Summary:Zatanna brings Bruce information. Selina brings Zatanna some serious hurt. Log Info:Storyteller: None |
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Blackout curtains mean that it's not especially obvious in the master bedchamber of stately Wayne Manor that it's 10:30 AM, the sun is shining, and there's not a cloud in the sky. For most of the working world, 10:30 AM is right when that coffee is kicking in fully and people are starting to feel completely human again. For vigilantes? 10:30 AM is deep in the REM cycle. Alfred's still an hour or two away from having to even start breakfast, probably.
Zatanna Zatara knows one thing, which is that she needs to help Bruce get better magickal defenses on his house. Maybe he had them once — she hopes he did, if her dad was involved — but it's been years. Moving furniture can disrupt patterns to devastating effect, but most interior designers wouldn't be thinking about THAT. The sorceress isn't there, and then she is, like she was edited into the film via jump cut.
Zatanna is in black: black high-waisted slim-fit jeans, black knee-high boots with spike heels, black stones in her jewelry, black choker, black vintage t-shirt, fashionably moth-eaten, with the sleeves sawn off and the collar surgically expanded, to make it more like a tank top, advertising whatever 'THE CRAMPS' are.
"Bruce. …Bruce." Zatanna says it softly, then more loudly. She reaches out to touch the man's shoulder in bed, hoping that her reflexes are good enough to avoid a wake-up judo toss.
Selina Kyle has no business condemning anyone on earth for going into someone's home without their permission - hell, not even for going into Wayne Manor specifically - but let it never be said she's not both territorial, and a massive hyprocrite.
Also, in her defense, she's not exactly awake.
"Hnnnnooooo. I don't want to do the interview after all…" Selina grumbles resentful of even the concept of being awake as she briefly drags a pillow over the top of her her head; dressed in a simple black tanktop and black pajama pants. Then she processes the female voice in the room. Then she cranes her neck to look back towards - and past - Bruce.
Then there's a pillow flying directly towards Zatanna's face, and by the time it's fallen to chest level, Selina's in the process of using Bruce's body like a balance beam to pull herself forward and swing her leg out at Zatanna with a growl.
An extra second of looking might have prevented this, but reflexes are what they are.
Batman arrived home just before the dawn. No injuries, not tonight. While he's been busy, he's been cautious. Deep in his slumber, he didn't think his interview with Betty was /today/. At least that's his first thought when he feels someone shaking him awake. "Selina?" he manages with a mumble. "Is it noon already?" he starts to ask, before one eye opens towards the woman at the edge of the bed.
"Payback is a bitch." he says dryly to Zatanna, as he starts to stir.
And with those fateful words - Selina's on the attack, leaping at Zatanna. It causes Bruce to sit straight up in the bed as he just barely misses Selina going out to strike at the magician. "Selina!" he calls out, pushing out of the bed and reaching out to try to grab at her. "It's Zatanna!" As he pushes out of the bed to try to try to get between Zatanna and Selina, and of course, it answers that old question of boxers or briefs.
Boxer style briefs. And no, there's not Bat-symbols on them.
It's nice that Bruce is so calm because Zatanna is on all fours on the ground, wheezing painfully. The pillow to the face did its job: surprising her and blocking her view. And before she could get out a 'what' Selina had nailed the kick to the liver with a speed, accuracy, and all-around ferocity that would make professional cagefighters start sweating.
With as much red wine as Zatanna consumes, the effect of squeezing all those stored toxins back out into her body has her almost totally helpless for a minute. "Agh— Auuuhh— Fuhhh—"
At the very least, Zatanna seems like she's resisting throwing up. On the other hand, she doesn't seem like she's going to be answering Bruce's witty repartee just yet. The back of her shirt (a couple sizes too large, tucked into those high-waisted jeans) says 'SONGS THE LORD TAUGHT US.'
Selina is caught by Bruce, but her leg still snaps out in the moment between Bruce's shout and her brain processing it, so by the time she's pulled her leg back, her eyes are wide, and she's got a hand over her mouth. "*Ohhhh*- cr- aaaa, oh *hon*!" She stammers and stumbles with uncharacteristic sympathy, squirming out of Bruce's grasp and sliding onto the floor to roughly Zatanna's eye level. "I'm- *oh*- I'm *real* sorry, do you-" she snatches Bruce's bottle of water off the bedside table and holds it out. "Do you need anything? Do you need water? Do you need an ice pack? Do you have to throw up? It's okay to throw up, we have a butler for that."
Selina pauses and glances aside to nothing in particular as the shock of guilt starts to wear off, "… We also have a butler for doorbells."
She really can't help herself.
One arm holds Selina at the waist, trying to keep her from killing Zatanna before you know, she processes that she's a friend, and not someone in the bedroom trying to kill them. While Selina starts to go check on Zatanna, Bruce drops on the bed to sit, and frowns. "I'm going to give you a moment to compose yourself, Zatanna. And then I want you to explain yourself." he comments.
Because yes, they have a butler. Finally pushing to his feet, he goes to get a robe to toss towards Selina as he starts to slip on his own robe.
Zatanna rolls over to sit on the floor, and the look on her face is like someone who's undergoing invasive surgery without anesthesia. For the professional entertainer who prides herself on always being able to turn on the charm, it's a bold new direction. "Owwww," she says after a long moment, droning out the sound like she's trying to induce a trance state.
"I was in a hurry," Zatanna groans from the floor. She doesn't resist Selina getting in close, but she also doesn't respond to offers of water, a puke bucket, and so forth. "I did a 'take me to Batman' and I didn't think it'd take me so… CLOSE." Zatanna is still breathing heavily, but after about a minute on the floor, she's ready to try and get up. She's wobbly. It'll be a little while before she's not feeling that kick so acutely.
"About… Plokta," Zatanna wheezes once she's on her feet.
Selina is tempted to be, well, catty, but she did just punt a family friend in the liver, so she's probably taken her allotment of liberties for today, even if Zatanna did sort of break in. Selina sets the water aside, grimacing sympathetically as she sort of rises to her feet along with Zatanna until they get half way, at which point Selina sits down on the edge of the bed, offhandedly catching the robe as Bruce throws it to her. "Well, I don't want to tell your business with magic…" she says while putting the robe on, "But it seems like it needs fine tuning."
She COULD be angrier. But she's either too tired, too frazzled by the mood whiplash of going from attack to regret, or she's actually matured? But that can't be it.
"Plotka" gets an uncomprehending tilt of the head before she looks to Bruce, letting him field this one.
That straightens Bruce's spine. There's a frown as he ties the robe into place, and looks to Selina. "Plokta is the demon that has been behind the kidnappings I told you about." he explains to her as he gestures to the chaise. "Take a seat, Zatanna." comes the offer as he goes to open the door, and waits for Alfred - who clearly heard the commotion. "We have an extra plate for breakfast, Alfred. Miss Zatara decided to drop in."
"Very good, Master Bruce." comes the response from the butler, perhaps with a lift of his brow at the owner of the manor, but turns to finish preparing breakfast - after he puts away the shotgun.
"What did you find out?" he asks as he turns his attention back to the two women to go take a seat on the edge of the bed.
"I think if I eat or drink anything after that I'll die like the guy in Kill Bill," Zatanna says, almost to herself. She doesn't specify which guy, so the interpretation is left to the listener.
Zatanna does take the chair, though, and breathes for a moment. She reaches into… a back pocket…? and pulls out the glass(?) flechette that Bruce had given her previously. Was it actually in her back pocket? It's a casual feat of sleight of hand that would likely be enough even to impress the cat burglar sitting on the bed. If only Zatanna had gone into thieving…!
"Okay, so… this?" Zatanna reaches out to hand the flechette back to Bruce. "That's Gossamer. You don't get that on Earth. That's from the Fair Lands. Call it Avalon, or Elvenhome, or Domdaniel, or… Faerie. Doesn't matter. The Land of Summer's Twilight." Zee says all of these names with great importance, like she's reciting a famous quote. "Nowadays most people call it Otherworld. Anyway… it's not like iron or anything. You can't just build a forge and away you go. To make Gossamer into a weapon? You need serious magickal skills."
Selina frowns and nods once when Bruce clarifies, then blinks once at Zatanna. A lot of guys died in Kill Bill.
As Zatanna speaks, Selina begins to develop the sinking feeling that she's going to need to start keeping up with all this magic stuff. She had a really good run of being a normal person, though! Good times. "Okay… I'm guessing this Ploka guy isn't looking for a kid who can make it, though right?"
"The kids are being brought into the Nightfall to be made into tattoo casters.." At least that's what Bruce is assuming is happening from the casefile he's been reading. "Otherworld. So he is a fae? Or is he something else?" he asks, letting Zatanna take the floor for now as he folds his hands into his lap. Glancing aside to Selina, there's a little frown of concern, and he reaches over, touching her hand.
It's a brief touch, and if she glances up, he'll cut her a small nod of reassurance. This isn't exactly his paygrade either.
"Though the idea of a fae - is he having these children kidnapped for himself?" he asks Zatanna, as he finally reaches for the other bottle of water on the nighstand to take a draw from it. "Gossamer - like the spider's silk?" he asks her curiously.
"Gossamer with a capital G," Zatanna says. "Similar, but… I mean, there's a lot of stuff in Otherworld that's SIMILAR to here, at first glance, but… it's deceiving." Zatanna seems to be thinking as she goes, trying to give this TED Talk for an uninitiated audience.
"As best I can tell? Plokta isn't one of the Fair Folk himself, but… he's clearly got some kind of 'in' there. Maybe an alliance, maybe he grabbed some territory, maybe a boon of some kind… there are a million possibilities with the way politics work there. So I don't know just yet." Zatanna breathes out. "These weapons aren't being forged in Otherworld — the Gossamer is arriving here and THEN being refined. So Nightfall has a serious mage in their midst, probably working directly with Plokta to arrange this pipeline. Think about it like, uh, drugs. Plokta is the cartel guy south of the border, smuggling the cocaine up to the distributor in Ohio, and then the dealer there is, like, cooking it into crack or whatever. Just replace 'cocaine' with 'magical Faerie silk' and 'crack' with 'sharp weapons.'"
Zatanna is off to the races, by now. She seems to mostly be recovered from the liver kick, or at the very least, this topic has her so engaged that she's forgetting her own pain. "I also found in one of my dad's books… it's not a CONCLUSIVE tie, but there's a thing that looks a lot like the Nightfall symbol tied with these ancient writings about the sun being eaten as kind of one of those, building a better world through total apocalypse type deals. I need to get a second opinion on that stuff before I can say anything more conclusively."
There's a slow nod of Bruce's head as he takes in the information, then he starts to process it. His first question is obvious - but one that he had only just thought about. "Zatanna, when is the next Solar eclipse, and does it coincide with any magical rites?" he asks her. "The moon devouring the sun, it could very well be referring to one." he comments as he settles into a more studious position. "With their uptick in activity, it could be the reason why we've seen more of them recently than we have in the past."
"Fae, historically, have been weak to iron. That parses out. But it doesn't give us much to work on as far as what part of Otherworld that Plokta may have taken." He blows out a breath in thought - "If we had access to a Captain Britain, they would be able to give us access to Avalon to find out what's going on there."
"July, in South America," Zatanna replies without even pausing to think about it. Some things, she just knows. "I'm hoping I can grab an ear or two who might be more up on the current events in Otherworld. Besides this, someone else came to me with evidence of some kind of, like, absolutely bad-news Unseelie summoning and while I don't KNOW that it's connected…"
Zatanna allows herself a low-key smile. "Well, I hardly have to tell the world's greatest detective what a hunch feels like, right?" She breathes out. "I'm visiting the schools today. Doing some free publicity performances and, you know. Hopefully it'll help the healing process a bit, but at the same time I'll glean what info I can from whatever rituals I can get one there."
Zatanna pauses for a whole beat, then looks at Selina, and then Bruce. Her expression is dead serious. "In the meantime… look, I know I don't need to tell either of you to be careful about things. But… I have to say. If this ends up with direct contact with the Fair Folk… leave it to me, or to Stephen, or to another mage. Please. Don't talk to them, don't fight them, and above all else, do not ever, ever, ever, EVER accept a gift from them. Don't even fucking let them hand you something." Zatanna looks to the open door to the master bedroom. "Don't let her, either," she says, not needing to specify who she's referring to. "This isn't just, like, gangbangers with guns."
Selina frowns, feeling an odd sense of heavyness about her shoulders - something in the neighborhood of dread as all these warnings are given out, the faustian implications left to her imagination. "We won't. She assures softly, also glancing at the door. "And I'll make sure our… circle knows it."
"Eastside Elementary - her name's Meredith Youvin." Bruce responds. "She has ties to a gang working with El Golfo." And then he pauses, and considers. He looks from Zatanna and then Selina, and then his attention returns to Zatanna. Could that be a ghost of a smile on Bruce's face? "I already have Selina and Helena planning to shake her down." he comments quietly.
A hint of pride. Perhaps worry - he's letting Helena go out. For the first time in all of the insanity in their lives. "I'll make sure to have them in possession of cold iron as they need it as well." he adds for Zatanna's benefit.
"Cool," Zatanna replies, though she still seems… concerned, especially when Helena is invoked by name. For magicians, all kinds of trouble comes when you start throwing names around.
With a gently pained "oof," Zatanna rises out of the chair. "I gotta go. I gotta get ready for the shows and, uh, maybe my dad's old rolodex has a working number for Thor in it, or something." She smiles, like she's back to making jokes and pleasing the crowd. She doesn't go in for a hug, because both of them are half-dressed. "Give my love to Helena, and Alfred too," she says. "I'll be in touch. And I'll call first, next time."
Zatanna grins, and winks. Then she walks through the open door of the bedroom, turns the corner just out of sight… and she's gone, like she was never there at all.
Selina is merrily oblivious to the problem with names. That might not do her any favors under the circumstances. She smiles, despite herself as Zatanna gives her love to pass on, and nods once. "I will. And! Sorry again abou-" And then Zatanna's gone. Selina gestures at the empty space and then drops her hand in her lap. "See, I usually had to look away from you before you could do that."
"Who do you think taught it to me?" Bruce asks Selina, a hint of mischief in his eyes. "I'll tell Alfred to cancel the meal." he mutters as he moves to remove the robe and drop back into bed. "Two more hours, just to process all of this." he murmurs, leaving plenty of room for Selina to join him.
"Oohhhh thank god." Selina sighs and flops backward, not especially caring where in the geography of the bed she falls on as long as she can go into a coma on it.