17492/Cassandra The Artiste

Cassandra The Artiste
Date of Scene:	25 March 2024
Location:	Gotham University
Synopsis:	Stephanie and Harper find Cassandra after hours in the art studio at the Gotham University.
Cast of Characters:	Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, Harper Row

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Cassandra Cain has posed:
Normally, Cass is hard to find. Heck for a normal day she's halfways invisible just sitting and reading. It's just a good thing that SOMEONE knew where she was today, because there's not a lot to report. She even ignored a call-out when some trouble happened. Which is not like her at all.

Sitting on the edge of a chair, Cassandra is looking at paper. Again, not her thing. She normally avoids writing, paper, and anything of that sort like a plague of boredom. But with charcoal on her hands, she's inspecting the ongoing project silently but with a high focus. So much that she actually can't hear anyone else come in.

What is the project? It appears to be stick men. Yes, a huge group of stick people that she's drawn on the page, in various poses. Given a moment of study, she pauses and smudges one limb out with her sleeve. She grumbles, audibly.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown stands in the doorway of the Gotham University art studio, leaning against the doorframe as she watches Cassandra contemplating the paper on the easel before her. Wearing a purple and black jacket over a sweater, jeans and some soft leather boots, the blond coed just watches her friend. A warm smile forming at Cassandra being so engrossed in what she's doing to not even notice her arrival.

Retrieving her phone from her pocket, Stephanie taps out a quick message and then returns it to her back pocket. "Was wondering what happened to you," Stephanie says, moving forward past the empty stools and easels as she walks over to join Cassandra at her side.

Stephanie looks over the drawing, head tilting just a bit to the side as she studies it. Finally she looks over to Cass, smiling, and resting a hand lightly on her back.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cassandra turns around so fast, lashing out. She pauses, then frowns. Eyes look left, then right. Her hand moved so fast, near Steph's face, that Steph might not even notice. But she now has a black mark on her upper lip. Made of charcoal. Good thing she wasn't carrying anything dangerous, or the new moustache might have been something bad.

Cass pauses, then grins a little. That IS funny, even to her. Then she nods, and steps out of the way to show her work.

Stick figures? Just that, but it very quickly becomes clear that they aren't just people. They're interacting with each other. hard to tell exactly what they're doing in a static image with no bodies, but they're there.

Cass looks from it to Steph and back, then raises an eyebrow speculatively.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown lets out a laugh. "Hey!" she says, her arm coming up to slow to block, though there aren't a lot of people's reaction it would have failed to block. She rubs at her lip then looks at her finger. She wets her fingers and then rubs at the spot.

"So what are you- Oh, ptoey. Charcoal doesn't taste good," Stephanie says.

Trying again, "So what is it that you're drawing?" she asks, smiling at Cass and then looking back to the painting. "What are they doing, what's their connection to each other?" she asks, focusing on the picture rather than on her friend. Her hand moves back to Cass' back once she's done wiping the mark away.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cass pauses, then draws a moustache on her own lip. She gives it a little twirl at each end, apparently being fair about her mistaken overreaction. But she's watching Steph ask her questions, and looks back to the picture as if considering how to respond.

In a rare case of misunderstanding (she really gets Stephanie generally) Cass puts up a hand, them motions to one of the othe pictures in the room. some lady dancing. Then she takes her charcoal, and draws on it. A stick figure, like the ones she's been doing.

In this case though,s he draws where the 'lines' of the person are. Arms, legs, main torso. Then she motions back to her picture, apparently explaining that this is meant to show how to begin drawing accurate people. She puffs up a bit, then nods firmly. HER people are accurate. The tiny eyeroll toward the 'dancing lady' says she thinks that this other one is not.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown follows the gesture over to the dancing woman and then back to Cassandra's paper. "Ah, I see," Stephanie says, thinking she understood the answer. At least to some degree. She did see Cassandra trying to correct the drawing of a body when she first discovered the art studio.

The blond girl turns towards the nearest stool, pulling it over but seating it a little beside and behind Cassandra so as to not distract her. She doesn't say anything more for now. Just stays quiet to not interrupt, and watches Cass draw.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
It's not always perfect. However, Cass grins wider for a moment, then hugs Steph and gets some more on her. She's not fully aware how much art supplies she's gotten on herself. But then, she turns back to the picture and nods. "More," she says aloud, then tosses her charcoal stick at the stack. It lands and settles into place, because of course it does, and she gets a couple of pencils.

Then she pauses, and glances at Steph. Back to the picture, or work in progress, and she starts adding one of the characters. She puts a body on the stick, using it as a base. Very simple, but she adds muscles as little blobs. She doesn't draw 'a leg'. She adds musculature as only she knows them, forming the little person. It's...a girl! The first leg drawn shows that clearly, as she adds a line of shading for skin, then more on the other leg. So much detail! But she's not just drawing, she's creating life.

A moment later the woman is revealed to have her arms up, and to be throwing a kick at whomever's to her right. From a glance you can see that that poor person is trying to duck back out of range. Stick figures being brought to life, by simple knowledge of anatomy.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper thought she had a pretty good mental map of this place, but she's still got her eyes glued on her phone. The siren call of the illuminated rectangle assuring her she's getting both the worst reception, but an adequate mapping feature.

It also means when the text comes through, she doesn't need vibration or nerdy ringtone about bacon pancakes to avoid missing it.

The sound of Harper's sneakers chirp from out in the hallway, preceeding her eventual entrance into the studio to catch sight of both gals. "This place has a whole different vibe at night, don't it? Heeeeey." Her free hand raises and she casts a look over her shoulder once before sauntering on over to check out the artistic expressions going on.

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown watches Cassandra start adding to the drawing. It takes Stephanie a few moments to grasp that she's adding muscles individually. But it doesn't take long, that training from Barbara on anatomy came in handy. But more than that, it just makes sense that Cassandra of all people would think like that.

It also doesn't take very long to spot the martial aspect of the stick figures. Dancing or fighting were the two obvious guesses, and the forms that Cassandra has rendered are as perfect as some scroll in an Ancient Tibetan monastery might boast.

The sound of the squeaking tennis shoes draws the blond girl's attention over. She's on a stool too, but a bit behind and to the side of Cass. So Stephanie can watch, but not be in the way. Harper gets a warm smile. "Yes, definitely more relaxed. Sometimes a bit spooky to. The archeology building in particular."

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cass doesn't react to Harper's arrival. She's either in the zone, or she heard the lady arriving a while ago. Oddly, for once, it seems to be the first one as she bites her lip and erases a tiny bit of an arm that feels 'wrong' to her. sometimes you have to assume how she's feeling from her actions, but this time does seem to be pretty obvious. The look on her face is very annoyed, and her focus is on her art.

With a puff of air to blow off chalk, Cass has one stick figure's arm pass over another's. She keeps pausing, looking the whole thing over as a whole, then erasing something else only to redraw it. Only when she's happy does she pause to add musculature.

No hair, no clothes, they all look kind of odd. Like a bunch of naked people sparring with an overwhelming group of stick men.

But it's got her full attention, like only training ever has. This seems to be important.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper rummages around in a pocket to refresh her gum with another stick. Layering on more watermelon, she leans in to the side after a circuitous route, tilting her head to sight upon Cass' work-in-progress. Harper hovers like a hen, meandering nearby but not roosting in one place. Perhaps hesitant because of Cassandra's facial expression and body language. She opens her mouth to say something, and aborts before allowing something to escape just then.

Harper peers quizzically towards Stephanie and tries to stealth chew while her brain formulates thoughts. She index-finger points to Cass, then to the art, and then pauses and tilts her head as she reconsiders ~again~. A bubble slowly forming between her lips like a thought balloon she needs to be bigger to hold all the questions. The pink orb sags and flutters and is slowly is withdrawn into her chomping yap.

"Well, if that department has got bones, I might risk a bit of spooky." Yeah. "I don't know about you, but if I don't have some software involved...Hey, where's the reference?" she frowns. "This all coming from upstairs?"

Stephanie Brown has posed:
"Bones, skulls, ancient spooky masks and artifacts," Stephanie says. "Though the more valuable stuff is in the museum across campus from there. I used to date a guy, Roberto, whose mother is a professor there. Nina da Costa. She's shown me around," Stephanie says of the archeology department.

No one in a hat and with a whip though, that she's seen.

Even as she talks with Harper, Stephanie is keeping an eye on Cassandra's drawing. "She kind of took to it. Wandered in before a class started, week or two ago. And wanted to correct the bodies where they weren't accurate. And they let her sit in and... well..." Stephanie says, motioning towards Cassandra who is now sitting in that art room after hours, just drawing.

"I think it's pretty cool. I can't wait to see what it's like when done."

Cassandra Cain has posed:
It's weird. Cass isn't paying ANY attention, which is definitely not her style. She puts a pair of pants and a hat on the first one she drew, which are not great, but she's adding and removing details as she decides that they aren't ...wait.

Cass pauses, then turns around and looks at Harper. She frowns, then she looks back at the drawing. Then back to Harper, then at Steph.

Her face is ..well, not annoyed, but something like that. "When you get here?" she asks, using her words. Apparently Harper talking got through to her.

Behind her is her picture, which is ...if it were left as-is now, it would look like this:

-On the right, stick people being driven back, toward the right side.
-Toward the center, they start to get musculature, as she's decided those limbs are placed properly she's added some form of life.
-Center, those are neither on the attack nor defense, kind of stuck in the middle of a melee. But also the ones who have muscles, but undefined.
-Moving to the left, she's added actual curvature and some level of features. These are the most aggressive, pushing the center 'people' aside to get to the stick folk.
-And on the furthest left, she's added skin. Hats, simple clothing. Actual people, with not only limbs but a suggestion of fingers on their hands. These have weapons, if only in 'there's a stick here' form. It's like a wave of levels of completion.

It's a study in how to develop the human body into art.

Harper Row has posed:
"Very cool." Harper agrees, and hunkers down some like there's a huddle going on to figure out the next strategic play in a game of SportsBall. She offers a bit of a scrunchy faced wince imagining Cass going around and doing a little editorial flourishes. "Yeah, I bet they don't have the same level skill of...observation as our girl."

Harper offers a spare piece of gum over to Stephanie, a little side-long at the mention of the perks of knowing the head honcho and networking. "I've heard mention of the Da Costa family." she asides with a nod. Her lips pucker when Cassandra acknowledges her presence and freezes like a deer in the headlights. She reanimates enough to offer a warm grin. "Just now really."

"Cass, Is this drawn from a memory, like a thing that happened, tugging something out of storage?" Harper muses, perhaps missing the point entirely, but digging the variation. "It really got its hooks into you, huh?"

Stephanie Brown has posed:
The offered gum is taken by Stephanie with a grateful smile shined Harper's way. Soon the gum is unwrapped, and chewed enough to produce a first watermelony bubble.

As Stephanie turns her attention back to the drawing, her smile is still there but the sentiment behind it is a little different. Pride. It's the same look of pride that Stephanie gets when Cassandra correctly pronounces a tough word for the first time. Or when she reads, or writes, something that was challenging for her to learn.

She smiles and reaches over to rub Cassandra's shoulder a bit. If she is returning some of that charcoal dust that ended up on Stephanie during the hug? Purely coincidence, really.

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cass' eyes look at Harper, as if she's trying to figure out how exactly to respond to the question posed. She lifts her hand as Steph rubs her shoulder, pulling her hand through her own hair and leaving shmutz in it. She's used to it, she can shower any time. No issue apparently. But she looks at Steph then, then back at her incomplete complete picture, and sighs.

Taking a breath, she says, "I am no..." Then she pauses. She puts up a hand, a 'hold on a moment' gesture. Then she takes a second to clarify her thoughts, what she wants to say. When she's ready, she says, "It has no happened. These...students from class. All. Bad draw people no bad. Teach better."

It almost worked! So close. But if she's trying to give the other students help to 'learn to no draw bad' she's made a good start.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper fidgets with her finger, scratching her nails against the denim of her jeans, but the rest of her staying mostly patiently still. Her jaw jutting while she watches Cassandra decide on best choice of words.

"Well..." Ms. Row drawls, drawing it out and letting it flap in the wind for a moment. She offers a small shrug and a smile. "Best place for it, right?" Harper winks and gives a firm nod. She fishes out a piece of gum for Cass. It's reflex, though she's maybe not remembering if there's a texture or preference issue with the chompy stuff. Gotta make the gesture at least. She exchanges a glance to Stephanie, and she thinks she groks some real warm fuzzy stuff from the other woman, which is pretty swell. She directs her attention back to Cassandra and uses the edge of her phone to jab herself against her chest. "Feel good?"

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie's head tilts to the side. "I have no idea what art style you'd say she's into. Realism maybe? Or whatever they'd call someone who wants anatomically realistic bodies. That might end up being it's own style. Cainism?" Stephanie says. The full warmth and humor in the statement might not get across to Cass, but then she'll pick it up from Stephanie's smile, laugh and body language that it's warmly meant.

"Thanks for helping me find her, Harper," Stephanie says. "Hope this didn't take you away from anything exciting you had going on tonight?"

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Cass doesn't get most of what's said, but that's no change. She smiles at the offer of gum, but gently presses it back into Harper's own hand. That seems pretty definitive as answers go. She does slip an arm around Harper, just for a moment, before turning back to Steph. Who is using words that she doesn't grasp, as usual.

So, silent Cass watches as the other two discuss things. We're back to status quo, it seems.

Harper Row has posed:
"Shucks, t'werent nuthin." Harper drawls again. "Nah, I was going to vegetate and steep in my couch." She was actually stood up, which would account for her looking not like she just got out of pajamas and threw something on. Lots of Blue's Clues for detectively sorts. A fellow vigilante doesn't stop to finesse a bit of makeup in the mirror or wear matching socks when in a rush to meet up with friends. She was nearby and mobile. "Anytime, rain or shine."

"Cainism...I can see that catching on." Harper replaces the gum and leans into Cass and a smartalecky grin. "We...aren't going to have to model are we? Wear bedsheets and hold apples?"

Stephanie Brown has posed:
Stephanie Brown gives a warm laugh. "I'm not sure she's familiar with that yet. I don't know that they've had anyone model for them in her class yet. I have only seen the first day though. So who knows, it's possible!"

Stephanie turns a grin over to Cassandra. Whatever they were saying, obviously it's still warm and involves being in a good mood. Stephanie motions with her head towards Cassandra's drawing. "I like it," she says, using simple words that she knows Cassandra has already mastered. "I want to see it when it is finished."

Cassandra Cain has posed:
Nope, Cass has no idea what any of that means. Honestly she's not even paying attention, a pencil in her teeth as she looks at her drawing. She's let go again, wandered over and cocked a hip as she looks, stares, and just stands there. Taking as long as it takes, she pauses, and then takes her pencil...

And draws one tiny line on the end of a hand. Then she's off in space again, considering where to work on next, her eyes scanning the page. It's possible that she's aware of the other two, but there's no real way to be sure. As she stares off into space, the only one in the room. Lost in her mind, she has definitely found another place to call home.

And for once, it's not tainted with horror. At least, not yet.

Dun dun dun.