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The Last Embers (Dark Steampunk/Fantasy)

For a moment, as the Sword of Dawn finally entered the Narrow Gates, there was perfect silence against a watercolor tableau: a strip of orange overhead, a deep and perfect blue beneath, and two vast, endless planes of gray to either side, all woven together by a thread of deadly white.

Then there was a shout from behind her, and in nearly the same instant, the glowing sphere of ether exploded against a sudden shield of crystalline energy, throwing shards of magic light in all directions.

The Sword didn’t so much as rock beneath them, and Banou turned, equal parts awed and curious, to see the man who had tried to speak to her before, his eyes turned upward toward his creation. She watched, quiet as his expression flashed from surprise, to cautious satisfaction, and then again to instant horror as his paling expertly diverted the ether attack into the wall of the glacier less than twenty yards away.

This time, there was no paling to cushion the blow.

Banou had just enough time to scream the first word she’d spoken since they’d set out - “Brace!” - as the first chunk of glacier broke away from the wall and plunged into the narrow channel before them, obliterating the thin layer of ice they’d been gliding along and throwing the Sword of Dawn into a steep rear, its bow pointing skyward.

The young soldier leapt desperately forward even as she felt herself hurled back. Furious, she reached over her shoulder, and grabbed the haft of her ice spear, yanking so hard, she felt the leather straps tense than snap as she drove its point into the first surface she could find. It skittered uselessly over black metal, but it was just enough for her to grab the helm with her free hand and pull herself upright again as the Sword righted a second later.

No sooner had she found her feet than her eyes fell on another barrage, threatening doom for their starboard side. Thinking quickly, Banou dropped her spear, pinned it beneath a foot, and grabbed the helm with both hands to pull hard to port. Hopefully, the others had heard and heeded her advice. Better everyone come out a bit nauseous than trapped under a glacier.

The Sword seemed to make sickeningly slow progress. With the ice they’d been traveling over shattered into haphazard obstructions, she moved faster, but responded too sluggishly. They just narrowly avoided losing a starboard panel before Banou was hurriedly pushing the engines hard to avoid a second collision with the yet-undamaged glacier to their left. For a moment, the Sword threatened to fishtail, attempting to wrench itself from her grip to join the ether blast in destroying itself against a vast wall of ice.

Growling, she wrenched it back again, hardly daring to breathe as she fought to straighten the racer once more. She could feel sweat dripping into her eyes despite the cold. Her arms ached with the effort of keeping the racer from driving too far to either side, from skipping over the still-falling chunks of ice, from dipping beneath the waves they threw in her wake. It was not a ship in the traditional sense, could not handle a tide that was never meant to -

“Look out!”

The soldier dared to lift her eyes, gray as the ice itself, from the helm for only a moment, already knowing what she would see, only now hearing the glaciers groan and crumble like thunder over the high whine in her ears. It seemed impossible, unfair even, that so much ice could fall and still leave the Gates so coldly pristine. It was as if a third wall had formed, falling from the sky instead of rising from the ocean. It was easily at least half the size of the Sword, nearly as wide as the narrow chasm itself. It bumped and scraped its way between the two walls, somewhat slowed by its size, but bringing another hailstorm in its wake.

There was no going around this one.

Almost without thinking, Banou stooped and plunged her spear between two prongs of the helm, burying the tip in the softer wall of the console behind it. She could already hear the engines chugging and straining, but hopefully, this wouldn’t take more than a second. Next, she quickly toggled the controls to seal the Sword. She wasn’t sure when the thing had last made its dive, but they’d be taking on quite a bit more water if she did nothing.

At the rear of the racer, she could hear the telltale mechanic whir as a sleek of thick black glass and metal began its journey aft to fore to seal the Sword against a field of orange and white. Banou risked a backward glanced, swallowed a curse, and then yanked her spear free of the controls to push the racer forward into a dive.

A second later, the great chunk of ice struck the channel before them.

Like a geyser, a great plume of ice and water roared into the air, forced higher and faster for the closeness of the glaciers. Torrential waves were sent crashing in both directions, surging several yards up the narrow channel, flushing the remainders of ice away like so much dust in a storm. The damaged glacier, its face still stunningly smooth, seemed itself to tremble, acquiesce, and then loose its final assault, adding to the cacophony of blue and gray and white.

And then, as quickly as it had come, the torrent was gone, the water had settled, and there was silence, marred only by the almost peaceful lapping of waves against the ice.

The Sword of Dawn was nowhere to be seen.

The Hands of Other Men

The Hands of Other Men

A Gotham Story

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
~ George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

The Hands of Other Men

Not, thought one sorely exhausted and also just regular sore Barbara Gordon, that Gotham city had ever been anywhere near approaching quiet. But it was decidedly more crowded nowadays than when she'd been a kid.

Some of it -- and she made careful efforts not to waste too much time imagining how much -- was Harvey Dent and his "New Gotham Now" campaign. The guy had shot through the ranks like a rocket ship just a little too quickly for Babs not to be on edge. Both her father and Bruce remained infuriatingly optimistically taciturn about him in their own ways. It was the kind of tight-lipped hopefulness that had always indicated there was some file stored away on some computer (or, in her father's cased, in a locked file cabinet somewhere in the evidence catacombs of GCPD) she just hadn't found yet, and frankly, there were other things on her mind just now. Bruce was paranoid enough for all three of them, and if anyone could smell something less-than-pristine on Harvey Dent, it was Bruce. Or rather it was Bruce's late-night alter ego, but that was neither here nor there.

In any case, Dent made for pretty changes all across the surface of Gotham: new parks every few blocks, a pristine City Mall along the harbor, complete with a waterside Ferris wheel themed in 'Gothic Lisa Frank' or something like it; and more frozen yogurt boutiques than could possibly be necessary in any city anywhere. Babs could blame her current predicament on those cosmetic changes in more than one way.

Under the surface, though, Gotham roiled just as dark and muddy as ever. Maybe moreso, if only because every tiny dent Harvey buffed away made the damage beneath seem just a little more insidious. Babs couldn't tie it to anything, not yet. But research had always been her favorite part of the game, even before she was back out and able to do it on her own again.

She was, just now, crouched atop one of those new frozen yogurt stands, the third to pop up in as many months by her count, called Princess Creamery, which Babs thought was just plain creepy, but whatever. This one, however, unlike the others, seemed to be missing a business license number, and the woman who was renting it shared a name with a widow who'd conveniently died at the Gotham City Retirement Home just three weeks ago.

Babs had been camped out at the equally pristine cafe across the street for the better part of the day, watched until the trio of teenagers behind the counter locked up and went home...and then watched another hour when a woman with dark brown curls dangling into her face stumbled out of a cab, looking flustered and anxious. She looked both ways across the empty street, darted for the front door, unlocked it, and disappeared inside. Squinting, Babs could only half see her rush to the counter -- in the dark, no lights on, duck behind it for a few minutes, then reappear, her face hidden behind dark curls.

The woman reemerged a few minutes later, her head down, hopped in the waiting cab, and disappeared. Bab's had only glimpsed the cab's plate for a second, but it had been enough. She still had that much, thank God.

She was running her fourth search on the plates wondering if maybe she'd been mistaken about the third number, and about everything, when finally, at twenty minutes til 2 AM, someone showed up.

Just not who she'd been expecting. Then again, the city had gotten crowded.

It was the shattering glass that caught her attention, something she'd have berated herself for if she had the time. For the moment, she could only curse under her breath and dart to the edge of the roof to peer over the edge. One window had been blown out -- out? -- and a thick fog followed after.

Babs held her breath on instinct, feeling her eyes start to burn and water painfully not a moment later. Her hands twitched to her belt, searching for the purifier there. It'd take a few minutes to clear the place out, but with a gas that potent, there was no chance anyone was still inside, which likely meant --

Go, Barbara.

Strange, how her inner monologue still spoke with Bruce's words in her father's voice. She only half considered it as she clasped a rebreather over her mouth and nose with one hand -- she almost definitely wouldn't go blind any time soon, right? -- and angled herself up over the roof edge and through the window with the other.

She was still trying to figure out why the window was broken if the front door had really been unlocked when she realized she could hear a quietly insistent beeping over the sound of her own breathing.

Barbara swallowed a groan. She was definitely getting too old for this.

The Last Embers (Dark Steampunk/Fantasy)

Mini reminder: this image is very much not mine and I take no credit for it, that goes here, to the best of my knowledge.

--

Banou Adiah

A Savage Turned Patriot, Eager to Serve the Land that Saved Her

Age: 18
Height/Weight: 5'4", 125 lbs
Race: Varyan, Ice Piratean - just don't call her Godless

Appearance:

With pale gray eyes called, by turns, 'piercing' and 'unsettling' (or just 'haunting' if the mood is right), Banou is easy to overlook but difficult to forget. Her thick, dark hair is nearly always braided and twisted into a neat, no-nonsense bun, and her armor covers most, but not all, off the tattoos marking her body. The war paint itself was tattooed onto her skin as a young child, a process no doubt as barbaric as the people who birthed her. Fortunately, Banou isn't the type to dwell overmuch on the past, particularly her own, and so does her best to pretend the marks are little more than a sign of how far she's come in her time serving Varya.

Personality: Patriotic | Reserved | Selfless | Loyal

For as long as she can remember (she does not count what little comes from those dark years on the plains), Banou has been happiest when she's working. Granted, it would take a close friend or confidant, of which very few exist, to distinguish a happy Banou from an angry Banou, or a desolate Banou, or a sleeping Banou. She is a soldier first and last, and if she feels she has a greater need to prove her loyalty to the empire than her more blood-worthy countrymen, well, it could only make her stronger -- like near everything else she does.

But.

Woe to those who attempt to draw shady lines between her childhood as one of the godless people on the plains. Banou has abandoned that life and title as cleanly as it abandoned her. Though she is slow to anger in most things, you'll find a quick and dangerous enemy beneath insinuations that Banou would do anything less than die for the Empire who has raised her.

Background:

As far as she's concerned, Banou's life began when she was five years old. On that day, she remembers vividly emerging from a ceaseless dark and cold into the unyielding, unforgiving, and yet ever-steady arms of the Varyan Empire. On that day, an Imperial scouting party met its quarry - a small and vicious band of Ice Pirates - and saw fit to rescue the lone survivor.

Banou's memories of her time before the Empire are few and fragmented, sharp and cold as shattered ice. She speaks very little of it, but in her dreams, she catches glimpses of who was, who her people were -- had been -- before her rescue. She does not speak of these dreams, or of who she was before. She does not remember, and does not want to.

It has been her life's goal ever since to prove her undying loyalty to her rescuing nation. And perhaps also to herself.

From the moment she arrived in Varya, Banou was reminded at every turn that she'd not been born of the people who rescued her from the ice. Out of gratitude or desperation (she's not quite sure herself which, though most who have known her even a little could guess easily enough), she has worked her whole life to be made worthy of the sacrifice that freed her from the plains. She worked in the stables and kennels of the Seculary Army training grounds until she was old enough to be conscripted for her own training at age twelve. It was not an easy life, made more difficult by foreign blood, but Banou only ever let the other children's taunts drive her harder, and by sixteen, she was fighting at the top of her cohort.

Even so, her captains rarely let her on the battleground, more often assigning her to grunt work, guard duty, escort service, and worse. Banou managed it all without complaint, quietly content to serve how she could.

She was escorting a small cadre of Order officials through a crowded market one day when she saw a woman not much older than herself being taunted by a handful of drunk men. Banou intervened quietly, quickly, professionally, and returned to her post, while old eyes watched from afar.

Three days later, Banou was discharged from the SA and abruptly employed by one Mother Yonah Levshin, again in service to Varya, though as she learned soon after, she would be far from the land she had learned to call home.

Talents/Ethereal Abilities:

• Combat - If Banou wasn't the strongest or fastest soldier in her class, she was undoubtedly the most resilient. She is far from fearless, but nonetheless exudes unflappable calm on the battlefield, and is generally able to think a few steps ahead of her opponent. She's skilled with a number of weapons, both ranged and close combat, but her ice spear is her favorite, and she is deadly with a bow.
• Ether'd Combat - She's no inquisitor, but years of practice and an indomitable will have made Banou slightly more gifted than the average soldier in manipulating her shallow store of ether. When in battle, she is somewhat stronger, and significantly faster, than her stature would have you believe. She also once staved off what would have been a killing blow with a paling that left her unconscious for two days. When she is not in battle, she practices smuggled secrets from the Seminary itself (or so she's been told) to keep her ether abilities sharp.
• Cold-Blooded - Banou maintains a stubborn, and not entirely unsubstantiated, belief that she can handle cold better than the average Varyan. Whether this is true, or she's just stoic and willful enough to make herself and everyone around her believe it is yet unclear.
• Luck - Alright, so it's hardly a talent, but Banou does have an uncanny way of just...knowing things. She considers herself competent, intuitive, 'not fucking blind', and sometimes, yes, even lucky.

Personal Seal:
A crescent moon over two hounds. Or something like this.

Character Relationships:
- Mother Yonah, Sixth Dominion of the Divine Order: Banou's new employer. The two have not known each other long, but Banou has found herself growing increasingly loyal -- and fiercely protective -- of the woman who gave her a way to serve Varya without having to defend herself from...Varya.
- Mal, Mother Yonah's handmaid: Not that she's ever needed any sort of rescuing, but Mal has remained quite close with Banou ever since the day the other woman spotted her in that market.

The Last Embers (Dark Steampunk/Fantasy)

The people stood, as they always did, amidst a ring of broken flesh: hunks of thigh and calf and shoulder and neck, black and red and hard as stone.

And the people, as always, were no softer.

"Where are the furs, boy?"

An exhalation. A whisper. A puff of silver breath on the wind, ripped away in an instant. Eyes as cold and gray as the snow watched the people. Watched the ice. Wept cold tears that froze on reddened cheeks.

"Where are they?"

The question came a little louder now, a growl sitting hunched like a hungry wolf, between the words, a whimper just behind them.

There were more people now, cloaked figures stark against the snow, the broken bodies scattered between them, unheeded. Ahead, a thin, high whining sound, like bone against glass. Instinctively recognized as frozen flesh against ice.

This time, a rising cry swallowed the words. Now only the answer came: "I don't have them!"

Before her, knelt between the bodies (both living and dead), a boy. A figure towered over him, another knelt beside him, and between the two smaller figures, there was a block of ice. It, too, was stained red.

"This is your last chance, child," and the voice was strangely serene now. "You found it difficult to mine the ice before?" The laugh put a stake through her belly, shooting cold up and done her spine. "Try it with no thumb."

It happened quickly then, as it always did. She moved, as if to step forward, or perhaps to run -- it never mattered. Before she could go anywhere, something broke the endless, gray waves of earth and sky, a swift, dark blur from the huddle of figures at the center of the ring of frozen, fractured flesh. The thing was no blade, had no edge, but in this kind of cold, that was almost a boon. It went up and then down, and somehow, the sound of overripe fruit being smashed drowned out the cry that should have come.

The ice went a little redder, the frostbitten flesh a little blacker. The pile of flesh grew.

Far away, something seized up from the earth, dark and vast as the sky itself.

And in the same instant, she felt the ice beneath her boot shatter like glass, sending icicles like needles into her blood stream until the cold swept up and over and she was gone.

---

Banou woke to a film of sweat cold and thick as mud coating the space between her belly and her shift. She imagined she could feel it freezing then and there, tiny crystalline fractals spreading over her stomach, creeping around her ribs to join at her spine, spread up and down until she was armored in ice like some great, terrible golem, fit herself to shatter or be shattered.

But the thought was gone as soon as it had come, leaving only a frown and an impatient huff in its place.

"Don't be ridiculous," she chided herself, ignoring the way her breath puffed white in front of her nose. The stove in the corner kept the cabin she shared with a small handful of other soldiers warm, but not near enough.

But then she had always liked the cold.

With that, she sat and placed bare feet upon the even colder floor, letting the chill that raced up her spine wake the rest of her body with it. Even when sitting, Banou tend to remain at attention. It was just easier, and anyway, you never knew when you might be needed.

For the moment, anyway, her limbs nearly trembled with a restless sort of energy, a need to move, and far beyond the bounds of this vast, bloody ship they'd all found themselves on. Not that she'd ever complain. Mother Yonah had been eager to complete the trip, and so, so was Banou. She had her orders and needed little else.

Quickly, professionally, she stood and dressed, pulling her long, dark hair back into a bun tight enough to make her eyes water. When that was finished, she grabbed her canteen and her spear and struck out to find a quiet space to practice. It was hours yet before Mother Yonah was to rise, but Banou had never had much of an interest in sitting still. If she was awake and not eating or meditating, she was training, and if she was to accompany Mother Yonah through the untamed lands to Varya's men might spread the blessed word, it would not do to go in untested.

Outside, the wind howled across the ice, whipping eddies of snow into tiny typhoons. And somewhere far, far away, a shadow rose from the ice.

The Last Embers (Dark Steampunk/Fantasy)

TY @vietmyke for letting me borrow your CS layout!

Also, this image is very much not mine and I take no credit for it, that goes here, to the best of my knowledge.

--

Banou Adiah

A Savage Turned Patriot, Eager to Serve the Land that Saved Her

Age: 18
Height/Weight: 5'4", 125 lbs
Race: Varyan, Ice Piratean - just don't call her Godless

Appearance:

With pale gray eyes called, by turns, 'piercing' and 'unsettling' (or just 'haunting' if the mood is right), Banou is easy to overlook but difficult to forget. Her thick, dark hair is nearly always braided and twisted into a neat, no-nonsense bun, and her armor covers most, but not all, off the tattoos marking her body. The war paint itself was tattooed onto her skin as a young child, a process no doubt as barbaric as the people who birthed her. Fortunately, Banou isn't the type to dwell overmuch on the past, particularly her own, and so does her best to pretend the marks are little more than a sign of how far she's come in her time serving Varya.

Personality: Patriotic | Reserved | Selfless | Loyal

For as long as she can remember (she does not count what little comes from those dark years on the plains), Banou has been happiest when she's working. Granted, it would take a close friend or confidant, of which very few exist, to distinguish a happy Banou from an angry Banou, or a desolate Banou, or a sleeping Banou. She is a soldier first and last, and if she feels she has a greater need to prove her loyalty to the empire than her more blood-worthy countrymen, well, it could only make her stronger -- like near everything else she does.

But.

Woe to those who attempt to draw shady lines between her childhood as one of the godless people on the plains. Banou has abandoned that life and title as cleanly as it abandoned her. Though she is slow to anger in most things, you'll find a quick and dangerous enemy beneath insinuations that Banou would do anything less than die for the Empire who has raised her.

Background:

As far as she's concerned, Banou's life began when she was five years old. On that day, she remembers vividly emerging from a ceaseless dark and cold into the unyielding, unforgiving, and yet ever-steady arms of the Varyan Empire. On that day, an Imperial scouting party met its quarry - a small and vicious band of Ice Pirates - and saw fit to rescue one lone survivor.

Banou's memories of her time before the Empire are few and fragmented, sharp and cold as shattered ice. She speaks very little of it, but in her dreams, she catches glimpses of who was, who her people were -- had been -- before her rescue. She does not speak of these dreams, or of who she was before. She does not remember, and does not want to.

It has been her life's goal ever since to prove her undying loyalty to her rescuing nation. And perhaps also to herself.

Because her earliest memories were of her own freedom at the end of a sword, Banou had never seen anything for her future but becoming a soldier. Her childhood was spent drifting between families and estates, usually as a stablehand, once as a very short-lived kitchen girl. She was conscripted by age ten, two years earlier than most children, if only by virtue of her utterly relentless need to prove her own aptitude for fighting.

And she was talented. Even in her earliest years of training, her strength, speed, and endurance marked her as a future commander, though in truth, she had no real desire to lead. She was perfectly happy working her way through the ranks until she was sixteen and taken to be personal bodyguard of the Sixth Dominion. Banou was skeptical for a time after learning the old woman had ruled over T'sarae, but Banou's former Captain Commander assured her even this could be of service to the Empire, and it was all Banou had needed to pour herself into it.

Her loyalty only redoubled on learning the old woman, a noted historian of sorts, meant to travel to the untamed east. Banou said nothing of it herself, but somewhere deep inside she suddenly understood she had been training her whole life for this moment.

Never again would a fellow soldier, or anyone, assume Banou shared anything more than bad blood with the people who had raised, and just as quickly abandoned her.

Talents/Ethereal Abilities:

• Combat - If Banou wasn't the strongest or fastest soldier in her class, she was undoubtedly the most resilient. She is far from fearless, but nonetheless exudes unflappable calm on the battlefield, and is generally able to think a few steps ahead of her opponent. She's skilled with a number of weapons, both ranged and close combat, but her ice spear is her favorite, and she is deadly with a bow.
• Ether'd Combat - She's no inquisitor, but years of practice and an indomitable will have made Banou slightly more gifted than the average soldier in manipulating her shallow store of ether. When in battle, she is somewhat stronger, and significantly faster, than her stature would have you believe. She also once staved off what would have been a killing blow with a paling that left her unconscious for two days. When she is not in battle, she practices smuggled secrets from the Seminary itself (or so she's been told) to keep her ether abilities sharp.
• Cold-Blooded - Banou maintains a stubborn, and not entirely unsubstantiated, belief that she can handle cold better than the average Varyan. Whether this is true, or she's just stoic and willful enough to make herself and everyone around her believe it is yet unclear.
• Luck - Alright, so it's hardly a talent, but Banou does have an uncanny way of just...knowing things. She considers herself competent, intuitive, 'not fucking blind', and sometimes, yes, even lucky.

Personal Seal:
A crescent moon over two hounds. Or something like this.

Character Relationships: [WIP]
- Mother Yonah, Sixth Dominion of the Divine Order
- Mother Yonah's handmaid, probably

The Last Embers (No longer accepting characters)

@DotCom Btw! One of the old players of The Red Scarf Hymnal actually cataloged a lot of our writing, and thankfully it's still online. The old thread was a victim of the forum wipe a few years ago, so good thing she saved all our posts.

Here's a link to it. I sometimes go back and read it. :p

wattpad.com/5552288-the-red-scarf-hymnal

@Lovejoy

Everything about this is amazing.

The Last Embers (No longer accepting characters)

Oh, wow, everything about this just made me so outrageously happy. And old. But mostly happy. Tonight, I think I need to hunt down your old work, but oh my goodness even just based on that, I’d have to think I’d be in. En route to Discord. What a turn of events!

The Last Embers (No longer accepting characters)

Hi @Lovejoy - that name is familiar enough I’ll have to go digging, but fond-tinted memories, I think.

Is this still-still accepting? I’ve a good bit of catching up to do but also a rainy Saturday and a pot of coffee so it seems feasible if you all are still
looking...

Teen Titans

B A T G I R L

MARV'S PIZZA

---

^{Now | Midtown, Manhattan, New York City}

It took all of a few minutes for her to mentally retrace everything she'd seen upon entering Marv's a little under an hour ago. The kitchen was in the northwestern corner, opposite the front door and the mounting chaos outside. She'd seen the street entrance to the basement had been on the true western side of the building where the streets were narrower. Shitty for traffic, but the best bet if she was going to keep people - kids - off the street and away from the action.

Outside, a geyser of water erupted and the windows shook in their sills again.

Babs hesitated only a moment before tugging the hood of her sweatshirt up (hardly Bat-approved, but if anyone came away from the day their four-year-old's pizza party was ruined by what or whoever the hell had blown up Midtown with a perfect recall of her face, well...they probably deserved her job more than she did), surreptitiously reaching into her pocket and making a sudden motion at the wall opposite her. Careful eyes might have discerned a purple blur in the air, gone again as quickly as it had appeared. A moment later, every light but those in the kitchen flickered out.

Someone near her screamed and Babs quickly, gently(ish), ushered the woman through the kitchen doors, away from the windows.

"This way!"

Almost immediately, the crowd turned and surged toward the double doors. Babs watched a moment, wondering if there was a way for her to disconnect said doors from their hinges without drawing too much attention, but no. The bigger issue was making sure the path from kitchen to basement and back to street level was clear before all she caused was a sweaty, bloated pizza crush.

Suddenly, a large glass pane near the far side of the restaurant exploded inward, showering a group of girls not much older than herself in glass. Babs saw one, a pretty brunette she'd overheard talking about her shitty boyfriend, drop to the ground. Green eyes flickered between the growing kitchen crowd, to the girls at the window, and back.

"Oh, fuck me," she muttered. Reaching behind her, she slapped a hand against the wall, leaving a thing purple disk against the plaster, flashing red at anyone who cared to stoop to hip-height in the face of imminent death. A moment later, she was launching herself across booths and tables again to crouch at the corner where the girls were screaming over their bleeding friend.

"Hi, sorry, ladies, can I just - " She planted a single tennis shoe against the jagged edge of the sill and boosted herself up in a single fluid motion before grabbing the roll-down grate from the outside and tugging down. She paused only for a second, staring in mingled amusement and curiousity at the scene in the streets before her.

"...Clark?" she muttered before she could help herself. Only, no. That was almost immediately apparent. Clark was older, bigger, stronger...and a hell of a lot less prone to anything beyond Boy Scout language.

"Who the shit -?" was as far as she got before something collided with a streetlight at the corner. Babs watched, speechless for once, as the thing - a girl - started to roll to her feet, only for another thing (most definitely a thing this time) to follow after.

Babs took a breath to...what, warn the girl, maybe? But before she could say anything, the girl had quite taken care of herself, dragging herself to her feet as the ethereal light around her faded in the wake of her admittedly impressive attack.

Babs blinked. "Well, fuck me."

At her feet, one of the girls still in the restaurant screamed, and Babs shook herself, tugging the grate down the rest of the way. Right. First things first.

She dropped back to the floor, wrangled an arm around the waist of the fallen girl before tugging one of the girl's arms over her own shoulder.

"Hi," she said plainly. "Can you walk? We gotta go."