b07 | (no subject)

[Out of nowhere at 4:03am]

What bird can write? ϵ( ‘Θ’ )϶

[ she's fucking asleep u dick. try again. ]

[Wow, nothing? How rude. He's just going to send out a quick request to a mutual acquaintance... call in a quick favor... and....

Yup. There sure is a constant tweeting chiming in from her phone right now.]

⋋(◍’Θ’◍)⋌
⋋(◍’Θ’◍)⋌
⋋(◍’Θ’◍)⋌

[ She's a heavy sleeper. ]

[ But. ]

[ About five minutes later; ]

DICK

CAN YOU FUCKING NOT

A PENguin!

[He has done absolutely nothing wrong this is a perfectly normal conversation]

I actually hate you

when was the last time u looked at the clock u moron

About an hour ago. Around the same time I had to cram myself into an air duct forty feet in the air.

Look at it this way, I could have woken you up with the two birds in love one.

[ She's really debating going back to sleep .. almost did after her last text. But with the 'ding' startling her awake again, she growls, grabs her phone and hauls her ass up and out toward the kitchen. Only a mournful glance is spared to see Brucely, belly up and storing at the end of her bed. Lucky bastard.

She'll start a coffee. Ugh. ]

aren't you a little thick to be crawling around in air ducts?

do i even want to know what that means

Ha ha ha. It's a warehouse. Even Superboy could squeeze in here.

Depends. If I said they're tweethearts, would I wake up to an arrow in my face?

[Ah ah ah shit his arm's going numb. Air ducts are not the best places to run recon.]

if i coudl fucking block your number i would

what kind of recon gives you enough time to annoy me at 4 in the morning

The kind with not too punctual criminals.
Intel's been uh...

It's been a little slow lately.

[That's what happens when you're no longer sleeping with your intel specialist, Dick.

... he might be a little rusty on the good ol' detective work. Shut up.]

uh huh

[ She's heard what happened. They may all be spread out across the country, but there is always JL (former or not) gossip. And Art has always been a bit sharp in this area since Wally. Even if Roy was a great dad to the kiddo, she and him were never ... Just no. More like roommates. ]

so tardy villains and you're bothering me

[ Oh good, the coffees done. Thank god. ]

Well, if I'm gonna be stood up I might as well make my own fun, right?

Seriously, who loads a warehouse with weapons in shipping containers and then just leaves them for a night?

[Let's see... if he factors in the time difference and how long it's been since Artemis started actually texting him back... then...]

How's the coffee?

And youre sure there aren't cameras keeping eyes on them?

[ Force of habit. She doesn't want to be working right now, but it's ingrained. And she knows Dick is more than capable, but he can also be prone to abject cockiness. Hubris. ]

Fucking fine. I'm gonna need three more cups to keep me up.

An operation this big? No way they're just leaving all of this to cameras. Besides, I've been watching this place for the last few days. They were too frantic yesterday to just let this sit all night.

[And he could just dismantle all of what he's seen so far. Call the cops, clear the place out, but he's not sure who's in charge.

And if he doesn't cut the head off the snake, this is just gonna drag on forever. That's the shitty thing about basing yourself in Bludhaven.]

Up to three, now? You sure all this off time hasn't made you a little soft?

[ That's the part Nightwing likes about Bludhaven, let's be real here. ]

i'm running on 4 hours sleep asshole

[ She's not done her first cup yet, give it time. ]

frantic? and now there's no one there?? sounds fishy. your not getting any readings at all?

[Wow??? Don't call him out like that.]

At least you get sleep.

[There's a little bit of a pause in his texts that could be worrying, but it's really just Nightwing shimmying his way to a different part of the air ducts because boy is he getting tired of smelling dead fish. This place is way too close to the fishing sector.]

Nope. Nothing. There's a car that goes by every hour, but they don't even have a patrol. So... it's gonna be a long night.

[Oh, and for good measure...]

*You're є(･Θ･｡)э

i mean i didn't know you were capable of sleep

[ You were raised by a Bat, remember? And honestly, delayed texts are only worrying if they pass the 17 minute mark. ]

its been a long night. its almost dawn, remember?

also don't correct my 4am text

I am! At fifteen minute intervals once every three days.

[When half of your upbringing was in a cave, you learn to make sacrifices.]

4am for you.

[... wait. That would make it 7am where he is. And the smog isn't quite that bad in Bludhaven to make day look like night, so why...]

Huh. Hold up, gotta check something.

[Maybe he is a little sleep deprived.]

[ There's a long suffering sigh that ends in a frustrated chuckle that Dick isn't going to be privy to. She pours herself another cup. ]

so you have no excuse

[ She knows its later on for him- morning fog brain not exactly placing the hour difference but knowing it was mildly significant. Long night, her ass. -- And since he said brb, she'll just put her phone down for now and get some dog food out for her boy. ]

[What was it that was cause for alarm, again? Fifteen? Nah, too on the nose. Too regular. Man, has it really been that long since he worked with a partner who wasn't just in his ear and hacking his contacts every second of every day?

Shit. This was just his luck.]

I never have excuses. I have reasons.

[He responds, exactly sixteen minutes later.]

You wouldn't happen to know how much weight an industrial air duct from 2008 can hold, would you?

uh

no. youve always been the techie, techie.

[ Cutting her nerves a bit close there, Grayson. ]

i would think if its post 2000 it should be fine?

Hacking computers isn't the same as knowing weight limits for metal alloys.

[... unfortunately for both of them, the friend that would have known that... isn't... around anymore.]

That coffee kicking in yet?

[ They don't really need to be getting into that at this time of the morning. That's a late night discussion topic over a bottle of wine. Not one cup of coffee. ]

it's doing it's job.

have you fallen through the air duct yet

Define fallen.

If, say, I'm still in the air duct, but it isn't exactly still in the ceiling, does that count as falling through it?

...

yes dick. yes it does.

Then yes, I fell through an air duct.

[And after another little pause...]

I uh... I might need some... assistance.

I think half the building fell with me?

[ ............. are you fucking kidding me ]

what

did you do

send me your fucking location

In my defense, I didn't set off the charges. Also, this building is definitely not up to code.

[It takes a second, but Artemis' phone will eventually chime in with a GPS lock on Dick's location. And if she puts in her contacts, she'll see the same thing being broadcast on that computer, as well.

Once that's done though, Dick is going to take a few minutes to just... breathe. Because being slowly crushed to death under some potentially flaming wreckage while trying to figure out what may or may not be broken or bleeding isn't actually the easiest thing to do.]

But I maaaaay have sparked a gas line in an attempt to create a distraction. The extra explosives didn't pick up on any of my scans.

Edited 2019-01-27 04:24 (UTC)

you DIDN'T set off the charges or YOU didn't set off the charges

[ She's already grabbing her keys and jacket, dressed on the upper half but still in pajama pants and loosely tied combat boots. From the secondary text she's reading, stopping in for any gear beyond her basic on-hands, isn't viable. She'll supercycle to the nearest zeta-tube and pick up a bike on the other side. En route she taps voice-to-text. ]

So you blew yourself up is what you're telling me.

No, I blew up the area around me. I am 100% in tact.

[.... ah. Shit. That slightly warm part of his suit is still slightly warm. And wet. That uh. That doesn't bode well.]

... 80% in tact.

Give me exact details, Nightwing.

[ Oh. Full super names, now. Dick, you're digging a deep hole for yourself and Artemis is getting more and more stressed out by the second. Thankfully, the nearest Zeta isn't really that far from her home, so she's booming through with a droning Recognized; B-0-7, Tigress and immediately eyeing around for her locked up bike. ]

I'm five minutes out.

[Welp. That settles it. If he's not dead now, he's gonna be once Artemis gets here.]

It's not too bad. Stuck under a pillar while mostly inside what's left of an air duct. Fire's still going in parts of the warehouse but it's brick, it's not doing much other than heating up the place.

Suit took most of the hits. Concussion. Bruised shoulder. Bleeding from somewhere I can't place though, so don't stop for donuts on your way over.

[ Lets just say if he dies, even if he's unconscious, she's gonna revive him and then kick his ass all over again. She knows it's just part of the job, knows it deeply in her soul. But it doesn't make it any easier whenever it comes up- especially not when it's Dick. Specifically when it's Dick. ]

Pinned?

[ He's gonna hear the roar of a motorbike in a minute or two, getting louder and louder until it comes to a near screeching halt, engines killed and although it's unlikely he'll hear boots on the asphalt over the fire, he can probably guess who it is. ]

Make a noise if you're not unconscious yet.

[ Pissed, but also entirely On The Job right now. She has his location, but the debris is making it hard to pinpoint exactly where he is. His locator must have been damaged in the 'fall'. ]

I have about an inch of movement at an awkward angle.

[So in other words, yeah. He's pinned. There's at least three ways he could get out of this situation, but he's not actually going to implement them yet. First of all, he still can't get a read on where he's bleeding from. There's a concerning amount of numbness spreading through his body and if debris got him in an actually serious spot, ripping himself out of it is just going to make things worse. Also, two of those ways involve irreparable damage to his partially pinned arm, and he's really not looking to be the next Roy Harper right now.

So instead, he waits. Closes his eyes and concentrates on his breathing, on shifting around and testing how each little movement feels both for the metal above him and for whatever injuries he has. He keeps sending a new GPS ping to Artemis every few minutes, his way of letting her know he's still there.

But it's... well, he doesn't actually know how bad it looks on the outside. But it isn't pretty. Half the warehouse is just... gone. A huge hole blown to smithereens, the lazy wail of sirens off in the distance showing that someone at the Fire Station finally decided to clue into what had happened. The fire itself is limited to patches of wooden debris, the rest of it just piles of brick and stone and metal.

And sure, he heard the bike, but the fact that Dick heard Artemis' voice before he heard her footsteps makes a grin cut through the pain, and he shifts a little more firmly inside his little metal prison, pressing his back against the thin metal of the air duct until he hears faint shifting above him. From Artemis' perspective, she'll see a few pieces of rock shift and roll down one of the piles, a metal beam scraping against some other piece of metal as it shifts and settles again. And then, she'll hear a muffled: ]

Polo.

Edited (this makes more sense ) 2019-02-02 00:00 (UTC)

[ She hates that response. Hates that Dick was stupid enough to make a rookie move and somehow get himself trapped, of all people. This shit isn't supposed to happen to him. She hates it. She's probably scared and just doesn't want to think about who else they've known who didn't-actually-make-rookie-mistakes. She also knows that Dick is probably really in his head about his stupid break up. Maybe not emotionally; but intellectually. The idiot.

The ding from his GPS is still coming through, but it's wonky, giving her signals from 5 to 20 feet apart and in the end she's relying on the sound of his voice from somewhere beneath the rubble. The place looks more like a few bombs went off than the-- actually it probably was a few, she can't remember right now because she's hearing his voice and that's enough to have her whirling around, tracing the sound wave on her HUD. There. Shifting dust and dirt and there's got to be a busted up bird somewhere under it all. ]

Marco. And don't move again you moron. If you bring this down on yourself even further I'm not even going to let them plan a funeral. Just keep talking; it's filling in the scanner.

[ She sounds like she's talking through her teeth; though whether because she's pissed or because she's moving something heavy from above and to the side of it all, is anyone's guess. ]