Downpour (Derek)

Participants: Derek James
Open/Closed: Closed
Location(s): Gotham's Cauldron District
Time of Day: Early evening
Weather: Very, very wet.
Summary: On the hunt for her mother, Rose's search takes her to Gotham, seeking answers from some of Lilian Worth's old acquaintances. There, she runs into another hero hoping to earn his stripes.

A bleak and ceaseless downpour had soaked Rose Wilson to the bone. Perched on a fire escape outside a run-down dive bar, her Ravage attire appeared three shades darker than it usually would, and her mask held so much water, it felt although she was wearing a flannel over her face. Jutting out from beneath the half-mask, her hair was plastered to the back of her neck and shoulders, her white locks stained grey. Occasionally, the odd drop of cold rainwater dripped down her back, trickling beneath her clothing, causing an uncomfortable chill to run the entire length of her spine.

Unsurprisingly, her expression was about as bleak as the weather – a permanent grimace that showed no sign of brightening.

She had been in Gotham for little longer than a day, and throughout her entire visit, it had rained. To make matters worse, the purpose of her trip required her to spend a great deal of time outdoors, and in packing light, she’d forgotten an umbrella – or anything more waterproof than a sponge. She wasn’t sure if there was anything that could possibly make the crime-ridden city less pleasant than usual, but rains of apocalyptic proportions seemed desperate to rise to the challenge.

Left to her own devices, she avoided the city for the most part, happy to leave Gotham to the care of its extensive vigilante population. However, in tracking her mother, she had dug up the names of some of Lilian Worth’s old ‘acquaintances’, and those names had led her back to the city her father had once tried to destroy. Though Worth, if she was alive, seemed capable of dodging every method of surveillance available to the Teen Titans (which, Tim assured her, were numerous), her former ‘friends’ were not quite so talented.

Operating out of a brothel in New York had apparently seen ‘Sweet Lili’ mix with all manner of unsavoury individuals – and a number of said individuals had moved their base of operations to Gotham’s ‘Cauldron’ district. Rose’s plan was simple: investigate the current whereabouts and activities of those aforementioned acquaintances, interfere if they weren’t ‘above board’ (which she was near-certain they wouldn’t be), and question them about her mother’s last known whereabouts.

That way, if they knew nothing (which was a very real possibility), she’d have at least achieved something on her journey: even if she could have bashed mobsters’ skulls together back in San Francisco.

Derek James

Derek was finding out the hard way that his suit was not in fact waterproof. He supposed he couldn't complain too much, Ernie had already done so much for him. Whining that she hadn't made the suit resistant to torrential rainfall, when she had taken care of everything else, would just be a dick move. Still, Derek was not feeling the sogginess of his suit nor the sloshing of every step he took. 

It was pretty late, at least for Derek. His hours of activity usually ranged through early morning or for a couple hours after school. He was a school kid and he had overprotective parents (or at least his mom was) so he couldn't really be out of the house for too many hours at certain times, which made training with Tempus near impossible and his heroics very very limited. But Ernie had raised a point to him that Derek thought was pretty good. If he wanted maximum exposure and really wanted Sideways seen and known out there, then he was going to have to put in more work. That meant longer hours. And braving severe storms apparently.

Derek had been trying to get his GoPro angled just right underneath a large gargoyle statue, to protect it from the downpour, when he was suddenly struck by idea. Two ideas to be accurate. The first was his realization that considering he was out there spreading the good name of Sideways and getting ridiculous amounts of rain washed over him all on Ernie's suggestion then he could complain about her failing to make a suit that withstood such weather. His second thought was to create a rift.

RFFT

The air above Derek separated in a fissure through space itself. The laceration above his head was edged by flaxen energy. The rain fell into Sideways' rift, at long last ceasing his battle with getting rained on. Where the rain went was anyone's bet. He hadn't really thought of a location in particular when making his umbrella-rift.

The GoPro, held on an extended selfie stick, was rotated just slightly by Derek's outstretched arm. "See that, Riftfam? It's called ingenuity." He beamed beneath the fabric of his wet mask, wiggly his eyebrows and by transference the fabric atop them as his free hand gestured up at the open gash in the air above him. 

Sideways was out to do his heroic duties and all that Justice League like stuff, but he also had to get some views for his streaming channel. So basically he really had nothing pressing to concern himself with. He didn't have arch-foes like established heroes, and Gotham was already crawling with a pantheon of vigilantes as it was; if a purse snatching occurred right under his nose he would probably be the last hero to arrive on the scene. So Derek found solace in making his videos, it was basically his guarantee for the night.

Rose Wilson

The shouts and cries that arose from the dive bar she’d been monitoring took Rose a little by surprise. While she knew its lower floors – an extensive basement that stored more than just alcohol – was being used by some of her mother’s former acquaintances as a black market gun dealership, she’d seen no-one enter or leave the premises during her numerous soggy hours of surveillance. She’d been waiting for an ‘in’ – the arrival of someone seeking a trade, the unexpected appearance of one of Gotham’s rival crime syndicates – before making her own entry, but had been left sorely wanting. As far as the Ravager could work out, the sudden disturbance hadn’t been caused by any outside interference. Her brow furrowed only deeper beneath her mask – the absence of gunfire was instantly notable and very strange. People who dealt firearms for a living tended to shoot at problems they encountered, and sheer panic often led to an itchy trigger finger.

Within seconds, the doors to the bar were thrown open, the loud ‘bang’ echoing around Gotham’s enclosed, cobblestone streets and two heavy set males stumbled into the downpour, looking back over their shoulders. Their eyes were wide with shock.
‘What was that?!’
‘Hero…it must be!’
‘What sort of hero makes it rain inside?!’
Their chatter was rapid and confused, with numerous mentions to the weather and Gotham’s caped vigilantes.
‘If Batman can tear open a hole in reality and make it piss it down in a bar, we’re all F*$%ed!’
‘Who said it was him?’
‘Who else would it be?!’

It was at this juncture that Rose Wilson interceded. As much as their conversation intrigued her, the mention of reality being warped and the emergence of another member of the hero community spurned her into action. If it was a cooperative vigilante, perhaps a delay wouldn’t have been the end of the world: they’d share any information they found on Worth. However, some wouldn’t, and if the phantom rain-maker was a little more lethal in their doling out of justice – or if, in fact, they weren’t interested in justice at all – then Wilson stood a chance of suffering a wet Gotham for nothing. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t overly thrilled by that idea.

Letting herself drop from her perch, Ravager plummeted two storeys before landing in a neat crouch, just ahead of the now drenched goons. They both gasped, reaching under their coats, no doubt for weapons; now a more tangible threat had appeared, subconscious reflex kicked in. With an impossible speed, Rose drew one of her sheathed blades from where they lay strapped across back and struck out, catching the wrist of the first to draw his pistol, disarming him instantly. He yelped out in pain, clutching at his arm, expecting blood. Other than a burning red mark, his skin remained uninjured.

The other didn’t have chance to pull his weapon before the blade’s sharpened edge rested against his cheek. He gulped visibly and audibly, and Rose smirked.
“Either of you know Lilian Worth?”
She doubted it, they appeared far too low calibre a criminal to have had any interaction with her mother, but that could just be daughterly pride speaking.

Derek James

It was weird, living in Gotham Derek had obviously known about all the criminal activity that plagued the city, he watched the news after all. But he had always been so disconnected from it. Probably because his parents had jobs that allowed them to live in a "safer" area of Gotham, and yet they weren't so wealthy that they would be targeted by mobsters and supervillains. Derek had lived a practically normal life for ever, up until he got his powers of course. Even now he still didn't encounter much of what was the underbelly of Gotham, but he could see the signs. He could see the shifty movements in the night, the discreet whispers between shadowy patrons of dive bars that were clearly up to no good. It made the new hero nervous but even more than that it made him want to extinguish those tiny hints of larger crimes. Derek had been gifted the powers to become Sideways for a reason and he was pretty sure it was for more than getting views and likes.

He wasn't recording himself any more, his selfie stick and GoPro were stashed in a backpack he had brought along with him and that too had been stashed to a safe place.

"Now, how do I do this?"

He'd never really done the whole stalk the night shtick. He didn't even know what he was supposed to look for. Was it just intervening in obvious crimes taking place or was he supposed to be able to see them early enough to intercede before a crime even took place? Sideways felt like his brain was going to rift open if he kept going back and forth trying to decide how to do this. He felt like Tempus would probably have something to say about it all, probably something confusing and long winded. Derek groaned as he settled into his perch, his eyes glancing left and right in an almost paranoid sort of way as he tried to suss out crimes in Gotham. Should be easy, right?

The rain hadn't let up yet, the pitter patter of the droplets striking nearby roofing was continuous, thankfully now Derek was secured underneath a protruding gargoyle face that Gotham had so many of so he didn't have to rely on a rift to keep him dry. Derek's body jerked involuntarily at the sound of a distant bang.

"Was that - ?" No, not a gunshot. But it was loud and it was close. And shouting voices followed soon after. Derek focused on those shouts, it wasn't an exact science but as long as he had a rough idea then usually that was good enough to get him close to where he needed to be. Sideways lifted two fingers and with a thought he split reality, opening a glowing rip in space that he quickly jumped into.

His body fell out of a similarly yellow-ringed rift. Derek used the time of his fall to gather a quick assessment of the area he had rifted into, and then he rifted again. Derek shot out at a new location, one closer to a fire escape so that he could grab ahold and still maintain a heightened vantage point. His rifts closed behind him. This time he was back to getting soaked, there was no coverage to protect the teen from the rain now. The rain wasn't Derek's worry though, he was much more concerned by the two men who had been cornered by another individual with long swords.

"Woah," the whisper escaped Derek's mouth before he had the time to think. He hadn't encountered anything like this before. He'd gone up against a speedster once, which was scary in its own right, but someone wielding actual swords? Sideways had never faced off against the aspect of death so directly before. Those swords could do some real damage. But was worrying and the possibility of getting mortally wounded something that stopped heroes from acting? Derek didn't think it was. But there was something else, he didn't have the faintest as to what had sparked up this standoff he was witnessing. But did it even matter? The teen found himself grinding his teeth at his own hesitance. He was thinking too much. It was best to act now and get the details later. He hoped.

    RFFT

Another rift was open, this one just shy above Derek's head, when he stood taller his head poked through. Sideways's sense went a little wonky for a second (but he'd gotten used to this feeling now) as his head popped out seemingly out of nowhere, upside down and on the sword-wielder's left. He fought the urge to say 'Hey what's up' as he turned his head to look at the silver haired individual.

"Howdy." That wasn't a million times worse or anything. "How about we put away the sharp, pointy things and try to use our words here." Said the upside-down floating head.

Rose Wilson