dear_mun | (no subject)

...do I get to pet your giant kitty, please? [Kronk figured that'd be a no, but he just HAD to ask! And he said please too.]

Any hand you extend toward this cat, you will not get back.

[That was language so plain that even Kronk understood it! No petting.]

What's her favorite thing to eat?

You havin' that much trouble finding action, Blake?

I'm a hunter, I get restless without territory to hunt in.

People who lead with questions about touching her.

...huh?

[Kronk was so confused, even for him.] Is that giant kitty your girlfriend? [Either way, Kronk politely stopped looking at it!]

Guess you would, at that. But you ain't got any place you were plannin' on looking at?

Personally, I've got no problem coolin' my heels right here. It's a pretty comfortable place an' offers all kinds of opportunities for peoplewatching, you know?

Not really. The mun just made this account after rereading some of my little misadventures in being a career criminal.

What kind of place do you mean, exactly?

There's some good places out there, it all depends on whatcha want to do with yourself.

capeandcowl's probably the closest thing to home, though.

This spot, the one that's kinda between spots. Here's where nothin' you do really matters, where you get to learn what you've got no way of knowin', and can go ahead an' call these jagoffs out. [He pointed upward, at his and Catman's muns.]

Other places, you don't even know they're there. Here's supposed to be more of a combination testing grounds and bitchfest about things you don't like, but...

[He shrugged.] I dunno, I like it here. It's a place where I don't have to do the things I do.

Way I hear it, that place had a "me", way back when.

I think my life became enough of a shithole without directly antagonizing the pricks in control of it. I'm not keen on doing it now. At least you had consistent characterization for your whole run.

Don't suppose you've seen any Bats flying around in here?

Could well be, can't say I checked. Rather blaze your own trail than pick up where other-you left off, huh?

Eh, one'a the big reasons they like us is that we'd speak our minds an' kick the asses of those that tried to jerk us around. I ain't gonna sweat it- an' when the reason for that steady characterization is that my story ended when my book did, hope you don't mind if I hold the sympathy. Least you got a shot at makin' it into the new place someday.

Seen a couple Bats, a couple Cats- of the feminine variety, mind- an' even a Bane pretty recently. You lookin' for some folks to get bounced off of?

Do I want to know where you got that, Blake? You haven't been breaking into zoos again, have you?

Just came to me out of the blue, around here. Can't really question a gift lion in the mouth, you know? Nice to see you, again. Haven't seen any of you guys since...Well, you know. That wonderful screw-up of Bane's. I knew I shouldn't have entertained his madness.

Well, considering where we're from, the concept of alternative selves isn't that revolutionary.

Don't know if I even want to. Thus far, the mun isn't exactly keen on most of it. Not to mention once of the reasons my crew got broken up is to start fresh for that abomination of a universe reset. You didn't get it bad, either. A good run, compelling stories, and you went out on top. Never have to worry about someone making you into a bigger loser, or using you as random d-list fodder.

It'll give me something to do, until he makes up his damned mind on where to put me.

Well, in our collective defense, it seemed like a perfectly plausible idea after taking on Hell itself. Even now, it doesn't seem particularly more or less half-cocked, depraved or lacking in sanity than anything else we ever did.

The Bat gives me considerably more trouble than most of those demons did. Most of them were all brawn and no strategy. The heavy hitters in the League could clean the clock of every demon we fought that day. Looking back, I realize those guys were just the low-tiers, like us. If they had been half as powerful as the metas in the League, we'd have never left alive.

Heh, too true. You oughta see the me they woulda talked about in the weirdass future.

Know what you mean, my guy's washed his hands of the whole thing; he makes his Marvel, when he goes for anythin' at all. But as for the rest... Blake, I went out tryin' to secure a future for a girl who didn't deserve what she was getting. An' now that future's gone with all the rest, so that kinda takes out the point, don't it?

Still, I get what you're saying. I may've been just Gotham bar trash, but at least I got a couple things right...

Heh. Guess I oughta thank you for the pep talk after all.

Anyway, sounds plenty fair. I generally just track the DC tag to find someone I can chat with... Which reminds me, there was a King Shark lookin' for attention none too long ago.

Have you considered the idea that we were allowed to escape? With our souls damned as they are, I see no reason for them to have killed us then.

Not when they could allow us to return, inflict our special brand of suffering on each other -and most everyone else we dealt with- and probably drag a few poor saps down with us eventually.

I think the demons have more in common with the Bat that he'd like to think about. Nothing is an accident.

You're one of the good ones, Tommy. As good as people who do what we do can be. When you took out somebody, they generally had it coming. Sure, the white hats aren't going to see it that way, but at the end of it all your job was to make the world a little bit better, one shit-head at a time. And you got paid well to do it.

Me? The six? We did it too, but not just that. We killed innocent people, either as a group or in our own early careers. A lot of them. That never washes off. I've seen Hell, Tommy. I know that's my fate, and I'm pretty sure I won't see you down there.

Sure, your death wasn't the prettiest, but it was quick. We all face that. People who do our work don't die as old men, surrounded by our grandchildren, Tommy. That's we had to give up. I gave up my son for it. So he didn't have to be a part of that. I loved him enough to have him never know who I was.

Edited 2012-08-14 02:57 (UTC)

Maybe. I guess it would make sense in a twisted, demon way. You'd probably be more an expert in that field than I am. I deal with what I encounter in nature, and they aren't it. Either way, I've made peace with it.

Only thing now is to decide what to do until then. What about you? Still palling around with Pornstache?

He seems to have been "iconic" enough to have warrented being used in the reboot. [There may or may not be some bitter muttering involving the phrase "mall goth clown groupie harlot" here.] I've decided to take a bit of a breather, myself.

Ah, right. He's not Pornstache anymore, is he? The mun seems to be grumbling a lot, now. Way I hear it, that Harley girl and King Shark got dicked over pretty hard, too. Now he's a Hammerhead with no personality, and she's a psycho...Well, she always was, but she was a cute, bubbly psycho. Now's she's just trashy.

[Sigh. Thomas really was going for a measuring contest, wasn't he?]

Blake. The difference between me an' the six? You guys know who your innocents were. I tried to stay on the right side'a the line I drew, yeah- but I couldn't ever say that I did.

As for the kid, we both know you did right by him- as best you could, anyway. But if you'd ever met Sean Noonan, you'd know damned well just how much crap you were talking about our lifestyle. The only thing keeping us in it is the fact that we won't let it go, won't suck it up an' swallow our pride to live a quieter life.

Maybe I didn't make it to a happy retirement, but I know that people can. You reinvented yourself as a stone-cold badass, Blake; you ever wonder what life could be like if you tried reinventing yourself as a fundamentally decent guy? Cause that's something you of all people oughta remember, that so long as there's life there's a chance to change- for the worse or for the better. All that's standin' in your way is yourself.

Edited 2012-08-14 04:26 (UTC)

[He's at home in his pathos.]

I've tried that route. Never sticks. Even if it did, they wouldn't let it. Not between the bad guys holding onto old grudges, and the good guys watching me every day, waiting for me to screw up.

You were at least able to have a decent conversation with the big blue boy, Tommy. They look at me and the revulsion and urge to lock me up is unmistakable on their faces. It's also more personal. You need to remember, Tommy, the last mission we had was a pointless vendetta meant to kill or cripple as many friends of Batman as we could. They don't just forget something like that.

It is good to see a comrade here.

Well, there's a sight for sore eyes. What are you doing here, Bane? Not planning more ill-conceived attempts at Gotham, I hope.

Primarily the same thing you are. Fighting apathy and entropy. But you should know better than most that nothing I do is ill-conceived.

Even by our standards, that job was a pretty colossal fuck-up. Not that I really have that big a problem with it. Truth be told, it was kind of a relief not having to follow through with it.

Did you? Did you try quieter, blendin' in and living a normal life not as Tom Blake who walks with lions or whatever, but as John Drake, sure I know him, plays weekend football with the boys and always stands his round? You know damn well that even in your day it's totally possible to get away clean- not perfectly clean, but enough so that you wouldn't be worth the effort of findin'. Especially if you made a few solid friends, afterward.

You think I don't know that look? I saved the whole freakin' League once from getting nuked off the face of the moon, an' they turned around an' gave me to the cops in handcuffs. That buncha clowns- aside from Supes- have their collective heads up their asses, an' you know it; the key is to just stay off their radar.

...Which, yeah, is a lot easier when you don't pull ungodly stupid crap like that. What the hell were you thinking? Nevermind, nevermind...

Still. Even with all that, it'd still be possible. It's amazing how fast they forget after a few years of ultracrisises an' burying their own, so long as you keep your head down.

I tend to prefer lions to people, Tommy. I was content to stay "off the radar" until people killed my pride.

That's your luxury, man. I dunno what to tell you, these days Detroit's a lot more incognito than the middle'a Africa- and tryin' to quit humanity just makes you an exposed target.