tushanshu | ʁʍ oo1; text

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ʁʍ oo1; text

[Maybe he's being overly cautious, but Tim isn't entirely sure if he's still in the Unternet and thus the city is just some trick, and so he chooses to make his first entry on the cities network text only. His decision is further bolstered by the uniform stowed away - the uniform further complicating the location decision. If he wasn't in the Unternet, then logically he shouldn't have that uniform. Still, Tim knows at least how find if he has any allies in this unknown city - virtual world or not.]

Well. That was a pretty rude awakening. I'm not used to waking in the tub surrounded by strangers. I mean, sure the tour of the city was different and the welcome pamphlet is a nice touch. But I'm not a huge fan of waking up in some fantasy movie and being told I'm going to fight some big bad evil. I'm not really the hero type. Heck, I haven't even had my morning coffee. Oh! Name's Todd Richards. Don't suppose anyone here has heard of Star City? Or knows where to get that coffee? [That should pique the interest of anyone familiar with his dimension. And the name should alert any close allies...]

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[The anonymity of the response was the first suggestion that whoever he was talking to had a special brand of paranoia; he was a new arrival and the general assumption should be that he wouldn't be able to tie identities to their network presence. So responding anonymous was a little strange.

But those street numbers? Tim might not be great at remembering his own birthday, but everything he could possibly know about the other members of the Bat family was firmly stored in his memory. August 16th - Jason's birthday. March 21st - Dick's birthday. Had he not used the name that he had, Tim might not have thought anything about the anonymous message.

But he had. Still, he doesn't jump to conclusions - certainly not publicly.]

I dunno, a few people seem to know it. 16th and 21st? What district would I find them in?

[Bruce's mouth quirks downward just a little, and he curls his fingers towards his palm, not quite into a fist as he studies the screen.]

Can't miss it if you come outta West Industrial in Metal.

[Unsubstantiated considerations are one thing. Suspicion is quite another, and Bruce has learned all too well to trust his instincts on the matter. There are few people as calculating as Tim, and who can play the game at the level he can. Bruce has trained numerous people over the years, but tim has always been the one he expected would succeed him.

He hopes otherwise, for his sake. But some paths, once you've started on them, can't be strayed from.]

Edited (whoop) 2014-02-09 19:22 (UTC)

[It takes Tim a long moment to respond. He doesn't like being unsure of himself, not being able to trust his own instincts and draw conclusions from them. But this is an unknown land and he doesn't know as much as he wants to, enough to set his mind at ease. He knows now that he's no longer in the Unternet, but that doesn't change much.

That said, Tim likes to think he knows certain members of his family well enough. What need was there for anonymity in a place where no-one knew each other? Where there was little risk to your absent loved ones? Maybe it was only second nature - when hiding behind a mask and in the shadows was your first instinct, you went with it.

Besides. The birthdays? And WI?

Not wanting to take the chance of outing them or himself, however, he continues to play it safe. Encrypt the message and reveal too much about your own skillset; say something too obvious and risk revealing identities.]

Okay. But from my place would there be, I dunno, a big building or billboard with WI plastered all over it so I know I'm in the rght place? Like one of those corporation-y joints? I'm not great with directions and I don't want to end up down some crime ridden alley.

[Hmm. Bruce actually half-smiles, not so much impressed as simply pleased, perhaps a little proud.]

Kid, it ain't hard. Christ, I'll get the folk to put out a sign, or maybe you can just follow the smell of the best coffee in Keeliai.

[Which means at the location specified, there'll be a dirty smudged old graffiti mark, innocuous in and of itself. But in actuality, it's a cypher containing further directions to Bruce's primary warehouse location. The one where he keeps the uniforms of everyone who's disappeared.]

Geez, no need to be so touchy. But thanks, I guess. I'll go take a look later.

[Tim's questions are practically answered by now, but it's confirmed to him for certain when Kon and Bart arrive. It isn't until after they leave that Tim slips back into his uniform and out of the top floor window, onto the rooftop.

From there, he heads to the location Bruce had specified. Dropping down to street level, he spots the mark on the wall within moments. He doesn't, however, understand it right away. It looked similar to the writing Tim had seen on buildings owned by the local people; a writing that he didn't understand yet, if only because he hasn't had time to sit down and study it. He snaps a picture of it with his PDA (the lack of technology here made him glad he'd made the PDA solar rechargable) and grapples back up onto the rooftop.

It takes him ten minutes before he thinks he's cracked it, and a small grin pulls at the edges of his lips. It wasn't quite the writing used by the kedan, but it was close enough, and besides, he should have known that Bruce would have hidden directions in a cypher. He didn't have a complete picture of the city yet, but he knew enough about the immediate area to know the location specified wasn't too far.

He doesn't head straight to the building, instead scoping it from a nearby rooftop. If he knew the other members of the Bat family, he knew that the front door wouldn't take him where he wanted it to. Many of the safehouses and warehouses in Gotham had concealed rooftop entry, and Tim didn't expect anything different here. Still, he waited for a few long minutes, surveying the street below for anything (or anyone) out of the ordinary. When he was satisfied that no-one was around and that the only thing watching him was probably hidden cameras on the building he was about to enter.

The concealed entrance is easy to find - for a Bat - and he drops inside on to the rafters and then silently down into the warehouse. The warehouse is fairly bare, with nothing particularly incriminating to see, though Tim was almost positive that the kitchenette had seen more wounds than meals.]

It's nice to know I won't be the only permanently paranoid guy in this city. [He says it quietly, but he's sure that if the intended recipient is here, they'll hear him.]

Edited 2014-02-16 20:57 (UTC)

[Bruce, however, is inside the small panic room he has concealed behind the brick rear wall of the warehouse. Very few people even know it's here, and it's not exactly a large space, roughly six feet wide and twenty long, occupying the gap between two buildings that he requisitioned for just such a purpose. From the outside, one wouldn't think that anything could be here at all, and from the interior, well-- he owns both buildings for a reason. The one on the other side is a storehouse, with a walk-in refrigerator that was requisitioned during the tribble fiasco. It compensates for the space he uses here, and it keeps the OS of his supercomputer fairly cool.

Though he doesn't use it anymore. He spent nearly a year building and refining it, but with his mounting suspicion that Malicant is a technopath, he's discontinued its use, deleted its harddrives and moved everything over to a hardcopy system. Of course, the system itself is written in a code that exists only in his head, so even if it ever did fall into the wrong hands, he has faith none of it would be broken.

The cameras, however, are still operational. They simply don't store data, and operate only on real-time captures, constantly cycling and deleting its own data banks. He watches as Tim arrives, and his mouth quirks faintly upwards. It's becoming a pattern. He loses Tim as Jason arrives, or Jason as Tim arrives. The irony is like ash in his mouth.

However, there's something different about this Tim, comparative to the last one. He knows at a glance, by the boy's balance and posture, the way he stands and moves that it's not the same one. This Tim is warier, older. Harder.

Which, more than the suit he's wearing, gives him a frame of reference for the time period Tim's from. After his return. The realization is a welcome one. He's dealt with more than one family member thinking he was killed by Darkseid, and all things considered he's lost his taste for it. It's made him realize the impact he had. He always expected he'd die in the line of duty, but he didn't... expect to be mourned.

In some ways, he thinks it hit Tim the hardest. Dick had a support network to rely on. Damian barely knew him. Cassandra--

He clears those thoughts from his mind, and rises from in front of the myriad screens hooked up to the camera feeds, and then he goes to the door of his small room. The door is a pressure-activated panel with a handprint digital signature beside it, the way in is rather more complicated than that alone. He eases it open, and steps outside, its barely audible hydraulic hiss oddly loud in the warehouse air.]

No chance of that. Too many capes.

[The soft sound of the door opening behind him has him turning on his heels. Seeing Bruce in the cape and cowl brings a small smile to his face. Back home, Bruce had been back for a short while, but Tim had found that whenever they saw each other he couldn't keep a smile from his face. There in front of him was solid, tangible evidence that he'd been right all along.

Yet at the same time, seeing Bruce at that moment made him feel small and guilty, even if just for a second. In all their years together, Tim had always been certain that Bruce could read him like a book when he had something to hide. The fact that Tim had a big secret to hide made him feel like squirming and avoiding the Batman's gaze.

He puts those thoughts to the back of his mind, in the hope of concealing them further. His focus instead shifts to the room behind Bruce and Tim almost wants to roll his eyes at the predictability of it. Of course Bruce would have a concealed room in an already fairly well hidden warehouse, at least in it's ambiguity. The fact that Tim hadn't spotted the hidden room on his first glance showed just how important it was to Bruce.]

Maybe. But they don't all share our paranoia, and they certainly don't all have warehouses with hidden rooms. Nice touch on the directions, by the way; I think I have a fair grasp of the written language here now.

[Tim doesn't step closer to Bruce, staying there in the centre of the warehouse and not yet completely relaxed. He knows what he's been told, he knows Bruce's height and build well enough to be fairly certain that this was Bruce, and he knows that the cypher and the cryptic conversation could only have been another Bat, but that doesn't mean he's going to drop his guard until he knows it really is Bruce.]

Sorry it took a while. I was getting a sitrep. Coffee and pizza, too. [Priorities.]

[Tim's suspicious of him. Of course he is. Bruce, on the other hand, knows better. There's no one alive that would be able to fool him, to present a facade of being Tim when the reverse i true. So after a moment, he reaches up and pulls his cowl back. It's a casual motion, he makes it seem like a natural continuation of their discussion rather than an attempt at assuaging that paranoia.]

Did they explain this place?

['They' meaning, of course, Bart and Kon. Who else, really.]

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