| THIS is why people think I'm part of the Bat Pack | |||||
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| What: Batman all but literally strong-arms Huntress into doing some spying for him. | |||||
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"Don't bother getting up, I'll let myself out."
He steps over the unconscious body.
It's a warm night in Gotham, leaving much activity in the streets, and even more work for the Batman. The dark knight stalks through quite the scene, it would have easily been billed as a massacre if more than a single ounce of blood had been spilt. No less than thirteen stout men in company uniform lay in the dimly lit (?) lobby of the Lyons Chemical Corporation, beaten, bloodied, bruised and broken, folded up like discarded rag dolls and motionless.
Every single one is still breathing.
More than one probably wishes they weren't, though.
His investigations have taken him here, tracking the money laundering schemes of a local crime boss, an investigation that led him to some rather stiff resistance. Or, well, it would have been stiff for some. He's got more important things to worry about than a few penny and nickel thugs right now. Ostensibly, he's sent for Huntress, but he doesn't bother waiting up at home for her.
Not while the night is still young.
Huntress hates, hates, HATES feeling like some damned DOG on a leash. Here, girl, come running at my beck and call and do what I want you to do and all you'll get in return is a pat on the head and maybe a few seconds LESS disapproving glare. Bastard. But, despite her extreme annoyance, she replied to the summons and shows up in time to look at all of the totally non-lethal carnage in the room. DAAAAMN. That right there is why she heeds Batman's call, no matter how much it rankles.
"Huntress," the Batman recognizes the other as she slips into the lobby.
The lobby is, as mentioned before, quite dark, even for this time of night. Several overheads have been knocked out by some unseen contrivance, and the remaining lights flicker on and off in unpredictable rhythms. The asymmetric and overall weak lighting generates plenty of dark spots for a predator to hide in, and mantled in it, the caped form of Batman seems right at home.
At least he seems relatively neutral towards Huntress at the moment.
Fast eyes track the direction of the vigilantess' attention, and Batman frowns. "Don't mind them. They're stunned, but none of them are going to remember much for awhile." He pauses for a beat. "Or eat solid foods." For a moment, he looks as if he might kick one of them, but seems to think better of it. Stalking forward to Huntress, he's eager to get to the point.
"I'm busy dealing with some ... Gotham problems," he explains succinctly, with the air of someone who probably wouldn't take being asked for details well. "I need you to do some more reconnaissance for me."
Huntress looks from the people all over the ground to the Bat as he gets all up in her personal space. "Why not get one of the Robins to do that for you?" Yes, she's recognized that there's more than one young man running around Gotham wearing Bat-affiliate attire. "I mean, I'm in the middle of working on something with H... Oracle. Don't know if I can afford to take much time away from that."
Batman isn't exactly inside of Huntress' space. Not yet, anyway. But with his favorably-comparing size to even most of the thugs in the room and a enshrouded silhouette that seems to spread to every black space in the room, it's hard to tell where Batman actually ends half the time. It's somewhat annoying. Especially when Batman glares at her like that. It's a little like being caught in the harsh light of the full moon.
She asks him why not Robin; he stares.
She says she's in the middle of something; he stares.
She acts cavalier; he stares even harder.
If you've ever seen a mountain considering a landslide, it's a little like that.
Finally, with excruciating deliberation, Batman's eyes narrow coldly. "Is that so."
He isn't really asking her a question. He's busy trying to decide how much she's lying.
Huntress narrows her eyes back at the Bat, 'cause it's either that or scream at him. "You doubt me, talk to Oracle." Because this time, she is being completely one hundred percent honest. The police reports will even corroborate, as they've been tracking an underground Fight Club, and that's where HAL sent her the other night. She's still got bruises on her knuckles under her gloves to prove it.
Oracle is always just one comm away, after all.
"You're mistaken," Batman states decisively. "I'm not doubting that you're busy working on something with Oracle."
The lie is not in doubt. Batman doesn't think of Huntress as the type to be enough of a fool to lie to him and think she can get away with it. He knows that even if he did bother to check with Oracle, the only thing he'd be doing is wasting his time. What he is in direct doubt of is her insistence that she doesn't have the ability to do two things at once.
A heartbeat later, a dark, grizzled grin the length of the reaper's scythe slides across his face. It's a rare sight, especially when the Batman leans all the way over to eclipse Huntress' shadow with his own, and look her dead in the eye.
"But if it's really that important, I'm wondering if I'm going to need to get involved in your 'something.'"
He adds, a second later, "Personally."
Huntress wants to draw back from that grin, but doesn't really have anywhere to go. "Maybe you should." Yes, bravado to stupid levels in the face of a perceived threat. "God knows HAL's been looking for that girl for a stupidly long time already." She can't help but hope, for Barbara's sake, that that Shelby girl is still alive. 'Cause if not...
He expects a little pushback. Huntress has always been a little stubborn. It's an aspect that that annoys Batman just as much as it garners his respect. He knows a thing or two about being stubborn. But when she faces him down with a cold eye and a brave word, Batman's grin doesn't disappear, even when she brings up a missing girl, which would normally be a scowl-inducing piece of information. Though he is not insensible to what she says, and certainly it has some meter with him, the fact is, the Dark Knight simply doesn't distract that easily. Especially when he's pursuing a train of thought.
"And you'd be willing to follow my direction to-the-letter if I did get involved?"
He's reminding her of what he believes to be an incontrovertible fact--that the Huntress operates in the city only because he hasn't decided to put a stop to her yet, a side effect of her agreeing not to use lethal means to control crime in Gotham. It would be short-sighted to think Batman so egotistical that he would honestly believe Huntress actually agrees with his methods, or really anything else about him. And while he has no interest in bothering Huntress anytime soon so long as she continues to fly straight, it might be a different situation entirely if the two engaged in a more extensive investigation together. In short, his authoritarian and occasionally draconic means, normally best experienced in limited doses, is likely to be misery for Huntress.
If she's as straight-laced as she acts, surely putting up with his methods is no great chafe, right..?
That grim grin hasn't gone away.
His direction? HIS direction? Screw that. "That is Oracle's decision, not yours, no matter what you think or how big and mean you make yourself out to be. She's the ..." SHIT. Huntress thinks fast. "... she's the one at risk, and Oracle is the one that seems to have some kind of personal stake in it." GOD. She hopes to HELL that he doesn't poke at that slip she just made. But she knows he will. 'Cause he's the effing Bat, and it seems his job to make her as damned miserable as possible.
"So what you're saying is, you can't handle it."
Batman has a way of saying the worst things as if they were everyday matters. There isn't anything Batman misses; it's easy to think that if Huntress' pupils dialate even by a millimeter, Batman will notice. To that end, Huntress stumbling over herself verbally when Batman asks her if she's willing to knuckle up is like setting off a sky flare to him. She'll be able to tell he notices, just by the way his optics respond, a narrowing focus, mirroring the eyes behind the cowl.
It's easy to forget he even is wearing a mask.
"But then again, that's not really about Oracle, is it? You're starting to choke a little, Huntress. And people don't tend to choke around me unless they've got something to hide..."
Huntress hahs. Faintly, but it's there. "You're wrong. You're actually, honest-to-God, wrong." Because her choke was about Oracle, and that's what she's hiding. She doesn't know how does or does not know about Oracle, and she's not gonna be the one to spill the beans if she can help it. Yes yes, she saw the Batgirl costume in the Clocktower, but even if this is completely trivial, she's actually got something over on the Bat. How often does that happen?
He's unmoved.
"God doesn't need to vouch for the honest. The rest is left to me."
She misunderstands his line of reasoning, but he doesn't know that yet. Some sudden shift in her demeanor, a recollection of berth relates to safety. From her perspective, he's getting colder, but this whole business as it relates to Huntress and Oracle is something that toys at edges of the Batman's interest, and speaks towards something a little bigger than Huntress is letting on. The only thing that can pull at the Batman's arrow-like attention is the idea of information being kept from him, and it's something he bridles at. Slowly but surely, the train turns away from other suspicions, other matters, to focus entirely on a new one.
"You're hiding something," he repeats, "and I think I might have to just find out what it is."
Huntress tries for a little more bravado, though it might come off as defensive. "Go right ahead, be my guest." He wants to know more about Oracle, he can go talk to her himself. "Otherwise, are we gonna keep up the staring contest until dawn? I sure as hell hope not." She hasn't been home since infiltrating the District Kings' Fight Club, and as accomodating as Oracle might have been, she really wants to take a shower in her own bathroom and sleep in her own bed sometime this week.
The Batman glowers at Huntress for a few more moments, reading her closely. Though the exact nature of her misunderstanding might not be clear to him, her behavior is. Her bravado works at cross-purposes to her intentions--though she may be lying directly to him, daring him to move into action gives him a confirmation that the information she's holding onto isn't something personally valuable to her--and may be potentially dangerous for him to find out. "You know that it's dangerous to dare me," Batman notes, his mien drawn of the darkest black. But that incisive reasoning is put to open thought -- Huntress is too practical to play games with her own information.
"I wonder if Oracle would have said the same... especially knowing we talked first."
He's going to have to get in touch with her. Soon.
Enfolding the issue to his laundry list of obligations and cases, he continues onto another vein. He appears to give Huntress peace only in an incidental and very foreboding fashion--if he gives her any rest, it is only by coincidence, and by the convenience of his own train of thought. "Still. It's going to pull my attention away from my own cases. You're going to help me."
It doesn't really seem like the circuitous argument really affected his outlook on the way things were going to end up at all. All in all, Batman just.. isn't really one for options.
If you want to sleep in a nice bed, you might want to ask for money for a hotel or something.
Huntress isn't even that concerned with a NICE bed. She wants HER OWN bed. She stares at the Bat for a bit longer even though doing so really is unnerving. It's like those paintings with the eyes that follow you everywhere. "Fine. Talk to Oracle. What is so damned important that you'd actually trust ME with it?" Is that yet another less than subtle implication that the Bat thinks poorly of her? Hey, it's what she believes, and he sure as hell isn't doing anything right now that would lead her to think otherwise.
It's a shame. Huntress isn't going to see it for awhile.
There's nothing kind, or relenting about Batman. He meets her stare evenly, mantled in his cape for the time that she takes to give in. When she does, there is not even a glimmer of satisfaction on his face. Batman, it seems, is strictly business in these matters. "It's something you're familiar with," he says simply, as if her question didn't even merit an explanation or answer. "My ongoing research into the Avengers has hit some practical limits as to how and when I can investigate them up close. I'm sure I don't have to remind you about the sort of problems Thor presents." That little hiccup caused quite a stir in the Justice League.
"So I'm going to need you to take a little trip and gather some critical information for me so I can continue my investigation." He doesn't explain why. It really does seem rather peculiar of the Bat to be looking into Earth's Mightiest Heroes with such an avid interest, but he seems deadly serious. If completely opaque.
The Avengers? THAT'S what he's doing all this for? The HELL? Why is he getting his cowl in a bunch over other HEROES? But, hey, if that's what he wants to do, fine. Huntress has no reason to get into a pissing contest with other heroes, especially ones that make her look like a little kid with a Nerf Super Soaker.
"All right, fine. You want me to snoop around about people that saved the PLANET, fine."
Batman doesn't really pay any attention to Huntress at all, having no reason to suspect she'll be anything other than completely loyal to him and her own word. "Good," he says, the slightest edge of dark humor seeping into his moving-mountains voice. "I knew you'd see it my way," he adds, drily.
Nobody ever said he wasn't an asshole.
"I'm going to arrange for an associate of mine to get you the funds you'll need for the globetrotting, plus a little extra in case you need it," Batman continues, pulling up a screen in his gauntlet allowing him to enter something in with a few keyclicks. "Some of the Avengers prefer to stay fluid and remote, so it'll take a little searching and more than a few greased palms to find them. No fighting with them directly, if you can help it. Your only mission will be to gather details on their day to day, and information on what I might need to breach their securities, if any exist. Don't get yourself into a situation that you can't get out of. And most importantly."
Batman stares accusingly.
"If you do happen to get into a dialogue, under _no_ circumstances do you tell them everything you know like a two-penny thug, like you did like last time."
Huntress huffs in annoyance at that, though really, it's true. "Why not just go over there and talk to them up front? Why all the secrecy and cloak and dagger bullshit? I mean, we're all on the same side at the end of the day.... aren't we?" She can understand the hesitations about Thor as he's not from Earth, though he seemed nice enough when he brought her crossbow back. And he totally didn't have to do that. But the others? Seriously?
"Just because someone's an ally at dawn doesn't mean they'll continue to be an ally at dusk," Batman points out, coldly.
There is a certain matter of fact way about him when and where the Bat elects to speak that doesn't really speak to a lot of trust, especially in people who might as well be engineered gods in some cases, literal gods in others. "Besides. The world isn't as simple as that." He moves past Huntress, the weight of his boots felt more than heard as he passes. There isn't a sound that emits from him, as opposed to a particular sense of weight and gravity passing. Just the barest hint of a feeling.
"The Avengers, like any faction, will help their own before anyone else. In a situation where justice is handed out at whim and interpretation, there's always a danger of it being handed out inequally, or even worse yet, corruptly. Without secrecy, it's easy to put yourself at a disadvantage, or worse--bring about the very thing you were trying to avoid."
Batman's grim reasoning comes to a head in a single example. "What if Asgard decided to declare war on Earth? What if the Avengers were compromised? Somehow, Thor doesn't strike me as the type to be easily reasoned with once he's angry. Not to mention his new wife. It wouldn't take much for an outside party to get control over him. In that case, would /you/ be willing to try and talk down a misled and angry Norse God?"
Helena honestly and truly believes that Thor and his people would never turn on Earth, especially considering that if they really are who they claim to be, they protected northern Europe a thousand years ago. Why change now? But, she does see the logic in the Bat's words, even if they ARE about as paranoid as they could get. After all, by going this route to find out about the Avengers, isn't Batman doing EXACTLY what he's accusing the Avengers of? Helping his own before anyone else? She doesn't voice that little gem, though. Probably wouldn't go over too well.
If you listen very closely, Batman never suggested that he was any better--if it were Robin, Batman would move Heaven and Earth to save him. Batman's own are the people he's promised his abilities to, and there are very dark parts of him that are fully willing to go to war with an entire world in order to save his own. It's only natural to expect it as part of the darkness of the human psyche. In fact, the only thing Batman is sure is a favorable comparison between him and the Avengers is the fact that of the opposing sides, he's sure that his will be the better equipped one.
"Batman keeps moving away. "It's only those with better reasoning and foresight who can avert disaster," Batman says, as if reading Huntress' mind. "The more you know, the less risk you have in getting hurt, or having to hurt someone else. Keep an eye out. I'll be sending the addresses to you. Pack your sun-hat," he advises, before lifting his grapnel gun. Huntress doesn't really have long to stop his here--he's quite done, and if she says nothing more, he'll be gone before she blinks next.
If she says something else, he'll probably already be gone anyway.
Huntress can't think of anything to say that isn't another adolescent complaint, and thus within the span of a blink she's alone on the rooftop again. And annoyed. VERY annoyed. She needs to go talk to Oracle.