12598/The Pursuit

The Pursuit
Date of Scene:	28 August 2022
Location:	Ryker Heights - Founders Island
Synopsis:	Batgirl tries to evade Nightwing in a game of rooftop pursuit
Cast of Characters:	Stephanie Brown, Dick Grayson

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Stephanie Brown has posed:
Even the padded soles of Batgirl's boots made some noise as her footfalls pounded across the rooftop at a full sprint. Cape flying behind her, the costumed heroine was a moving shadow in the dark of the Gotham night.

Leaping as she came to an alley, she just cleared the distance to the far rooftop, then took a sharp right, running and jumping into space as if with little care for her own safety. Or gravity.

A bat-shaped grapple head shot off into the night, the line quietly whirling out behind it. Wrapping around a rooftop water tank nearby, the line went taut as Batgirl swung out around the building, letting go and then popping her cape open to glide over to the next roof.

Huffing and puffing at the exertion, she glanced over her shoulder for signs of her pursuer. Nearly caught when she'd pounded across the rooftops of Lexcorp, then throwing them off before hearing the footsteps behind her as she darted over the sign above the Third Gotham Bank and Trust.

But a few elusive moves had seemed to do the trick, and there was no sign of pursuit now, though Stephanie Brown didn't let it slow her. Up ahead the peaked roof of the Elementals Apartments would provide her a good launching point for her next grapple. Just making the jump to it, she caught the edge of the roof and pulled herself up, then ran up the sloping roof towards the ridge at the top, too tired to cackle at her success. But she could hear it inside.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    The Batcave was good for many types of training, but was no replacement for the city when it came to rooftop chases. All the training in the world doesn't prepare you for the first time you throw yourself off of a twenty story building while looking for a likely point to grapple to before you hit the pavement.

    Nightwing loved this sort of thing.

    Watching Steph leap and grapple out of sight, he pulled up a map of the area on his HUD, then took a quick turn to the right and jumped across an alley. Running across the roof, he slid over some air conditioner ducts, pushed off and into a roll, then shot a grapple up to one of Gotham's ubiquitous gargoyles and swung across a street. Releasing the line once he cleared the street, he dropped down to the rooftop, the landing turning into a roll to absorb impact before he was up and running again.

    Climbing a billboard, he's got a clear view in the direction Steph had headed and scanned the roofline with his enhanced optics, looking for any movement that could betray her location.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Overhead, thick, dark clouds did their best to obscure the stars, though occasional glimpses of them rewarded anyone who spent long enough looking up. To Stephanie, the clouds were less about the obscured view of the stars and more about them blocking the moonlight that reveal her.

Her rush to the peak of the roof gained extra speed as she started down the other side. The next jump would be more risky, covering a wider area and with more lights down below that might reveal her. A gloved hand pulls a few pellets from her utility belt and throws them ahead of her to the edge of the roof. The dark cloud that results will help conceal her at least partway.

But the leaping heroine clears the obscuring cloud, the wisps of it curling around her limbs as she stretches to grab an antennae arm sticking out. Was she spotted? She doesn't know if her pursuer is even near enough to see, but she hopes the smoke trick did enough to break up her form without seeming too out of place amidst the steaming vents and smoke-belching chimneys.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    One of the truths about human vision is that movement attracts the eye, so as Steph crests the roof of the Elementals, Dick spots her and tags her on his HUD before she vanishes again down the back side of the roof. It might be considered cheating a bit, but since they're doing 'real world' training, he's using all the tools at his disposal.

    Firing another grapple as high up the skyscraper beside him he zips up the line to about the fortieth floor then kicks off the wall, launching himself into the open air. His gliding wings extend with an eye movement command on his HUD and he banks in the direction Steph was heading.

    He sees her laying down the smoke to obscure her movements, which would be a good move if he was behind her instead of above her. Banking again to match the direction of her movement he waits until he's about five yards ahead of her before retracting the wings and dropping to the roof, landing in a crouch. "Gotcha. But you're getting really gfood at this."

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Batgirl turns to look back over her shoulder for any signs of Nightwing. Running full out doesn't leave her much chance of hearing that quiet whoosh of his gliding wings as he passes overhead.

And then suddenly he's landing ahead of her, the blond heroine skidding to a halt just short of him. She lets out a laugh. "Darn you!" she says, bending over for a moment to rest her hands on her knees as she draws in deeper lungfulls of air. "Thought I had you outrun this time!" she says as she straightens up.

She moves over to the dark-costumed man, sliding her arms around him to press close in a brief hug and a little nuzzle of her lips to where his cheek is exposed. "Made it a lot further this time," she says. "Thought maybe I'd given you the slip!"

Dick Grayson has posed:
    Chuckling slightly as Steph moves in for a hug, he slips his arms around her for a moment, returning the hug. He nods, saying "The smoke trick was a good idea, but you need to remember that you're in a three dimensional world out here. As soon as I got to a tall enough building I could see you no matter what you blocked your path with. One thing Batman drilled into me during my training is that a human trying to get away from something rarely looks up. We tend to only look around ourselves because we can normally only run on flat plane, so our brains tell us to only look where we could go. Breaking that habit took me a while, but once I did I found a whole ton of options for catching up to people I was chasing."

    He taps her cape and continues, "Remember, if we can get some height we can usually glide faster than most people can run, and it gives us a great view of the surroundings as well. Also, criminals tend to panic when you suddenly drop out of the sky in front of them, which lets us get the first hit in."

    "That said, you are getting really good at running the roofs out here. I've just got a good many years of practice at this from all my time as Robin and Nightwing both. You're catching up pretty quickly though, I'll have to keep on my toes."

Stephanie Brown has posed:
"It's not fair that you're bigger -and- faster," she tells him, giving him a playful punch in the ribs, which of course just hits his body armor to where he likely only feels that there was a thump there.

Stephanie listens to Dick's advice, nodding at various points. "I should have gone higher earlier on, though was hoping to outrun you," she says. She turns then, looking out over the city and leaning back against the man behind her. "Great night for it. Nice and dark," she says. "Night like tonight, Gotham's nights kind of her give her her own little bit of beauty, don't they?" she says.

Lights on various buildings and signs twinkle here and there. A pair of searchlights wave about in the sky, trying to draw attention to the opening of some new club. Out on the highways, lines of traffic show as white headlights or red tail lights. The night helping to smooth some of Gotham's rougher edges visually, even if it's a time that the roughest edges come out to play as well.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    He smiles and slips one arm around her as they look out over the city. She's not wrong, from up here at night all you can really see are the lights of various buildings and not the less pleasant aspects of Gotham. For some reason, the city seems to be cursed to always look like it's crumbling around the edges, despite the money pumped in to cleaning it up.

    "Yeah, it does. Kind of a pity that this is our busy time, so we don't often get the time to appreciate it. Darkness hides the criminals as well as the city's decay." He pauses, then shakes his head ruefully, "It's finally happening, I'm turning into Batman. That sounded just like one of his lines."

    Thinking for a moment he asks "Have you ever heard of part of the city being built over a Native American burial ground or something? There has to be some reason Gotham is so much worse than New York or Metropolis. Especially Metropolis, I swear Superman must fly around that city polishing the buildings."

Stephanie Brown has posed:
"It probably was," she says with a chuckle about the possible causes of whatever curse might afflict the city. "Well, there are blue collar towns and then there's the Metropolis's of the world," she says. "And then there's Bludhaven and all those longshoremen, fishermen, and all of that," Stephanie says, naming the town that Nightwing took to cleaning up before he transferred his day job back to Gotham.

She rests her head back against Nightwing's shoulder, a hand moving to rest overtop of his. "I still think she's beautiful. What movie was it, with that one line? The rot gives it flavor?" she asks.

Stephanie gives Dick's hand a pat with her own gloved one. "And you've got a way to go before you become Batman. Heck, I even saw you smile once this week," she teases in a light-hearted tone.

Dick Grayson has posed:
    "I think I'll manage to avoid turning into him, since I have you in my corner. You're like the anti-Batman, always looking for the good in things and enjoying most everything you do. We just have to make sure you keep that spark alive, even when dealing with the worst this city can throw at us." He leans his head against hers for a moment, then adds "However, since it's Red Robin's patrol night, why don't we head home and get changed, then see about having dinner out somewhere? I'm in the mood to be waited on instead of cooking."

    He taps out commands on his bracer's touchscreen, and from the street below the rumble of his motorcycle grows as he drives itself to his location. "Need a ride?" he asks before stepping off the roof and catching a flagpole halfway down, swinging around it and then dropping to the street below.