A Guardian Angel (Open)

Participants: Stephanie Brown / Open
Open/Closed: Open
Location(s): Gotham City
Time of Day: Early hours of the morning
Weather: Overcast
Summary: Stephanie Brown finds herself cut off from her support and vastly outnumbered. Hopefully, someone can drop in and lend a hand!

She sat huddled against the wall of a dark alley, clutching her side in her gloved hands. Though the armour protecting her hips from puncture wounds was still intact, she was fairly sure she'd cracked a rib or two, and the static in her ears suggested they'd taken out her communications – her link to her friend and mentor, Barbara Gordon, had been severed. “But that's no reason to panic, Steph. You've got this.” However, Stephanie Brown, former Robin and now third Batgirl, had most certainly 'not got this.'

It had all seemed routine enough an hour before. With the 'Oracle's' aid, Stephanie had tracked down a group of arms traffickers, visiting Gotham from Bludhaven, and with a little careful planning and reconnaissance, had engaged their convoy with the full intent of halting their criminal enterprise and leaving them cuffed for GCPD collection.

Things hadn't quite gone as expected.

The arrival of a second, seemingly unrelated band of mercenaries – highly armoured and well trained – had flipped the script. With enemies attacking her on all sides, even with Barbara's help, Batgirl had found herself outnumbered and outmatched. She had needed to leave the immediate area, find cover and re-strategize. Unfortunately, it was while attempting her exit that she'd been shot – twice. The plating on her Batsuit had stopped both bullets doing any serious damage, but the sheer force of the shots had knocked her flat.

Just about able to grapple line away, she'd fled to a nearby alley to examine her wounds and wait for back-up. With the Birds of Prey at Barbara's finger-tips, Stephanie expected heroic intervention sooner rather than later. She just had to make sure she survived until then.

The interfering mercenary band had different ideas.

Indeed, though Steph had extracted herself from the site of immediate threat, she was close enough to hear them – some had taken control of the convoy she'd originally targeted, while others had spread out, looking for any signs of 'the cape' - a.k.a her. They were moving quickly, clearly having seen the direction in which she'd travelled, and weren't wasting any time.

If she stayed put, they'd find her, and she wasn't exactly 'fighting fit.' If she didn't, she'd only end up further away from the traffickers, and of no help to anyone who might come providing back up. With her head ringing and side aching, Stephanie Brown was going to need to make a split second decision and she had never been good at erring on the side of caution. In 'Fight or Flight' situations, Steph could count on one hand the number of times she'd opted for the latter: and this wasn't going to be one of them.

Raising her grapple-line skyward, she fired the device into an overhanging fire escape and shortly after was dragged toward it. She hit it without much in the way of grace, her injuries hindering her usual acrobatics, and she managed to drag herself into a 'perching' position: ready to descend on any mercenaries that closed in on her former position. With the element of surprise, Batgirl hoped, perhaps, to be able to claim the upper hand.

The trip to Gotham City was supposed to be quick. Painless. Simple. The last thing he wanted to do was run into a Bat (let alone the Bat). Even though the reason for his visit was practical and would have no immediate cause for him to step into those circles, he knew that the universe liked to screw him over. Which was why he'd brought his "work" clothes and toys. James wondered if that was like daring fate to drag him into something stupid in Gotham - or if not bringing them was the dare?

It hardly mattered. When, in his dingy little hotel room after touching base with one of his suppliers (he was getting really good at the "hey, yeah, so I'm not dead anymore" conversation), a gunfight broke out practically right outside his window, James heaved a weary sigh. He peeked through the curtains, and almost got out of the whole crapstorm when he saw a costumed vigilante already on the scene.

Except it wasn't the Bat, and as he watched things... Weren't going so well.

Another sigh, and James let the biometric scanners on one of his suitcases run. With a chime of approval, it clicked open, revealing a treasure trove of gadgets underneath...

- - - - - 

"S'cuse me, young lady." Trickster was hovering over Batgirl's shoulder, hands stuffed in his pockets like he was waiting for a barista to call out his name for a finished drink, rather than on the quickly-expanding fringes of a gunfight. "Would you like some backup? I know how possessive your type are about this city so I didn't want to assume," he said conversationally, never mind the flashlight-mounted sights of numerous guns that had just painted the walls of the alley. Two pairs of armed men and women turned the corners into it while James patiently waited for an answer.

Stephanie Brown