tushanshu_logs

Characters: Dinah Lance and OPEN
Date: July, all after Clueventure
Location: Wood Sector, and wherever you need her.
Situation: There are ideas and commitments that Dinah started before being distracted by detective work. Now she intends to follow up on them.
Warnings/Rating: Blood, wounds in the Arthur thread.
I started with prose, but will switch to action if you'd like.

General Starter: She found it in the wood sector, a courtyard formed by four trees growing from each corner, growing and intertwining together above, walled by hedges that have been growing out since the last master left. As soon as she had a spare morning and the presence of mind to do so, it is here Dinah returns.

She keeps the name and cleans first the sign painted so neatly in Chinese: “The Jade School of Kung Fu, overseen by Grand Master Shifu.” She doesn't know what happened to the Grand Master, but a dojo cannot be left unused, and she plans to honor this Master she never met by returning his space to the use it was intended.

She sent messages to the people she knew were interested in training with her, to let them know where they could be found, then she set about trimming the hedges, sweeping the building and the courtyard, and transforming it into a usable dojo again.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She's quiet for a few more seconds, watching him fidget in place on the cell. Then she's hit suddenly by the full force of how much this sucks for a speedster - a depowered speedster, because the return of her cry this morning doesn't appear to have applied to the boys here - to be trapped in this room for any length of time.

She's also surprised by the vehemence of his convictions. This is more than just running off with a repowering device, which was the impression she was getting.

She rests two fingers against her chin and watches him.

"I'm sorry, why does that mean that can't be the reason?"

Bart's actually not all that fond of the PSD - they'd tried to make off with them to beat the kedan back to the warehouse, not because he wanted his speed back so badly that he was willing to keep using that thing indefinitely.

First of all, the abrupt flipping between powered and non- made him feel a little sick. It wasn't just, oh, I can scream now if I want to. It felt like being jerked through a wormhole by his belly button. The whole world went from 1000x speed to slow motion instant replay when the device kicked on. Bart can handle either one - he's fine now, when the rate is constant, although he's lost some of the urgency. That vibe he normally gave off of being barely contained is gone. It's the switch that threw him, and he was going to give the machine back when they were done.

Secondly - and way more importantly - Bart doesn't like machines that can mess with the Speed Force, for the obvious-to-him reason that the one someone built went critical and almost took out the West Coast. But Dinah might not know that, and no one needs to know that. He doesn't want to hear it for even touching the thing. "Seriously? Because you just said that they were going to send in uniforms to make the arrests and they didn't. So why did they call us off and try to collect the PSDs? I'm a total captive audience here. I've got all day."

"Oh."

She exhales, and shakes her head as if to clear it.

"I thought you meant foreigners. I've heard of more than a few kedan arrests being made."

Not least because the kedan she ran into herself were arrested.

That mollifies him considerably, and Bart relaxes a little and eases off on the full-steam-ahead arguing. He's still chafing at everything though, and she's moved onto something else that bugs him. "Why are you separating us from the kedan like that? By calling us 'foreigners', I mean. That's the label they slapped on us. OK. Yeah, it fits, but that's not how they say it. They say it like we're an intrusion. Like I asked to be here. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised to be here, either."

Bart looked pointedly around his cell. "Because they're dragging us here in the first place and overextending their resources to the point of rationing. The past month I've been going hungry, getting depowered, and now I'm cooling it in the slammer which isn't as badass as it sounds. I'm having a really shitty month for someone whose only crime was trying to help.

"Because it was a convenient way of distinguishing us. It's not like I could say 'human.'"

But her tone has completely shifted. She can't even pretend to stay mad right now, or to try and find it amusing.

Quietly: "I know."

She also knows how little she can do about his shitty month.

"Convenient, but it still stinks. Like, it's already us-versus-them. Labels aren't helping. I know I do it too. At least I haven't starting nick naming them yet. There's a merchant by me, looks just like Flipper. Maybe I should just get it over with and lump them all in together because I can. Maybe then I won't be stupid enough to try and work with my own kidnappers.

Because he really feels like an idiot for having even bothered.

She doesn't say anything to that, because there's not a lot to say. 'us versus them' - it's not, and she can't really think of it that way. It's all of them, kedan and 'foreigners' in it together, except she, and some others, specifically signed up for a specific job to help. Because she can't do anything else.

And she knows he's angry and frustrated, and blowing off steam.

So she sits and she waits to see if he has anything else to say.

He's said his piece, and, while Bart wants to keep the conversation going to eat up time, he's just going to keep going in circles now. He resumes his sideways seated position, tucking his knees back up to his chest. "Why did you come here, anyway?"

"To see if you were okay," she says simply. "Or at least, to see if there was anything I could do to make your stay here easier."

"I'm great." It's cocky and flippant, and he lets it hang there for awhile before explaining in a tone with less bite, "Really, I'm fine. We didn't get roughed up, and we didn't assault any kedan so they can't be too mad at us. I'm just a little stir crazy."

Bart picks at the material that's stretched over and slightly bunching around his knee. "You wouldn't have any books on you, would you? In English?"

"Sorry."

Dinah leans back in her chair, pushing her hair back from her face and scrunching it into a fist before letting it go. "I don't think I have any books in English, period.

"I brought a chess set for Superboy, though. He'll need an opponent."

[Open]

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