all that's done and gone and passed tonight (mix of open and closed)

[overlyprecocious]

Who: Tim Drake overlyprecocious and friends
What: Tim is Coping and it's fine
When: late January, after the Hunger Games mostly
Where: Central City mostly. and Sky High.
Content Warnings: a little trauma related to being kidnapped into space by aliens (twice!! thanks, canon), a lot of anxiety, some unhealthy coping mechanisms like food hoarding and vigilantism

It's not like Tim is traumatized by his experience in the survival games. If anything, he's relieved that he was snagged by the aliens and not, say, a hapless seven-year-old. He has survival training, he has a magic restocking utility belt, he has family he was able to meet up with and work with. It was easy for him, comparatively speaking. It just - being kidnapped to space made him even more aware of the metaphorical sword of Damocles already hanging over his head whenever a Confluence finally brings him back home again. There's an extra cruel sting to being reminded that he's not even safe from being randomly yanked from his home and sent back into danger outside of Confluences.

Being more active as Robin is a reasonable precaution. He was already caught off guard once, and thankfully he at least had a minimum of supplies on him and the utility belt even if he didn't have the benefit of the full Robin suit. What he has on him here won't do him much good when he's yanked back home, but at least he's more prepared for anything that happens in this reality when he's suited up.

Comments

[OPEN, high school] teenagers scare the living shit out of me

[overlyprecocious]

He can't be Robin during the day mostly, for obvious reasons like Robin being a creature of the night and also government-mandated high school. Tim's not really the friendliest kid in the school - he specializes in being nice but bland and forgettable as much as possible, and mostly socializes with the people he already hangs out with outside the school.

Even people who don't spend a lot of time with him might notice that he's gotten more squirrelly than usual, even if he's trying to mask it. He's increased the Absolute Minimum number of objects that could be weapons hidden on his person (that he is absolutely not supposed to have, but what the school doesn't know he could use in a fight won't hurt them), and he's got roughly two days' worth of protein bars and one days' worth of clean drinking water stashed in his backpack. Bonus: roughly all of the security concerns that he'd been trying to pretend not to have about being in an unlocatable school in the sky have come back full force.

Right now, it's his lunch period, and he can be found in an unused classroom that he definitely shouldn't have access to but it's amazing what you can use as a lockpick these days. He's not hurting anything, anyway, just re-checking that he has all his emergency supplies and also maybe wondering if General Sense of Mental Unease counts as enough of an emergency to have Nico sneak him out. Probably not.

[faceguy]

Since the world reconfigured itself around their trip to the past, and since his brother started coming to school, Leo’s been walking around without his disguise, fully turtled out. The people who care can just ignore him, but enough of them don’t now that he feels pretty alright in his own skin.

His own skin that he was taking to the courtyard outside when he sees the door of a classroom that should be locked open. And Leo is nothing if not nosy.

Peeking his head in, he… feels like he knows this guy. Though he’s seen him more often in costume than out. They haven’t really hung out at school before.

But Leo is still noisy, and the amount of supplies Tim is lugging around catches his interest.

“Going camping or something?”

He asks this from where his head is poked through the doorway.

[overlyprecocious]

Luckily for - well, everyone, Tim is aware that there's turtles attending the school, if only because it's hard not to be aware of something like that. Word gets around. And it's very Noticeable. That doesn't mean he isn't still a little surprised to have one poking his head into his definitely alone-time sanctuary.

So, "Something like that," is what he ends up saying, and not why are you a turtle??

[faceguy]

Aw, that's too bad. He loves giving snappy comebacks to those kinds of questions.

"Something like camping?" He laughs once. "Well, I guess it can't be any worse than actual camping."

He waves a hand. "I'm Leo, by the way."

[overlyprecocious]

"Well, it was kind of like involuntary camping," Tim admits because the whole... alien reality tv thing wasn't exactly a secret? He guesses. It was broadcast.

"I'm Tim."

[faceguy]

Oh. Maybe he was caught up in that whole alien thing? Leo hadn't watched it - couldn't really bring himself to watch it. Which he should probably feel bad about, but he already has enough alien-related trauma to deal with.

"Leo," he says in introduction, entering the room the rest of the way, "but my friends call me Leonardo."

He says this like it's a joke, although it's technically true since he became Accelerator's friend.

He nods at the supplies. "So you're staying prepared in case you go involuntary camping again?"

[overlyprecocious]

"Yeah. Pretty much."

It definitely makes him feel uncomfortable to admit that directly, but at the same time, it's pretty reasonable, right? It doesn't have to be a secret. Maybe other people should start doing it, too. "It just seemed like a good idea."

[faceguy]

"Guess being prepared can't hurt," Leo agrees. It... does feel a little paranoid, but hey, who is he to criticize people for being paranoid?

Leo leans against the doorframe, his shell making a muffled clunk when he connects; not as loud as it could be since he's wearing a jacket.

"You know, my dad took me and my bros involuntary camping once. I mean, it wasn't scary like... uh, yeah." He rubs his neck. "But he took our phones and dumped us in the woods to teach us some kind of lesson about technology or whatever."

It wasn't that bad. They did have adult supervision.

[overlyprecocious]

If Tim was a different child, he would probably have a different reaction to that. Something like woah, that's kinda messed up, maybe; but he's Robin, and while he doesn't think his Batman would do anything like that without at least forewarning, it's not that far off from training.

"Was the lesson that getting out of the woods is easier with GPS?"

[OPEN, Central City at night]

[overlyprecocious]

For the most part, Robin flying solo sticks to reconnaissance and lower-level crimes. It's how he was trained; Robin stays with Batman, Nightwing, or Batgirl if he's in Gotham, or the Team if he's out of the city. He spends a lot more time patrolling alone here, but he usually sticks to the base-level rules of Don't Bite Off More Than You Can Chew.

He may have taken a bigger bite tonight than he meant to. This gas station robbery has a lot more guns and perpetrators than any gas station robbery could ever possibly need. He expected one, maybe two guys, probably not exactly highly-skilled. There's four guys, and they're all armed. It's not an emergency, yet - he's not about to reach for the panic button - but that makes this trickier given that there's an unarmed cashier and a couple hapless late-night shoppers who could get caught in the crossfire.

"Isn't this kind of overkill? I'm pretty sure all you need is a super soaker to pull off a crime like this. No offense," he adds to the cashier, "it's just I'm assuming you're not paid enough to put yourself at risk for this job. Unless you have great hazard pay?"

Robin: a man of the people.

[demigoth]

In the far corner of the gas station, hidden from those up at the cash by the position of the shelves, Nico was concentrating on loading up a slurpee cup with alternating layers of blue razzberry and cherry. He missed the people coming in, or rather didn’t care to look when he heard the door open.

But now that it’s lidded, he turns and stops, mouth half open around the straw. He can see three heads in ski masks and one hand sticks out past the aisle, a gun at a familiar red-and-black hero.

Um. No?!

Nico summons his sword to his left hand and hucks the slurpee at the tallest head before running into what is about to be the fray.

[overlyprecocious]

Robin has roughly less than a second to recognize that a slurpee and a sword have entered the scene, and both are being wielded by someone who Tim is absolutely not talking to again if he gets shot when Tim already had this. He'll yell at Nico later, though, because right now he's rushing into action to disarm everyone before someone gets shot or stabbed.

"Okay, this is all really unnecessary!" he calls out, hypothetically to the robbers still (like the one whose wrist might have just been broken in the process of removing his gun, but he should have thought about that being bringing a gun into this) but really to the demigod charging with a sword right now.

[demigoth]

The robber at the end of the aisle - who isn’t the slurpee victim - has the sense to turn towards the slurpee machine with his gun drawn.

Nico drops to a knee slide as the gun goes off. RIP blue razzberry, which is now spraying half the store in neon sugar as the machine continues to churn despite the cracks in the casing.

The demigod punches Smart Guy in the nuts and melts into the shadow he casts. The second shot leaves a smoking bullet embedded in the linoleum where Nico just was.

[overlyprecocious]

Tim is absolutely going to have a heart attack as a result of this fight. He hates this, he hates having an armed but un-armored friend running rampant in the middle of a fight. And it's not like he and Nico have teamed up in a fight very often before, so his ability to predict what Nico's going to do is hampered. The sheer panic when the gun goes off and hits where Nico was just a second ago distracts him just long enough that he loses track of one of the guys, and another gun is fired.

It hits.

It takes Tim a moment to realize it hit him, and he honestly feels relief for a second that it wasn't one of the civilians who got hurt because he wasn't doing his job well enough, and it wasn't Nico being found at the other end of the shadow he traveled through. The body armor does what it's supposed to do, it stops the bullet from penetrating skin, and it's going to hurt later but for now he spins around to let the shooter know that wasn't very nice.

[demigoth]

Nico’s gone for less than two seconds. He jumps out of the shadow a Doritos display, bringing the pommel of his sword down on Slurpee’s head so hard that the man instantly crumbles to the floor.

And somewhere in that moment, there’s another gunshot.

And Robin’s body jerks with the impact.

“Robin!” Nico doesn’t stop to think, only whirls with both hands guiding his blade. The wicked sharp sword lops the shooter’s forearm clean off, who screams in pain and tries to grab at Nico with his stump.

A black cacodemon jumps out of Nico’s and nips onto the man’s elbow. Screaming gives way to sobs like the flip of a switch, but the son of Hades is kicking the head of Smart Guy into one of the metal aisle shelves to make sure he stays down. “Robin?”

[overlyprecocious]

It's one thing to know that your friend is trained in wartime battle and his fighting experience is pretty much all life-or-death stakes.

It's another thing to watch him lop someone's arm off.

He's in the midst of calling out to Nico that he's okay when it actually hits that Nico cut a man's arm off. Luckily, the last guy standing with a gun is in shock, long enough that Tim's able to disarm him before he does something stupid like shoot at Nico, and then he's doing a quick scan of the surroundings for the nearest item that could be turned into a tourniquet before someone bleeds out.

[demigoth]

Tim gets to the last one before Nico does, which is probably good for the thief. As it is, Nico hits him in the forehead with the flat of his blade, sending the guy staggering for the door.

And that’s all the time he wants to waste. Demigods don’t use guns - at least most don’t - but he’s still aware of how much damage they can do. He rushes over to the vigilante and pulls at his arm, although he’s not sure if he should get him moving or just teleport him out. He’s scared if he doesn’t land them in a hospital on the first try, he might not get his friend there. “C’mon, what are you doing? We need to go.”

[SEMI-OPEN (to people with building access), the new bat-building]

[overlyprecocious]

The new building that Dick bought is nowhere near "done" or "liveable" yet, but Tim still has access and can (carefully) explore the building if he wants, which is what he's doing now. He knows TJ's working on the security system, but right now Tim's exploring and looking for opportune places for hidden passages, nooks, and hiding spots. It would be difficult to put any in that the other bats don't know about at this stage, but shut up, he's visualizing. Manifesting. Being reasonably careful not to fall through any questionable structures.

[mostdangerousbird]

[ TJ is carrying an armload of boxes down a third floor hallway to the apartment he’s claimed as “his”, even though it contains only electronics and a few thrifted Formica tables and vinyl chairs to work on the electronics. There’s an ancient Frigidaire that he’s coaxed back to life.

When he sees Tim, staring at an ornate 1920s floor iron and obviously wondering about the structural integrity of whatever lurks beneath, TJ smiles. ]

Have you seen the blueprints of the building yet? I’ve got 5 sets going back to 1917. They’re… interesting.

[overlyprecocious]

I've seen some of them.

[Maybe all, maybe not all. Definitely the official ones, and maybe an unofficial one or two, but he's curious if TJ has found any that he hasn't. Tim knows that he's got some interesting structural plans for the building's security, even if he doesn't know all the details.

TJ's got the box well-managed, but Tim goes on ahead to open the door for him.] What did you find?

[mostdangerousbird]

You know a lot of the walls sound emptier than they should. Even account for plaster and lathe and the air gaps.

[ Tim sets the stack on a table and starts sorting everything into the existing organization while he talks. ]

At first, I thought it was differences in building codes between our 1920s and Gotham's. I had 4 sets of blueprints at that point, starting with 1923 when the building finished. There were discrepancies in the units, obviously, both the building and most of the units have been remodeled in a hundred years. But I could never make the measurements add up. I tried the square footage with and without bathrooms and closets. Maybe there's 18 inch soundproof walls between units. Maybe there's fire breaks. No matter what I did - I can't get the building within 2000 square feet of where it should be.

[ And that's a lot of room to lose because you forgot to carry the one. ]

So the architect's family never moved. They're in the same brownstone in midtown for 4 generations now, and I went digging around in the attic while they were in Florida. Found his original drafts from 1910s. There's a copy in the closet.

[ Tim gestures at the entryway closet right by the door. ]

I haven't digitized them. I keep meaning to ask Dick about them, but I want to make sure I have everything wired through them before everyone else starts picking out their favorite hideyholes.

[overlyprecocious]

[Well.

Tim basically looks like TJ just handed him a credit card and told him to go wild in a toy store, and he's scurrying for the closet to retrieve the blueprints. Hidden spaces? That no one else in the family even knows about yet? He is excited.]

Full hidden rooms or mostly passages?

[mostdangerousbird]

[ ... okay, that's the first time TJ has really been charmed by his younger self. It's suddenly oh, I get it. He understands why Dick and Alfred were on his side from the start. Tim looks like it's Christmas at the Wayne residence. ]

Mostly passages, but there's a couple of rooms. Maybe 3. The pencil's a little blurry and faded. You'll probably want to see what Dick wants to do with those.

[overlyprecocious]

[There's some bounce to his step once he locates what looks like the blueprints and heads back to spread them out on the table with the others. Well, some bounce in his step until it pulls badly at the bruising on his torso, and then he's moving with a bit more care.]

I figured we'd end up with some hidden rooms but that we'd probably have to build them in ourselves. It's so cool we have some that came with the building! Have you gone to see them yet?

[mostdangerousbird]

Not yet, no.

[ He's been busy - or keeping busy, and there's something about it that makes him feel alone.

It's like the first time you're shown the way into the batcave. It's like the first time you fight with your friends at your side. It's a network of secret passages. It should be fun. But there's been no appeal. TJ's been waiting for it to spark some sort of thrill: it hasn't. ]

If you're going to go, you should take someone with you and tell someone else where you're going.