16641/Which one of the '12 Days' is this

Which one of the '12 Days' is this
Date of Scene:	21 December 2023
Location:	Red Cave (14th Street Garage) - Park Row
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Jason Todd, Phoebe Beacon

---

Jason Todd has posed:
Just in case there was any confusion, it's the holiday time of year. All of the decorations, the sales, the music, the sales, the treats and desserts. The sales. Time with fam... forget it. It's just about making money and selling selling selling. Go buy all the things. You know you want to. You know you're going to.

Jason sits in his loft, a number of bags in front of him. He stares at them, glowering silently. The hell he just endured for a few gifts? Was it really worth it?

Of course it was. But still. Shopping sucks.

He sighs and looks at Church, "You better be grateful for what you get..." but still he can't help but smirk a little. He does like that cat. Just don't tell anyone.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    The Answer: -5. The Twelve Days don't start until the 25th and end on Epiphany/Three Kings Day with alltogether too many birds and who decided twelve drummers and eleven pipers were good gifts? Nevermind the geese?!

    And Phoebe Beacon, of course, would never tell anyone that Jason likes the cat.

    Just that she feels genuinely sorry for anyone who hurts the Maine Coon that has taken ownership of the garage.

    The familiar sound of her motorcycle echoing against the alleyway outside quiets a moment before she enters in her code, and as the garage door opens she wheels her way inside.

    Off comes the helmet and the outer shell as she lowers the stand on her ancient Frankenbike with one foot.

    "Jason? You in?" she calls out, giving a warning as the door closes behind her, and she shakes out her hair. It's loose today, and all over the place, and she blows some of the kinsk and coils out of her face as she shakes off the cold. Even if he wasn't, surely he wouldn't have faulted her the use of his coffee maker for a hot cup of joe, right?

    Right.

    "Hope you don't mind, just wrapped up round one of my fight against capitalism. Oh..." she pulls a few bent pieces of metal from her backpack. "Also, how much 'illegal' is it to remove anti-homeless archetecture from city property? Asking for a few friends."

Jason Todd has posed:
Now we're dealing with negative numbers? Great. Whoever the egg-head that decided to put math into a holiday seriously needs to get an ass kicking. Seriously.

Hearing the alert of the perimeter monitor he knew someone was coming. The custom alert told him it was Phoebe.

Standing up, he drops his hand to scratch Church's head behind the ears before walking to the loft's door. "Up here."

He waits for her to make her way up to him. Instead of a hug, he offers a fist to bump. Nice and non-commital.

"The city can go to hell. Oh wait." It already is.

"Coffee? Cocoa?" he offers.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe returns the fist-dap with a grin. "Yeah, but what am I gonna do with a backpack full of random metal parts and allen-wrenches?" Phoebe asks with faux innocense as she leaves her bag by the stairs down to the garage. she's wearing one of those stab-and-slash resistant sweatshirts in gray and a pair of jeans with orange flowers stitched to the back pockets.

    "And trust me, the city's not Hell level yet. They have way better administrative." Phoebe jokes, "I'll take either, whatever you're having." she replies, leaning down to remove a tin from her bag.

    "Alfred asked me to pass these on to you. Cookie tin, in case you don't make it up to the house."

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd follows her inside, not bothering to close the door - the whole garage is kind of one big living space as it is.

"How much random metal are we talking about? You could clean up pretty well at the scrap dealer. Get yourself a little spending money just before Christmas. The city won't notice." Shots fired!

"Cookies? Nice." He moves to start a new pot of coffee and also puts on a pot of water to heat. "Just for that I might show up to get it refilled." Because it'll be gone in an hour.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Aah, maybe sixty, seventy pounds? Not in my backpack though, only my last few destruction of government property items are in there." Phoebe gives a small grin, and she shrugs her shoulders.

    "Yeah, 'cause really, I'm hurting for money..." Phoebe trails off, and she sits at the table and offers a hand to Church before she reaches to pay her respects to the actual head of household.

    "I know they're not Alfred cookies, but I'm tinning up gingersnaps and cherry tye-dyes tonight. I could swing by and bring you a tin of those too."

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd considers. "That's probably at least twenty bucks in scrap" he jokes. Everyone knows scrap dealers lowball their offers.

"Donate it to a local charity." He has a sense of irony, clearly.

Church slinks his way out from under the coffee table to greet Phoebe and give his blessing to her visit. That he gets extra pettings makes the approval almost obligatory. But he's a cat who puts up with Jason. Fickle is clearly in his nature.

"Cherry? Eww" he grimaces.. "cherries and raisins - cranberries - none of them belong in cookies. That's a federal crime. They lock you up for a decade for that you know."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "It's sweet cherry, made with extract. Tastes like what you get on top of a sundae --" Phoebe explains. "They're just colorful cherry-flavored sugar cookies, you goob." she gives a wry smile. "But hey, more for meeee if you don't want any! I'll just give you a couple more gingersnaps." she gives a small grin, tilted over and scritching on Church. "And no one's locked me up for my cooking yet!" she explains with a grin.

    "You wouldn't report me to the Flavortown Police force would you, Church?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd shakes his head. "Fruit doesn't belong in cookies. It's just sick and wrong" he states again.

Church, purring like a race car's engine and easily as loud, seems to be entirely okay with her visit. He bumps her hand with his forehead before weaving through her legs. His size means that his head is already coming around the outside of her left ankle, which his body is curled between and then around the front of her right ankle with his long tail curling behind her calf. It's like a train going through a tunnel. With a soft 'mew' he wanders over to check out his bowl. Food time humans. Again.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Apple cookies are totally a thing!" Phoebe protests as Church wends his way around her legs, and she laughs a little as the cat takes up the real estate of her ankle and calves, and she rights herself to go investigate his foodbowl with him and to suss out if he truly was starving, since obviously Jason would have never fed this cat in his entire life. All cats are like this.

    "What about jam-filled cookies, or does jam have enough sugar in it that it doesn't count as fruit? Or do you just not like fruit in your cookies?" Phoebe questions in curiosity.

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd shakes his head, "Not right. Fruit in pies, not in cookies.." he seems intent on this but still mostly joking.

Starving is a relative term for any feline. Church has enough mass for three or four common house cats. So it stands to reason he eats six times as much. Naturally. The bowl is not empty. But see, human! It is at *least* more than half empty. This is clearly a food shortage crisis of global proportions. That much food could only last, what, a day and a half?? The horror.

Looking up at her, Church stares expectantly.

This earns a snort from Jason. "He eats better than I do."

"Just don't like fruit in my cookies. Sugar. Chocolate. I'll even allow almonds or walnuts. Even Fig Newtons aren't cookies. They're just fruit bars cut up into bite sized squares" he says with a grin.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "I think you're gonna be fine, Church." Phoebe informs the cat, and she reaches down to stroke her fingers through his fur one more time before she stands back up and stretches her hands up towards the ceiling.

    "Maybe if you ate fruit in your cookies --" Phoebe trails off on that thought, and she gives a wry smile. "But I get it. I guess my Pink Lemonade cookies are also off the table." she replies as she returns to her seat.

    "... and wasn't 'it's not a cookie, it's a Newton' like, its tag line in old commercials, or am I misremembering some of the old recorded stuff people watched?" she questions, her nose wrinkling in thought.

    "So, other than hating on the fruits in cookies and now all my favorite cookies being awful to you -- how you been, Jason?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Church is sad. Look at his face. Those pleading eyes showing betrayal. With a quiet meow of indignation, he saunters off to find a suitable spot to sleep. Resting conserves energy. Who knows when he'll next have a proper meal??

Jason laughs. "Nah. Lemonade isn't fruit. it's a drink." It's a fool that looks for logic in the mind of Jason Todd.

"That probably was their saying. It just proves my point." See?

"I'm not hating on what you like, Pheeb. You like them, that's okay. I'll gladly offer any of them to you." It seems fair. He considers, "I've been fine. Things have been strangely quiet with the holidays. The leads I've been following after Grigory the Chemist have run out. He's not gone but he is very careful." Which seems strange to Jason.

"What about you?" he asks as he moves over to pour a cup of coffee for himself. "Coffee, cocoa or tea?" He gestures to the hot water if she chooses.

"Anything cases you're working on?"

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Got a couple. One I've had to invoke the mighty Lady of Shadowcrest Estate -- that'd be Zatanna -- for some help. This distrubution ring I've been trying to route's got metahumans *and* magicians involved, and it's really beginning to irk me. And whichever you're having I'll have, Jay. I'm not going to make you make me anything special -- though if you're leaning cocoa, do you have any marshmallows?" she questions, her eyebrows rising up as she backtracks.

    "Grigory the Chemist... same case you dangled that guy out of the crane for?"

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd looks at her and laughs. "Cocoa it is." He nods, "Check that drawer." Why are marshmallows in a drawer? Because that's where he had space for them at the time.

He pours himself a cup of coffee and then spoons in several heeping spoonfuls of cocoa and begins to stir. Why not both?

"I haven't seen Zatanna in..." He shrugs. It's been years at least. "Yeah. He's pushing his custom cocktail of drugs but in small batches and he has been really careful to cover his tracks." Now it's a matter of pride that he crack the case himself without asking for help from the likes of Oracle and her data scouring mojo.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "After what happened with the mess in New York, see's been trying to mentor both me and Charlie. Like me, she's got hereditary skills. Unlike me, it's not as easy as her magic to master." Phoebe explains, and she hops up to check the indicated drawer for marshmallows.

    "Yeah. We haven't figured up what this group's upto yet. They have all the equipment to make almost every anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, SSRI -- like all the mental drugs. It's *weird* cand I can't really find anything like it in my research. But get this --" she takes up a marshmallow, and takes careful aim, making it obvious that she is going to throw a marshmallow at Jason.

    "One of the metahuman mages works for Phillip Cupp. Asshole who kept coming after me."

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd looks up, "Mess in New York? I think I missed out on that."

He turns to catch the marshmallow for frowing. "Cupp is involved?" He looks at her intently. "Directly or just through this meta working for this group?" He pauses to sip his poor man's mocha then pauses to get out some creamer from the 'fridge and adds some to his cup, stirring it in.

"Need someone to pay him a visit for you?" he asks.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe looks down and her shoulders sag.

    "After the Angels." she explains, her eyebrows drawing up slightly before she leans back.

    "We don't know yet. We have his computer and financials from his campaign and he's spun it that Dent's supporters looted his stuff." Phoebe states, accepting the cocoa and adding marshmallows.

    "I wanna say yes. But he knows my identity and he's threatened to out me and my abilities to the public. And that'll be the last time I can go out in any official capacity."

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd nods about the angels thing and lets it drop.

"Being good at covering tracks is one thing. Have you talked to Barbara? Not even he can hide from her skill. You should talk to her."

Pausing to sip from his cup, he looks at her, "Sure. He knows. That makes him a risk to all of us because you're part of the Wayne family. I'm sure he's dumber than a bag of hammers in reality, but if he happens to connect the right dots?" He shrugs, "It sounds to me like your brothers and sisters need to go pay him a visit and make him understand that knowing things isn't the same as spouting them. If he even so much as thinks about using what he may know, his life is forfeit. Any family. Any friends. There won't be anywhere he can hide. No one fucks with us." He smirks, "Hell. Just ask Bruce. That in itself, having an encounter on some dark night? We're scary when we want to be. He's terrifying." Which isn't something Jason admits often but it's no less true.

"The point being, you aren't alone and there are many ways to play this to a resolution."

Another sip, then he looks at her, "I've promised I wouldn't handle things a certain way." Meeting her gaze he finishes, "I'd make an exception."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Yeah, but you don't have the power to heal people." Phoebe points out. "You don't have to worry about someone letting it slip, and then people are coming up and asking me to go to hospitals, or asking me why I didn't heal a broken leg in middle school so someone could go to a basketball tournement. Or bringing their babies to me and asking me to reverse illnesses or genetic faults. How do I choose who to heal and who not to heal then? I already have nightmares about it. There'd be nowhere for me to hide... because he doesn't have to out Phoebe Beacon as a member of the Bats -- he has to out Phoebe Wayne as a healer." Phoebe leans back.

    "... besides. If I let you visit him then I have to let Damian do it, and then Talia will want in, and then suddenly we're running A Christmas Carol but instead of being a shit landlord he's just a shitball human being who kept breaking my fingers, hands, and wrists on my seventeneth birthday while I was chained up in a silo and engineered a way for me to have a triggered panic attack based on the scent of his stupid cologne. We'd never be safe if he wasn't silenced."

    Phoebe's lips tighten. She has obviously given killing Cupp a lot of thought.

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd listens. "Bat family. Healer. It doesn't matter, Phoebe." He looks at her seriously.

"You're -family-. In all regards. That's what family means. This isn't a fight you have to face alone."

"And I'll note that I did say you ought to let all of us pay him a visit." Frowning as she talks about the silo, "That silo could easily be his bogey man. Every time he sees it or thinks of it it should cause him to have his own panic attack. At the very least."

He leans against the counter beside her, close enough that his shoulder lightly touches hers.

"No one in the family gets to live in fear. This needs to be put to rest." Or Cupp does.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Once I've sifted through the information and can make the leap that Cupp hired Saif Hassan for his abilities to attack mem, we will. There has to be a reckoning. No onde deserves to live in fear like this." Phoebe pauses, and then she leans against Jay as she breathes out.

    "I can always count on you for the no-bullshit, Jason."