."
"There's other options, I guess." Babs says in a surprisingly understanding voice, even if she's smiling a little at the reaction from the spider. "Always a group of young heroes looking to expand their retinue. You'd make a smashing addition to their roster, for sure. You're even color coordinated! More than I can say for half the 'heroes'. Blue and red? What is /that/ about."
"/Right/? Primary colors? Really?" Spider-Girl gestures at herself. "Black and white are just as eyecatching and a lot less kindergarten. I am just sayin'. You are a very understanding lady," she notes, waggling a finger at Barbara. "I like you. It's decided. You tell me your Twitter handle, I'm puttin' you on the list, you get DM privileges."
"He's a sweet guy, Superman.. but I think all those super abilities have left him colorblind." Babs quirks her mouth into a sardonic smirk, but is mostly teasing the Man of Steel. S.G.s reaction, however, gets her laughing. "Alright! at (@) booksonwheels." She says with a grin, scooting her chair a little closer to the masked hero with all the concern of an inocent kid who's just met Hulk Hogan, without all the mystique and star struck. "I've also got a blog that's semi weekly." Which, ofcourse, is assuming the Spider is being serious, Barbara definately seems to be.
Spider-Girl seems to be serious, since she's whipped her phone back out and started dancing her fingers across the screen. "Books on wheels... hah, I like that. This is me," she says helpfully, leaning down and tilting the phone so Barbara can see. @the_spider_girl. "I tweet a lot. Fair warning. You can tell me to shut up but I probably won't. Where's the blog?" she asks cheerfully, already switching over to her browser. She does pause and cant her head slightly to one side. Aha. Sirens. Almost time for her to motor.
Barabara has a pretty nice rig, all things considered. The console on the arm of the chair is a mini computer, with a little LED screen on the bottom side of the cover. Her fingers blaze across the keys and link up with her cellphone to put all the information in without having to navigate the contact features and sync everything up with the mainframe back at the Tower. "themoreyouknow dot n.i.f. slash armchair underscore blogger. That's me. I wrote the forum code a few years ago.. it sees moderate traffic, mostly conspiracy theorists, but I don't stiffle creativity, even if they're nuts."
"Hey, they can be fun to read. And sometimes there's a nugget or two in there," Spider-Girl says with a grin, quickly tapping in the address so she can smack the bookmark button. BOOM. "I might have a local topic to bring up over there, actually. We've had some /weird/ fliers getting posted around town lately, reading them makes people super paranoid --" Ah. Sirens close now. Speaking of paranoid... "I better jet. It was really nice meeting you," she says happily, offering a hand for a quick shake.
Barbara leans forward towards the bit of 'hero gossip' and then frowns a little at the sound of sirens and the reaction it understandably illicits. "Yeah. Uh, hey I'll stick around and give my statement.." Wiggle pointing, since she also seems to understand how difficult it is for heroes to work within that whole 'due process' business, "Maybe we can meet up later before I head back to Gotham. I'm not helpless out here or anything, but it's always nice to have a straping spider themed hero around to watch my back." Shaking the offered hand, "Scoot, I'll tell them you were like seven feet tall, wearing a hoodie."
"Just lie and tell them I was awesome," Spider-Girl says brightly, and then she's turning to sprint up the side of the building and up onto the roof. "If you need anything while you're here, just at me!"
Running up the sides of buildings. Barbara watches with her head tilted to one side and a little 'whoa' in her expression. Even for the all mighty Oracle, seeing things like that first hand is still pretty impressive. "Will do!" Grinning. She reaches down and unlocks the wheels on her chair to swing her back in towards the sidewalk to wait for the police and give her statement. "Yes, officer, I saw it all. So many flips!" Because exageration is how legends are born.