maskormenacelogs | You don't know how you got here; you just know you want out.

[ And he watches. Nightvision is the first important thing to maintain. She shields her eyes, as Bruce has. Good. She looks up, looking for him, pays attention to her surroundings. Still he watches, unmoving. He's not visible, particularly in the wake of the tiny white candle's single-LED efforts. It's a dull light, but in this situation it's all but blinding, even just in the periphery; brighter than a meteor.

There. She leaps up into the trees, vanishes into the canopy as Bruce had. The whole sequence took seconds. Just seconds.

Trees had very little in common with the multi-layered wooden fortress in which Bruce had learned his skills of subterfuge and patient, and they were unlike Gotham too; in fact it was easier to move through them. There were more handholds, the leaps were surer, although he had to be careful not to land too heavily and rustle the leaves. Bruce moved like a hunter, coming closer by a circuitous route, carefully minding the branches he'd partially cut, 30 foot high suspended pitfalls. Fighting in daylight was one thing. This was the night; it was Bruce's domain, and he had to know she could fight the things that knew it as well as he did.

If Ra's were here, kept alive by an alternate universe or plucked out of history, knowing might save her life. Knowing she couldn't might save it too. The test, if unwelcome, was none the less imperative. ]

[ She's done the nature thing before... kind of. The city is her usual habitat, born and raised in Gotham like she was, and aside from dabbling in the wilderness here and there, she's more at home with concrete and brick. So it takes her a while to get the hang of moving as quietly as she usually does in the face of creaking branches and rustling leaves. For a while her progress through the trees isn't difficult to track in a quiet forest, and she winces with every misstep.

Finally, annoyed at herself, she stops. Her eyes are only just beginning to reacclimate to the darkness, but as long as she keeps her face at least half-turned from the light, progress is steady. She takes a few breaths, consciously wills her weight to lighten a little bit, and moves on.

It works better this time. However, this time luck isn't on her side. Her third leap finds a steady and solid land on the branch, right up into the branch itself isn't steady or sturdy under her anymore. Its partially cut width snaps, and her only noise is a muffled sharp intake as she starts to fall.

She's an old hand at falling, though. She keeps totally silent as she twists in midair, hands stretched out — one to block her face, one to catch ahold. It takes two tries and 20 feet, but 10 feet above the ground she manages to snatch another branch and swing herself over and onto it. She perches there for a few seconds, catching her breath.

Definitely tampered. No branch that thick breaks that easy. ...Which tells her a little more about the game they're playing. ]

[ A little candle compared to the obscuring quality of streetlights is enough to ignore, but it provides sufficient light in the black shroud of the forest to pick out footholds. One thing that tells Bruce more about her is her choice not to extinguish it; he knows she can aim well enough with that slingshot of hers to take it out, after all.

He's still again when the bough breaks with a ripping crack, listening for the sound of impact, for some sound of surprise or the telltale noise of breath expelled as a body hits the ground. Only the tree branch crashes down, and then there's stillness again. Good, she's thinking. Bruce gives her the time to do so.

Bruce pulls himself up to a higher branch, one of the more fragile limbs. Dry, dead leaves in the canopy above rustle, and he taps the branch again deliberately, provides a rhythm that is not a natural part of the tousling breeze, gives her a target. Chase me. He has his next foothold ready, using a knot as a handhold to spring across to a branch further away. He knows how she responds to a challenge now. His next questions are how quick is she? And can she apply that fast thinking to pursuit? ]

[ She freezes as soon as she hears that sound, too purposeful to be one of nature's many little noises. Alright, got it. She wears a little half of a smirk as she begins a swift ascent upwards and left, where she'd heard it coming from. She freezes again when she thinks she hears him moving, though. Of course, he wouldn't make sound then just sit on it, right? That'd be dumb. So she adjusts her course, angling toward her best guess at his landing point in the darkness.

And she moves more carefully now, too. A split second goes to testing each branch before she puts her full weight on it. She hasn't felt any more trapped boughs, but she doesn't relish trying her luck at a freefall again. ]

[ There. She adjusts her chase with hawklike speed, switching from one tactic to the next in midair, and as she lands on the bough in front of him, Bruce does too. His grapple line whips free, the sound no doubt familiar, catching on the next branch up, to which Bruce swings himself with grace, crouching low in the darkness above. A safe distance, but also the increased weight would have broken their foothold, and it wouldn't have been a pleasant fall for either of them. ]

Close, but you haven't caught me yet.

[ Again the sound of the grapple gun, but this time Bruce doesn't follow it; shrouded in the blackness of the canopy, he curls his hands around the line and leaps down from the opposite side, and with an enormous crash half a tree, leaves and branches and all, counters his weight, swinging toward Carrie in a violent rush while Bruce drops safely to the ground. ]

[ Shoot, just missed him. Her head follows his progress up through the darkness (man, she really needs to get a pair of infrared inserts again) as she crouches, ready to follow him again. But then comes the second shot. She doesn't immediately realize what he's done, and loses her chance to leap away out of the avalanche of tree. Then she's surrounded by a battery of leaves and branches, caught up in the downward fall of it, and all at once her mental image of the situation sharpens.

Right. Okay. She's probably got about 4 seconds to get out from under this tree here before they both hit the ground — and that's probably a generous estimate. She scrambles through the branches as they fall, clawing and leaping her way up through to the upper side of the tree, her mental timer ticking alarmingly as she goes. It takes what feels like far too long to be able to get a clear vault away, but finally she's able to spring out into empty space. She's still stretching for a handhold in the darkness when the tree crashes to the ground below her, but an instant later she's snagged her hold.

She flips a quick loop around the branch and settles on it in a perch, breathing heavy. Then, a second later, she laughs. This? This is great.

Then she's off again, leaping to the neighboring tree and starting her quick way up it, back to higher ground. She's almost sure she heard Bruce headed down, and if she can get the drop on him, she'll catch him. ]

[ All Bruce knows is that she doesn't crash into the ground. He touches down a few seconds before the branch does himself, snaps the grapple instantly back into place, still crouched, and springs away just as the deafening crash of snapping twigs and branches sounds behind him. Bruce submerges himself in the darkness on the ground, finding a low, dark spot between two trunks of a coppiced tree.

Thus begins the next test, with surprise attacks from behind out of the way, he moves on to hide-and-seek. She'll spot him if he climbs, or moves from his hiding place, so now she must decide where his hiding place is; where would she hide were she in his position? He's picked a place where no light from the candle falls, and yet it can't be far away from the fallen tree--the options are slim.

And as he waits, Bruce carefully removed a silver colored pellet from his belt, clasping it gently between thumb and forefinger. She'll find him, and he'll be ready when she does. ]

[ She doesn't stop until she's about 15 feet up, and then sinks into a crouch and immediately turns her eyes to the ground. She keeps one hand clutched to the branch, while the other shades the candle from her eyes. It's a help and a hindrance at the same time, that candle. She'd put it out, but she doesn't want to lose the light entirely... but it creates a false reassurance with its dim light, and provides even deeper shadows where it doesn't reach.

But the moon isn't full enough for her to want to take her chances without it, so it stays.

She studies the ground below her in silence, analyzing the area surrounding the fallen tree. He'd jumped more or less straight down, right? So he has to be near to it. She examines the shadows critically, trying to decide which is deep enough to hide a fully grown man. Several of them are, actually. But the one that's closest, which she thinks would be a reasonable distance to dart to in the time she'd been busy with the fall...

Yes, she decides. That one.

She bursts into movement without warning, bounding off branches and dropping lower with each leap, until she's dropping nearly straight into that shadow between two trunks, booted feet first. ]

[ Bruce is all readiness, nerves strung tight, prepared to act. His plan is Batlike. She comes down on him, inspecting the shadows, and he drops the flash pellet, silver nitrate bursting bright pinwheels, his own eyes closed against it, so that he has time to get her in a hold.

It's not what happens. She's adjusted in response to her challenger - adjusted to the fact that it's Bruce that she's fighting - and when she comes down she's on the attack. Then it's Bruce that has to adapt. He's impressed by that, impressed by her pragmatism and agility impresed by her nerve.

His hand closes tight around the pellet so as not to accidentally drop it, forearm crossing over his chest so that the impact is absorbed evenly by bone and muscle. His feet slip on the dry, sandlike dust between the two trees, and Bruce doesn't resist it, letting the movement give him time to adjust. He knows she has to land, that the fact that he stays on his feet means she can only spring back from the resistance of his body through the fork in the tree or follow through and leapfrog over his back, and Bruce jams the blade of his gatling into the tree trunk, using its inherent ability to support his dynamic weight in order to throw himself into a kick of his own. The trigger on the gun releases the catch on the line, giving him room to continue to move without releasing the device.

If she springs back, he's already attacking; anything else and he gains himself time and space to prepare his next attack. ]

[ She does spring back, instinctively, using chest and forearm for her springboard. Keep distance, Robin. She lands light, and can tell more from the sound than the sight of shifting shadows that he's on the attack. There is some benefit to being nearly half the size of your opponent, though, and so Carrie dives into a roll to the side, looking to duck under his kick entirely and end up several feet to his left. There she'll pause, looking to see what the next phase is supposed to be. Combat? She has one hand on her slingshot already, just in case. ]

[ Almost, and sort of. Bruce locked the gun against his belt, but the claw end was still lodged in the tree, connected to him by the invisible line. It all depended on whether Carrie had noticed in her retreat.

He spun to the left, keeping the line out from under his feet. Now, unlike before he moved slowly, placing his feet carefully, bringing his hands up in front of him, body low so as to present less of a target. One hand was still closed into that fist, pellet held out of sight.

Combat. And it was still her offensive. ]

[ In the darkness the line goes unnoticed. She's more focused on Bruce himself, watching warily what she can see, and listening closely to what she can't. And, for the first time, she hesitates. He's waiting for her move, she's pretty sure. But training never really covered this part, training put emphasis on fleeting diversions and clean escapes.

She shifts her weight uneasily, resettling her readied stance. Whatever she does, she better make the decision now. So up comes the slingshot, opposite hand digging into one of the pouches at her side for a pellet. Not just any pellet — this is the one with that flash of empty, blinding light. It's flying toward him in an instant, aimed to land at his feet, and she's already bounding off to the side. She shuts her eyes just in time for the flash, midair to her handhold on a branch to swing herself up. Distance, always distance. ]

[ He'd been testing the theory. Sure enough, as soon as he moved into a combat stance, she switched to flight. He'd been right in the first place; this wasn't what she'd trained for. She could watch her environment, take advantage of height to avoid getting caught without a place to escape to, adjust and compensate mid-movement, but when it came to following through, there wasn't anything that she could do. If her opponent simply chose not to pursue her, then what?

Still, Bruce gets blinded by the flash only because in the darkness he doesn't know when to close his eyes. They're shut before it's reached its brightest, but the phosphorescence has done enough, and Bruce closes his eyes calmly, waits, listens, letting the spots sparkle and dance behind his eyes, but ready for any telltale whisper of noise that might give away an unexpected attack.

Because that would be what he did next. This was the moment when, using a line and a grapple, individual thugs could be snatched up and dangled a hundred feet above the ground; other than beating them into a bloody pulp, this part was his specialty. ]

[ After she catches her footing on the branch of her choice, she goes still. There are no telltale whispers of noise, no scrape of boot agains branch or brush of cloth. She bites her lip, waiting, tensed but unsure of herself. Will he attack? Does he have something planned? Should she make a move? But what kind of move?

The moment drags on, and she's sure that her advantage of the flash is rapidly fading away. Finally she speaks, her voice sounding high and disruptive to her own ears in the silence of the arena. ]

You... want a spar, or what?

[ She doesn't like that she has to ask, it throws off the rhythm entirely. What kind of Robin can't seamlessly interpret Batman's moves and go along with it? But this is new ground to her, and she doesn't like the uncertainty of it. ]

[ He waits for only a moment longer, letting the ringing question hang in midair, and then there's a chink of metal on wood as the grapple violently releases, and the whoosh of the line as it returns back to the launcher. His own flash pellet goes back into the belt at his waist, the one piece of his costume he'd deliberately worn.

Bruce visibly disengages in the darkness below, takes a single breath to expel some of the battleready tension in his muscles, then raises his eyes back up to the canopy as at last the fog behind them clears. He still can't see Carrie, but he knows she's there. ]

How about an appraisal? You can come down.

[ That feels like failure — she hasn't lived up to some expectation, so the game is over. She hesitates a second or two, then leaps into open air. She lands lightly, straightens from a partial crouch, and stands at the ready. Like a soldier awaiting orders. Or a chewing out, as the case may be. Either way, she's silent and readied. ]

[ If Bruce knows that she's disappointed he doesn't show it. Instead he checks her over to make sure none of his traps have caused her any harm. The thin light from the candle reaches them well in this part of the clearing, and his eyes have finished readapting to the light by the time he speaks. ]

I didn't understand before. I was taught how to care for myself, to disappear as though part of the darkest shadow, to use my surroundings, my mind, as well as my body. But I was also taught how to fight; eye to eye, fist to fist, blade to blade.

Most importantly I learned to use distraction to build an advantage. That's what you are, isn't it? You're the distraction--you're the flash pellet. ...When I had become too slow to move too quickly enough to not be seen.

[ Save for a few scrapes and bruises, which are mostly indistinguishable in the darkness and around her clothes, she's unharmed. But as she listen her posture shifts a little, less ramrod straight. That's right. She'd forgotten again. Obviously this is not the same Bruce, obviously he's from a different world with different memories... but he's different, too. It's hard to keep that in mind, especially in the wake of an exercise like this one.

She nods, though there's the crease of a frown in it. ]

More'n that, too.

[ Not that she contests being a distraction. What else is the bright yellow cape for? Still, she has her pride in her usefulness to stick up for, here. But how do you define your whole purpose in a couple words? ]

Robin's the... the backup. Batman's got a plan, so Robin takes care of all the extra details on it. [ And sometimes it's Robin with the plan instead... but she'd rather have that discovered for himself than explained. She cocks her head, trying to see if he's got it, or she's done a terrible job with words. ] Anywhere the boss needed an extra hand, I had two.

[ Bruce processes the extra information quickly. Backup, not take down. He'd been able to work out the distraction element from the pursuit, he'd known there was a problem-solving element of it from when Carrie had followed him down by the beach. But he's still new to the idea of a partner, and it's a lot to process at once. Or rather, it's been a lot to process. He's had time to work through it.

At the bottom of it all, though, standing pro to con with 'I work alone', is one very simple fact: if he'd had a partner when he'd been taking on the Joker, someone to follow Harvey, what had happened to him might have been prevented. And before that--maybe with a partner, he'd have been able to save Rachel, too.

Anywhere he "needed an extra hand." ]

I can adapt to that, though it seems obvious to me that this can't be the last test. [ He had to know how she performed with research, first aid, urban reconnaissance. But maybe he could discover that in time. ]

If you're going to manage any of this with any independence, you'll have to learn how to perform a takedown on your own. I have a few ideas for how you can do that without losing your distance.

[ Of course she expects tests, that's not news to her — but she definitely perks with interest at the idea of a takedown with distance. That's the kind of thing the boss never taught her much about. Not after Todd's empty suit displayed in that silent glass case in the cave. ]

Yeah? [ Brightly, enthusiasm restored. ] So lay it on me, what's the ideas?

[ He removes his grapple gun from his belt, stepping in toward her with the grip turned in her direction. ]

I'll have to put my mind to some of the others--I'm thinking some sort of magnetic net, but maybe there's a way to use your slingshot as a launcher. Of course we'll have to find a way to get hold of carbon monofilament cable, but we're in the right place for salvage tech.

[ Bruce could innovate with the best of them, but he tended to leave invention to other people, and instead adapt the technology he found to suit his plans. If they could find the cable in sufficient lengths, Bruce was certain that he could build an explosive projectile that would wrap unbreakable cable around an assailant and with some luck, snap closed with strong magnets thereafter. ]

Do you know how to use this?

[ A magnetic net? That sounds awesome. Her eyes go bright, even if she doesn't actually voice the enthusiasm, and she steps forward to reach for that proffered grapple gun. ]

Sure. Got my own, too. [ Not quite like this one, though. This one is good, but a little... old. She looks over it curiously, noting similarities and differences. ] Figure like I can keep an eye out for stray tech — couldn't pay me to do summer school, so I got the time.

[ An extra eye being kept out for 'stray' technology is more than appreciated. Even if he doesn't pick up the cowl again, Bruce knows he'll need to be surrounded by technology just to feel safe. While he'd already set up a certain amount of pressure pads and switches and recording devices around his residence, so far most of it had been salvaged from his suit--he'd have to replace them. ]

You'll need to manage your time better than that. You should be able to hold your own against an assailant like me in straight up combat, too. Sometimes you won't be able to run. I'll teach you as much as I can.

Now show me. [ A nod toward the grapple gun, and he stepped back. ]

Kidding. [ She glances up at him from the grappling gun, a small smile in place. ] Place like this, with superpowers all over and the government playing friendly? Gonna need loads more training. Wouldn't have time for school anyway.

[ She doesn't say it like it'll be a chore, though. She sounds outright excited about the prospect. And on that note she fires off the grappling hook to let it catch in the trees above. She takes an instant to test her weight on it, then hits the retraction and zooms up and out of sight. The thing runs pretty good for an older model. ]

You don't know how you got here; you just know you want out.

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