Getting Gothams Lights Back On

May 03, 2015:

Rowan visits Babs during the Gotham blackout…. his response to what she does… surprises the redhead

Clocktower - Gotham

Characters

NPCs: None.

Mentions:

Mood Music: None.


Fade In…

Rowan heard that things went… interestingly in Metropolis. He has no doubt Babs did too. He also heard things went interestingly last night. In a less good way. But it seems that people have been talking about getting the city back to normal, whatever normal is for Gotham and when he heard that he immediately flew to the clocktower to find out what was happening.


Babs has been rubbing her temples over what's happening in Gotham. Fortunately, her preparations based on the intel she'd received means the Clocktower has power, limited as it may be. Rowan might find that a little strange, or perhaps not.

With the power grid out, much of her video feed is out as well, which is and isn't a good thing. She doesn't have eyes on as much of the street as she'd like, that's bad, but conversely it saves power running the screens to display all those feeds.

The power outage also means that she's spending a lot of time in her monitoring room, not wanting to waste the battery on her tablet for frivolous things…. like food in the comfort of her aparment and sleep, in a bed. She's been living on cold snacks and dozing in her chair, when she can… She probably looks a little worn and rough around the edges as a result.


"Babs?" Rowan says quietly. A plastic bag rattles at his side. He's got some perishables from New York where there's still electricity. "Babs are you here?" It takes him a minute in the dim and semi clutter of the place to find her.


He shouldn't be there… not in the monitoring room. Until today, she's kept this part of her life completely obscured. "I'm here, Rowan." The rattling of the bag has her looking around, a tired smile on her face "Come to check up on me? I'm sorry I've not been in touch… it's…. been busy."


"I'm… sure it has…" Rowan looks duely impressed. He's never seen anything like this on this world. Nor often on his own. Only in large cities controlled by the overlords. "So this is… your secret. Or one of them, I suppose?"


Babs stills, watching his face carefully and nods slowly "One of them, I guess." It's more correctly a smaller part of a bigger one. "I can't offer you tea right now, unless you'll drink it cold." gesturing at the screens "I'm conserving power, until we can get the grid back online."


"It's been shut off for near two days now right?" Rowan says as he sits down next to her. His face is… one of wonder. So this is what she does. But… what does all this mean? "I've been hearing things about it. Something happened in Metropolis. A battle of some kind. Your people won it. Now there's talk of turning everything back on."


"Nearly two days, yes." She hasn't slept much during that time either. Not that, that's such a surprise. "There was and we did… I'm still waiting on details but…" she shrugs "We've had been waiting for something like that to occur." We…. not her …. "Have we spoken of HYDRA, Rowan?" Babs can't remember, which is telling given how good her memory is.


"I've heard of them on the news… and you've said a few things about them wanting control, but nothing specificl." Rowan pulls up a seat in the darkened room near Babs. "I take it this is important…?" He caught the 'we' too.


"This… " Babs blinks a little and reaches to take Rowans hand. "HYDRA are an organisation that has been around for a long time… to us, the champions as you call them, they are bad… almost evil. The seek to remake the world in their image… and" she sighs again "we consider them terrorists. We got wind, sometime ago, that they were planning an attack on the tri-cities, I'm…. not sure what their ultimate goal was. Perhaps it was just to disrup the population, but given what I know, I think it was bigger. Whilst we weren't ready for what it was, we were ready for something."


"That's good." Rowan says. "And you won, it sounds like. So soon everything will be back to normal. Well… normal ish." The Blue watches Babs for a moment and squeezes her hand. "Something's wrong though. YOu seem… off. Worried."


Babs cants her hand and regards the Blue Warrior, taking her time to respond. "Gothams a mess, it's keeping me… us… busy." The Bat family has been going since the power went off "Until the powers back on… I'll be here." That he hasn't asked, has her puzzled…


"And 'us' are people that you keep secrets for?" He won't ask but he needs to know that he shouldn't ask. Rowan offers her the bag. "I brought groceries and goodies from New York. Can you… spare a few moments to eat? You look like you need it."


Babs takes the bag and opens, a small smile crossing her face. "In the kitchenette up here, yes. I can't go to far…" playing Overwatch means she needs to be near. "and as long as we don't need electricity. I could only make so many provisions."

"Us, yes… those I protect" and who, in turn, protect her. Interestingly, Babs doesn't admonish the Blue or tell him how difficult life could be now that he knows this facility exists… Not like she did Kane, when he'd tricked her.


Rowan nods and goes to make Babs a turkey sandwich, returning with that and a cold soda and a plate of potato chips. And one for himself. "And this is why you're busy most nights. Doing this. Which it looks like you've been doing for a couple of days."


Taking the food, Babs sighs in delight before taking a bite of the sandwich. "Oh, that's sooo good." The soda is placed to one side for now… Rowans question eliciting a small grimace. "Yes…" Overwatch "and yes again. When the grid went down, we knew the crime element would have a field day. I " she glances up at Rowan "ahhh had arranged certain contingencies for if that occured. It was good that I got minutes notice before they cut the power grid. It's just meant though, that I need to be here fairly constantly."


Just as Rowan's about to reply the lights flicker everywhere in Bab's apartment and across the block. The dragon-blue glances out the window and sees them going on across the city. Gotham slowly, painfully, comes back to life. "Looks like they've restored power." He murmurs with a smile. "Hopefully that'll make life easier."


And just as the lights flicker on, Babs comms systems comes alive "Oracle, powers restored, we're going to start clean up."


"Clean up?" Rowan cants his head slightly, watching as Babs does her thing. On Earth 81 this'd all be done mentally. He's got no idea how they manage it having to type or otherwise manually interact with the interface. But it seems exhausting. No wonder this is considered hero material.


Babs cuts her eyes to Rowan and smiles wryly, as she enters a series of commands and her systems comes fully alive. The maps of Gotham are overlaid with video feeds, many of which are still restarting and data scrolls in a couple of windows. As her systems come alive, Babs sighs a contented sigh - her baby is back online again.

Tapping a button on her console, the redhead speaks, the digitally altered voice being transmitted "Acknowledged. Thank you. Oracle Net is nearly fully operational too. I've got your location, despatching GCPD, but I suspect they'll have their hands full tonight. Secure and move on, I'll monitor."

Looking to Rowan, Babs bites her lip "Clean up, yes. The teams will restore order to the streets of Gotham."


"Oh." Different kind of clean up. "Sounds like you're about to get busy again. Do you need anything? Tea? Or… a proper hot meal for later?" He can stay and cook and clean up a bit. She may need it.


"It just got a whole lot easier, in fact" Babs looks bemused at Rowans response. Now her systems are place, she can use a lot of her automated systems and not rely on the manual processes. "I still have to monitor and provide guidance, but … this is a lot easier."

"I'd like the company, if you don't mind me ignoring you sometimes and some hot tea right now sounds wonderful." It's strange, not being questioned, not having someone gushing over what she does… she might get used to that in the long run.


"I'd love to keep you company." The Blue smiles. "Missed you in the last few days. Well, our last dinner notwithstanding." Rowan goes to make some tea, then he'll settle in next to Babs and watch her work. Going to be interesting to be sure.

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