20314/Exit Ramp to Jail

Exit Ramp to Jail
Date of Scene:	26 March 2025
Location:	Gotham Diamond Exchange
Synopsis:	Miles and Barbara team up to detour Hightail from her life of crime!
Cast of Characters:	Miles Morales, Barbara Gordon

---

Miles Morales has posed:
Early evening in Gotham. It's that time of day where the darker side starts to come out, the seemingly eternal gloom that hangs over the city that comes down further, like a curtain falling on it's final act of the day. Outside of the Diamond exchange, a pair of guards are recieving a brief case that is being transferred for transport within an armored car.

The represenative of the company that was carrying the case releases the handcuff on his arm that was holding it securely to him. As he was getting ready to lock the cuff on the guard that will be the one to carry the case to it's destination in Metropolis, the wind seems to pick up, carrying with it small bits of debris and garbage. It swirls for a moment and then seemingly manifests into a green blur that streaks between the two men, snagging the case in mid-stride!

The figure, dressed in green friction armor, is female-shaped and as she glances behind her, she shouts, "Thanks for my new best friends!"

And off HIGHTAIL goes, streaking as fast as she can through the streets of Gotham, attempting to find a place to pour of the speed and avoid both the local police - and the vigilantes that call Gotham home.

She makes it a couple of city blocks before it's too late. She senses the webline and leaps over it as she pirouettes as she jumps. "Not today, webhead!" she calls back to the pursuer that has joined the race, the black suited Spider-Man of Gotham.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
When early evening came, and the sun began to set behind the horizon, Babs' drone flock would always come out to play. Every evening, they dispatched from the Clocktower, and more recently from the GGE Blimp. Some even had their own stations hidden around the city, where they parked and charged during the day, before setting out in to the night. The drones were an irreplaceable measure of the modern Bat-family vigilante work around the city. the live camera feeds, and the technology built in to them were beyond words to describe, when it came to helping the Bats solve crimes, and stay safer.

Tonight, there were already many out in flight, staying close to the buildings, and thusly being a lot harder to spot with the naked eye.

When the sun gave way to darkness, though, Batgirl was out on the town tonight, within her armored vehicle.

It pulled out from one of its emergence points, the headlights shining brightly, as it rumbled its powerful engine. The black armored vehicle immediately found its place amongst the alleys, and back roads of the city, where it could minimize its effect on the population that would undoubtedly spot it - there were even websites that tried to track Bat-activity around Gotham City.

Within its cockpit interior, Babs stared at the bright displays, showcasing her info from her drones, and the action in and around the city tonight.

Miles Morales has posed:
As Spider-Man was pursuing Hightail through the streets, he's barely able to keep her in sight as she has to slow to navigate the twists and turns of the Gotham streets. It is the only advantage that Miles has is that he can get above the buildings and change direction. "Com'on Hightail, you know how this goes! You're just gonna be hungry when you get caught!"

"Not catching me today, Spidey!" she calls back out as she makes a turn, just as a large armored vehicle pulled out of the alley she was about to turn down.

It forces her to leap again, and then...

*THUMP!*

That would be the sound of something landing on the hood of the car for a moment.

Pausing, the green suited figure turned to look at the figure sitting within.

And then a slow, slow grin spread across her features as she lifted up the stolen briefcase, the handcuff link still dangling from the handle and she uses her other hand to throw a jaunty salute as she jumps off the armored vehicle to take off on the run again.

A few moments later, Miles is swinging past, "Sorry!" he calls out to the Batmobile, "She's a fast one!"

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Just a few moments before the situation happened to come across the Batmobile, Babs had reports of it unfolding coming in across her monitors. It was always a troublesome thing, to have to do this job against super powered people. In truth? Babs prefered just breaking up fights outside of night clubs, or beating up some criminals that were entirely of the average Human capacity. But, such was the life of a Bat in Gotham City. sometimes there were things beyond the GCPD's ability to stop, and that drew in the Bats, or others like Miles. Miles was new'ish to the city, though, and even if he had been on the Bats' good graces lately, Batgirl feared for his underestimating Gotham's ability to dip in to the mentally unstable playfields of crime. They all had to learn the hard way, Babs' in particular.

When it landed right outside her vehicle's window? Babs had to smirk for a second, before she keyed on a open comm that she knew Miles used. "spider-man. What have you brought unto our fair city tonight?" She chided him, as she was already adjusting the city's street lights to make sure to direct traffic away from this area, which allowed her to pull her armored vehicle out on to the street, and fall in to a hot pursuit of the situation.

"You need some help with this?" She asked, as she started getting some camera shots of the woman causing this trouble tonight, coming in from her drones and city CCTV feeds.

Miles Morales has posed:
If Barbara has done her homework (and one assume she would, because she's awesome like that), she would have more than enough information on Gotham's Spider-Man. Miles Morales. Student that was visiting Gotham when the earthquake hit, ended up living here during No Man's Land. Went home to his parents, but came back to attend university. And somewhere in there, got spider-powers. Must be something in NYC's water.

But that's not here or there. At the moment, as his comm comes to life, eyelets widen in momentary surprise. "Oh, hey! I didn't bring her here!" Miles' voice hits a higher pitch for a moment in protest. "Why would I want to add to the Spirit Halloween Store Gotham already is?"

But she asked a question in there, as the lights all switch into Batgirl's favor. "Her name's Hightail. She makes the freeway, she's gone. And she's a bit fast for me. You know the streets way better than I do - think you can find a spot to cut her off at and maybe we can pinch her in?" he suggests between swings, the weblines back to white since he ran out of black webbing during the museum incident - and he really hasn't considered approaching her for more.

What, he's shy.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
While driving her vehicle at relatively high speed, the streets cleared by her manipulation of the street lights, Babs smirks at what she hears the Spider saying over that open comm channel. "Consider it a friendly ribbing..." She quietly said, before they switched topics. "Seems like that might be the case, yeah. It looks like she might be a little lost, but we'll see..."

It took just a second for Babs to put in a bit of a city street plan, meant to slow the girl down, or even direct her to go in a specific pattern, as Babs accessed her computer system via her neural implant. She no longer needed to touch the screens, or worse... a keyboard. She simply had to direct her computers via the direct connection between them, and her mind.

"There's a drone just ahead of yo." Batgirl's voice stated with confidence. "Follow it. It's on the way to the on-ramp closest to where you, and she are."

And sure enough, the black bat-shaped drone was visible just barely in the dark, and it was taking a hard turn to the north, its systems carrying it near silently through the city like a small squirrel-sized fighter jet.

For Hightail? She found a road block rise up in the center of an intersection, one made of cement pylons, that flashed with strobe lights, and a strip of spikes in between them. They were designed for cars, obviously, but in this instance? They might disuade the speeder from traveling down those roads, and instead going through the one gate that was still wide open, and unblocked by these city-built traffic obstacles!

Babs' green eyes went from her displays, to the road before her, her own vehicle bounding through an inter-section, leaving a group of tourists on a street corner to all try and grab shots of a 'famous Gotham' spotting of the Batmobile! (Even though it is not THE Batmobile, that one is likely in the Bat Cave right now...)

Miles Morales has posed:
"Oh." That's all Batgirl gets in response for a moment about the friendly ribbing. After all, under that mask? Miles is trying to make sense of it. Ever since he started swinging in Gotham, he's always had one worry in the back of his mind. That eventually, the big, bad Bat is going to show up and tell him to get lost. Which would make sense, as far as Miles could tell, most of the Family seemed to be normal humans - well okay, not normal, but you know what I mean.

"That's cool." he finally manages, a soft tone of revenance in his tone. Batgirl is a favorite, after all. Maybe after Orphan. To have something that is similar to approval? Yeah. That's cool.

She directs him to follow the drone. "Drone, got it! Should I wave at it or something?" But when he spies the drone in question, he smirks beneath the mask. "...okay, I'm gonna convince Squirrel Girl to train a pilot squirrel." he comments as he swings after the drone as it leads him towards the highway on-ramp that Batgirl is expertly manuveuring everyone towards.

Hightail, in the meantime, is noticing that things are a lot more confusing than she realized. "I should have let Rabble install a GPS." she mutters to herself as yet another path is cut off to her as the anti-vehicle defenses are brought to bear. She skids to a halt, looking around as she clutches the briefcase. Finally spying a sign that points the way to the Interstate, she starts to run in that direction - and directly down the path that Batgirl has set up for her, a hamster in a carefully laid out maze.

Miles arrives at the rendevous point, swinging up into the air to land on a nearby traffic light, turning invisible so that Hightail will not see him when she rounds the corner.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
With all the traffic being redirected too, it was helping to make some roads look less appealing to the Speedster in Motion, or so that was the hope. It seemed to be paying off, as the line of drones that were monitoring the fast woman's progress through the city, were pinging back with motion detectors picking her up at high speeds, heading down the roads that were being cordoned off. The cameras were designed to pick up fast moving objects, and because of it, Batgirl was getting a number of slo-motion shots of Hightail dashing down the normally busy streets.

"You're out of the spray I gave you, aren't you?" Batgirl chided Miles further, as she could see the webbing that he was using was not what she had given him. "You're going to need to give me a mailing address, or a PO Box, where I can setup a stream of the stuff. Not to say what you're using is inferior, or anything... but... come on." She had a playful tone to her voice over the comm link, no modulator active, leaving Babs' voice to sound perfectly feminine, and likely not being what one would connected to a woman driving an armored high performance road monster of a car.

She made a fast turn down a long city street, just at the far end of where Spider-man was going invisible. "Heads up. I'm going to sprinkle the on-ramp entrance with some electrical charges. Don't step on them, they're for our little diamond thief friend."

A sudden appearance of 12 bat-drones would come in to Spider-man's vision, flying a few stories up in the air, they began to rain down little spherical pellets that smacked against the pavement below like hard bits of hail amidst a spring time storm, creating a cacophony of clattering sounds that persisted for roughly 10 seconds, before they stopped.

"Lets hope she can't see them..." Babs said, as she pushed the throttle forward on her Batmobile, the fat tires rolling hot and fast down the side street's concrete pavement, carrying the vehicle rapidly down the street toward the on-ramp's location.

Miles Morales has posed:
Hightail continues her now desperate run to Escape from Gotham - fully aware that Batgirl is in hot pursuit. But where did Spider-Man go? She's pondering that as she gets closer and closer to the on-ramp.

When Batgirl chides him, Spider-Man lets out a nervous laugh. "I didn't know if it was one of those subscription things and I don't have any major credit cards, my credit is terrible!" he retorts. "And showing up at your place would be weird."

There's a pause, because his spider-sense just tingled shortly after the ball bearings are spilt all over the ground. "She's here." he comments, eyelets narrowing as he watches.

She's running straight towards him, at high speed. How to distract her from looking at the ground? That takes only a moment of thought, as Spider-Man suddenly reappears on top of the traffic light and yells, "Boo!"

Hightail shrieks, looking up towards Spider-Man, knowing she should turn. But it's too late. Way too late. She has stepped into the field of balls, and as her foot lands on the first few, it comes out from under her and she starts to careen out of control and towards a wall.

"Crap!" Spider-Man suddenly starts firing weblines across the street, swiftly creating a makeshift goalie's net that the speedster slides into, as it wraps around her to capture her, the briefcase snared within as well.

"Goooooaaaaal!" Spider-Man calls out.

"Wait. Wrong team."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
It was about a second after the web net went around the Speedster, that the electrical effect of the ball-bearings went off too. A crackling energy net covered the ground in front of the on-ramp, zapping Hightail to Hell and back, but not with a lethal amount of electricity. No, these were designed for simply disabling people on the run, quite literally in this case. Each sphere burst out a blast of energy, meant to dull, numb, and stun the target that fell within the spikes of electric tendrils, and with Spider-man providing a web net, it should be---

"Good job." Batgirl said, as the Batmobile roared up on the scene from the west, it coming to an immediate stop, before it idles with a revving of its powerful engine, creating an echoing sound that rattled the windows of the nearby buildings.

It fell silent, and the canopy over the vehicle's two-person cockpit slid open. From inside, Batgirl rose up, to stand up from the interior of her car. She put one dark-gold boot up on the edge of the cockpit, with her cape flourishing out in the wind behind her, her eyes on her wrist computer, taking in the last bit of observed information, before she rose all the way up from inside her car, and dropped down to the ground outside of it.

In black and dark gold, the famous Gotham City female crime fighter made her way toward the on-ramp, with a few visible onlookers peering out from building windows, or storefront vantage points, some coming outside to watch, or record the situation with their phones.

"Have you dealt with this person before?" Babs asked, stepping around her ball-bearing trap, and toward where Spider-man had the rather fast thief tied up.

Miles Morales has posed:
As she's caught in the webbing, Hightail grunts. "This will only keep me down for a moment, wall-crawler!" she declares - but that's when the other part of the plan happens as Batgirl unleashes on the speedster. Poor Hightail. Not only is she snagged, but she gets tasered. Like a lot. By the time the ball-bearings are done with her, the speedster is left quivering, curled in on herself within the net wrapped around her. There's a few more twitches and then she stops altogether. There's no fight left in her, even if she had planned to escape the netting.

"Thanks." Miles offers, rubbing the back of his head. "But I think you did most of the heavy-lifting on this one. No cap." he points out as he turns his attention to the approaching Batmobile. As Batgirl makes her appearance in all black and gold and red, he chuckles. "That's some hella drip you got there."

But the conversation turns to the dealing with Hightail before and he sighs. "I ran into her a couple of times when I was in Brooklyn. Didn't realize she was gonna come running the roads down here. And she's not really in a position at the moment that I can ask her what she was up to."

He's finally noticing the crowd that's forming, and one eyelet rises in surprise, the red rim moving with the motion. "Is this like..." a gesture towards the bystanders. "...a Star Tours thing? Is there a bus that goes around the city looking for Bat-sightings? If so, you should totally get a cut of the profits."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
As Spider-man replies to her, Batgirl continues her walk toward him, leading up to being not too far away, which helps with direct conversation.. at least before GCPD rolls up. She stopped, and just stood there in her black and dark gold, her cape waving gently around her armored body, her red hair doing the same behind her shoulders. She let her green eyes go to the woman in the webbing, slumbering from the blast of electrical power, and she eyed what had been stolen. "I guess, when you can move that quickly, making it from city to city is barely a chore at all. Why limit yourself to crime in such a small region?" She quietly said, keeping her voice perfectly low enough that it really only reaches Miles' eyes.

She knew that the Gotham citizens were watching them, recording them even, and with a little glance toward her wrist-mounted computer screen, Babs activated a blurring feature, suddenly causing all of both she and Spider-man to blur-over on their various devices - which was a mainstay for protecting anonymity in this modern world.

"There actually is a Bat Tracker app...." Babs says, her eyes going back to the white eyelets that cover Miles' own. She grinned at him. "I feed it fake data. Sometimes I leave treats for those who go to see if they can find us, though. It's good to give back to the city, right?"

The sound of sirens could be heard to the south, with the sight of blues and reds flashing, making their way through the city streets with impunity, as the road blockers were pulled back down in to the pavement that they had sprung from to block off the diamond thief.

"Look. Come by the tower any time you need gear help, or a refill on those packs. I designed the stuff to make your life here a little easier, even though I know you're pretty much as capable as any of us. Still though... It's good to be friendly neighbors, right?" Batgirl asked, as she watched the spider, curious by his very nature, but not one to pry without reason.

Miles Morales has posed:
"That would be like a Flash question, I guess?" Spider-Man responds, glancing again over at the crowd that has gathered - and more so at the police sirens. Cops were not his friends back in New York - and while the Bat-family may have some relations with them, he doubts he's covered under that blanket so much. "I'd love to find out who put her up to this. Most of what I knew her for was petty pickpocketing. To go after a score this big... it's not her style."

"Wait, there's an app? I'll have to download it." he comments with a hint of a tease in his voice.

But when she suggests that he comes by the Clocktower, Miles pauses again. This time, the pause is more genuine. And when he speaks again, it's only after one arm comes up to clutch the elbow of the other one to rub at it. "I appreciate that." he finally says. "I'll drop by." There's a glance down at the ground. "It's not that I have anything against anyone. Just... I mean, there's other Spiders and all, but we're not all as close as... well, you seem to be with the other Bats and like... I don't want to crimp your style or anything."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
In the air above their heads, the Bat-drones spread back out, and began to disperse around the city once more, leaving just two of them behind to continue a sweeping patrol up and down the city street. Batgirl glances at her wrist monitor once more, the screen illuminating her face and the golden bat symbol on her chest in a dull blue hue, before she looks up at him again. Her right hand disappears under her cloak, and a second later she pulls out two packs of the Nightshade webbing. She tosses them to him. "Don't be a putz." She says in a friendly fashion. "We're all in this together. You're in my good graces now, and because of that, my home is your fall back point too... When you need one. It's there as a bastion for our kind..."

Our kind?

"Protectors." She answered that question quickly. She glanced down at the girl in the webbing, and shook her head lightly. "She's going to get questioned, and likely taken to the Raft for this offense. As far as prisons go, it's a fairly well maintained one. There are worse places, to be sure."

Arkham Asylum sits in the far off distance, some eerie lighting covering its facade, and actual bats fluttering around in the trees on its lawn.

"I'll make sure they ask her the right questions. You don't have to stick around here and talk to the cops." She said, hearing the sirens growing much louder, as their headlights were just a block over at this point.

"I'll send you an update, when I have some information." The redhead states further, before she turns to start to walk back toward her vehicle, with no intention to leave quite yet, but to prepare for the GCPD herself... Some of them might be prone to recognize her, for personal reasons.

Miles Morales has posed:
He can leave? Great news! Because Miles Morales, college student, has mid-terms this week. "Okay, just... yeah. I keep hoping she'll rehab, you know? There's so many speedsters that she'd do something good instead of all this." A gestulation of his hands around him. "But I'll drop by later. Should I call first? You know, don't want to show up and you're all in your Bat-shower robe and Bat-shower cap." She can probably hear the grin in his voice.

"I'll keep in touch!" And with that, he fires off a webline, using it to slingshot him back into the sky and into the general direction of the college.