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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2018 2:35:54 GMT
Timeline: Current Previous Threads: Catch that Kid Characters Involved: @robin , @nightstar & @croc Location: Alleyways and sewers  Nibble, nibble, on my house The people of New York City rarely looked up. That was the easiest way to tell a tourist from a local. The tourists always had their noses in the air, cameras pointed at the sky, and they would randomly stop for no apparent reason in the middle of the sidewalk as if the towering skyscrapers had captured their entire attention and they were so in awe they had forgotten how to walk.
Gotham wasn't like New York City. They were both big. They were both ugly. They both stank. But Damian had never had to deal with tourists and their cameras before. Not like this. Not ones that weren't hoping to catch a glance of the Dark Knight and his Squire. Not ones that could stop with reckless abandon and the confidence they weren't about to be gunned down by gang violence. Which was why the little Robin was irate with his glowing purple companion who was anything but subtle whenever she flew at a speed fast enough to ignite her stupidly pretty hair.
"They're going to notice you," he hissed at her, eyes scrunching behind the domino mask, so that his nose wrinkled in distaste below. Damian landed on a building with the effortless ease of a child who'd been trained since birth to fear no height. His grappling hook retracted with a soft zipping noise. It stayed clenched in his green gloved hand as he scowled at her.
She'd been an obvious thorn in his side since the second they'd crashed here. While he tolerated her presence, even to the point of allowing her to curl up besides him in the strange Canary's house, he kept up the act that hated having to put up with her. Even if sometimes he was actually very glad she was here with him.
He turned his gaze away, adjusting his optics with a lazy hand to his mask, and considered the skyline. It was so similar to Gotham that it physically hurt. He didn't understand why his insides contracted in a fit of sentimentality, but they certainly seemed to know. He huffed, blue eyes turning down, and spotted a familiar pointed ear shadow.
Batman.
Robin was firing off his grappling gun before he even consciously thought about it, the sharp intake of air before he aimed the only indication he'd seen anything. Mar'i would just have to follow or be left behind. The boy swung downwards, landed silently on a rooftop below, and continued at a run across it. Batman's shadow became more pronounced the closer they got, and a spark of elation flickered to life in Damian's chest.
"Batman!" the little boy called, a curt sort of hushed half-shout meant to get attention, as he landed silently in the alleyway behind him.
Tag: @nightstar & @croc
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2018 3:08:45 GMT
A pair of purple boots landed softly beside him. She scrunched her brow and titled her head ever so slightly at the harsh whisper. "How else am I going to keep up?" she questioned, opening her arms as if to point out the lack of grappling gun or any other equipment. Her hands dropped by her sides and she stepped in closer.
"I'll be very careful," she assured in a hushed whisper. She tried to draw into herself as though pulling an imaginary cape of not-noticibility around herself. He didn't seem terribly convinced. Mar'i was just glad he wasn't putting up more of a fuss that she followed him. She didn't like the idea of him going off by himself, even if she was of the opinion they should lie low--wait for Batman, any Batman, to come to them first.
Especially since there was a chance she could be captured and chucked who knows where just for being herself. It was so unfair!
She moved closer to the edge to try and get a better view of their surroundings. A lot of taller buildings were in the way, so she tried to see to the streets below. Not too many people out at this time of night. Was it a cat or a bat lurking in the shadows of the alleyway? That was easy for eyes like hers; definitely the cat. The corner of her mouth quirked up at the sight of the small tabby meowing outside a door. Begging for scraps, little one?
Her head snapped at the gasp. "What?" It was the warning she got before the grappling hook was zipping Robin away. She followed quickly behind him, not knowing where he was going or what he was chasing--not until she watched him land in an alleyway. From above, she analyzed the figure, and it was her turn to gasp with eyes wide like saucers.
Mar'i landed beside him with a hard thud, raising her hand up. Energy sparked around the small finger. "That's not Batman," she said, putting her other arm in front of Damian for protection. Batman wasn't green.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2018 3:47:59 GMT
The familiar scent of urine filled his nostrils. Though it wasn't usually this fresh.
"J-Just take it!" the criminal pleaded from his position of being pinned to the wall, a large clawed finger on either side of his head.
"I don't frickin' want it" came the deep rumbled reply, a deep sigh following soon after. Why was it so hard for this guy to understand? He was speaking english wasn't he?
"I said, go out there, and give it back to the gal you took it from"
Confusion.
"Take the bag." he growled, picking up the handbag and shoving it into the man's hands. "Back to the girl. Get it?"
The man nodded emphatically and Waylon sighed with relief, retracting his enormous hand and letting the man fall to his feet. Of course, when he tried to take off in the wrong direction, the criminal found himself grabbed by the shoulder, claws cutting through clothing and bringing blooms of red to the surface.
"Not that way" The anger was getting difficult to control. He'd tried to be restrained before, but with the way he threw the man in the other direction it was clear his patience wouldn't last much longer.
The man tumbled and rolled across the ground of the alley, but quickly scrambled to his feet and ran out into the street, handbag clutched across his chest as if it were a precious babe. The giant figure shook his head and moved to follow, looking to confirm with his own eyes the receipt of the item, but stopped dead when he heard some drop into the alleyway behind him.
Batman
That word was definitely one he didn't expect to hear. He'd only told one person in this world about his friend from the other dimension. And they definitely weren't male.
His body turned quickly, a pair of blood red eyes glowing from the shadows. Who was this kid in bright coloured garb that knew Batman? Had someone else come through that quivering black portal he had touched back home?
He had so much he wanted to ask, but the second figure that dropped seemed clearly hostile. She stood defensively in front of the boy and the energy that crackled around her fingers was unnatural. For a world that actively hunted Neo's down, he hadn't half met a lot since he arrived here.
Whether or not the girl was intent on attacking, he didn't have a choice but to approach if he wanted answers, the monstrous figure stepping forward into the light.
A huge black tarp-turned-cape draped over broad shoulders, the scaled hide of the behemoth in front of them could only be seen through a slight crack in the front now that his arms hung by his sides. Rows of savage teeth were concealed by a black balaclava that had been modified to have large pointed ears clearly modelled after Batman's own cowl. The only thing that could be considered wildly out of place in this fake Batman costume was the presence of brightly-coloured pink rhinestones and glitter lining the eyes and ears of the mask.
"How do you know that name" Waylon asked with a deep rumble, his shock and seriousness undercut somewhat by how silly his glittery adornments looked.
"Is he here?!" he asked, taking another giant stride toward the two children.
A flicker of hope in amber eyes.
Tag: @robin
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2018 1:02:53 GMT
Nibble, nibble, on my house The hope on Damian's face died the second Croc's appeared. That was not his father. It didn't take Mar'i smashing down on the concrete next to him and stating the obvious to make him realize that. Even though she'd known Batman for years before Damian had ever been allowed to meet the man. His upper lip curled in distaste at her defensive position, because he didn't need protection, but he wasn't stupid enough to attempt to move her arm out of his way. He knew she was stupidly strong.
"TT," he clicked at her. Now that they were up close he could see that the costume was a mere mockery. The glitter, which Grayson probably would have worn, was something the original wouldn't be caught dead in. This man in the fake cowl was much too large to be Grayson. In fact, this fake Batman was as tall as Damian had originally imagined his father to be. Even the voice was accurate to his imaginations. It was just the stupid sparkle that made it clear that this was a fake.
While the little girl with the crackling energy arcing across her hands was the obvious threat, she wasn't the one that had the hair trigger. Damian was the one who took insult to some stranger dressing up like his father but even more insult from the fact that, for a few seconds, he had been duped as well. The boy didn't like feeling stupid. It interfered with his superior world-view.
"Pretender!" Damian hissed through his teeth.
His expression morphed into something of cold fury as ducked under Mar'i's arm and charged forwards. For such a tiny child, Damian could get some serious air, as he sprang up from his sprint to deliver a spinning kick aimed at the false Batman's gut. It wasn't just as high as he could reach. Shut up.
Up close, Damian could now see the shoddy construction. The cape was a ill cobbled tarp. The hat was too fabric to be of any actual protection. "How dare you mock the memory of my father!" the little boy seethed, and aimed a punch for a knee.
Tag: @nightstar & @croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2018 2:28:09 GMT
Mar'i grabbed Damian to stop him. "Hold on," she urged. "Before you hurt him again, I need to know..."
Her green eyes squinted up at the heavily disguised Croc. "Why are you wearing a princess crown?"
It was so absurd that it warranted an explanation. She was a princess and she didn't get a crown, so why was someone dressed like a thrift-haul Batman wearing one? "I've heard Batman be called the Prince of Gotham, but you don't have to dress like a princess if you want to find him." Her head tiltled curiously, and then her eyes narrowed further. "You're not hoping to gobble him up are you?"
@croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2018 4:04:12 GMT
Not knowing what to expect from the brightly-coloured child, Waylon raised his arms and used them to create a cross-shaped defence for his face. For all he knew the kid had super strength like Molly or shapeshifting like Kamala and a giant axe was about to come down on him.
When the boy bounced harmlessly off his stomach however, Waylon became far less concerned.
While the hit to his knee also struck true, his thick muscle density, hard skin and tough bone structure made it so that the boy was more likely to break his own hand than do any substantial damage to him. At this point the child hero would need a bulldozer or some kind of explosive to make him move from this spot.
It wasn't the attacks that gave him mood for pause. It was what he said while swinging.
"You're Bruce's kid?" he asked incredulously, Amber eyes searching the boy for any kind of resemblance to his friend from the other world. "But the old man said-"
He stopped talking when the girl with clear powers pulled the boy away from him. She had overestimated the kid's ability to harm him and at first he figured she must be the rational one, until she asked a really silly question of him. Her friend, boyfriend? Friend, was attacking a stranger, and that was her focus?
A deadly clawed hand emerged from the tarp in what appeared to be a hostile move at first glance, but it then moved up and pulled the mace from his head. His hideous, malformed teeth, eyes and ears exposed to the light.
"It's not a damn crown" he said exasperated, looking down at the mask in his hands. "I didn't choose to put the stones there, Molly she-"
He stopped, shaking his head from side to side dramatically as if to clear the cobwebs out.
"That doesn't matter. How do you know Batman?!" he took a large step forward, his eyes intense and filled with desperation. "Where is he?"
He paused. Something the boy said coming back to him that made his heart sink to his stomach.
"What do you mean his memory...?"
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 1:31:14 GMT
Nibble, nibble, on my house Damian attacked with all the ferocity of a hornet that didn't seem to realize it was stinging a Kevlar vest. The fact that nothing he did moved the pretender, or even seemed to hurt, had the little boy growing angrier by the second. When Mar'i pulled him off he struggled against her superior strength, and didn't stop until the charlatan said a name he shouldn't have known.
The tiny Robin stared up at the false Batman with wide eyes and a slightly slack-jawed expression at the reveal. The old man could only be the servant, Pennyworth. Which meant, somehow, this fake Batman had actually known the real one. Probably before anyone but the al Ghuls had known Damian existed. Mar'i's question was so off-topic that it startled him back to reality. He wriggled out of her grip, scowling at her for daring to manhandle him, before turning his glower up at the pretender.
She had a good point: why was he princess Batman?
When the mask was pulled up, and the monster was revealed, the little boy didn't so much as flinch. He'd seen monsters before. He had a pet one. This one seemed more inclined to talk about Batman than eat them. Which, while odd, wasn't exactly unusual. His father was an interesting topic. A niggling thought wondered who this Molly was, before the massive creature took a thundering step forward.
Damian moved in front of Mar'i fearlessly, despite the fact that he couldn't actually do anything to stop the giant before them, and scowled. "The Batman you're looking for is dead," Damian informed him heartlessly. He couldn't explain what had happened. He'd only met the man once. "I am his son," a self-important, green gloved hand gestured at his bright red breast before thumbing over his shoulder at Mar'i. "She's the daughter of his successor."
"It should have been me," Damian complained. "But I'm apparently not old enough to be Batman." There way no way to relay the story of how he'd entered the fight for the cowl and promptly lost.
Tag: @nightstar & @croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 1:59:00 GMT
Ma'i was stunned by the mention of Bruce's name and her grip around Damian slackened. The scaly man before her knowing Batman's identity would have been chilling were he not so... different. "You're not the Killer Croc I know," Mar'i mused quietly. The Killer Croc she knew would never let some Molly get near enough to bedazzle cowls, which was not a crown--a distinction, despite boasting superior eye-sight, was completely missed the first time somehow. He didn't sound like he'd gobbled her up either and stolen the work of art. He sounded... human. Growly, but human. The multiverse was so surreal.
Then they had to go and talk about Bruce some more and all her thoughts came crashing down to a sea of sadness. Mar'i winced at Damian's unfeeling status update. She went quiet, eyes glistening with tears, and tilted her head just so that her hair formed a black veil to her face as a cape once shadowed the Bat. She withdrew silently away from Damian; his complaints garbled like she was underwater.
@croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 2:57:53 GMT
Deep amber eyes flicked to Mar'I when she spoke, keen senses ensuring her musing wasn't left unheard. She shouldn't have known that. There was no Gotham here, no circus. His intense gaze washed over her, searching her from head to toe for something, anything that could tell him why she could possibly know that. For a while they lingered on her face. That face. That hair. Something about them tugged on a thread in the deepest reaches of his mind.
"You look..." he took one more step closer, eyes transfixed on the little girl's face. "Familiar..."
The boy getting in the way snapped him back to reality, his hand had risen toward Mar'I as if to reach out and touch her. Snapping from his confusion he noticed what he was doing and stopped immediately, his arm dropping as he took steps away to be even further from them than he had started, his body seeking the natural protective wrapping of the dark.
"No"
Was all he said to Damian when she told him he Batman was dead. There was no way that was true. He wouldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. Nothing the boy had to say made any sense to him. Bruce didn't have a kid, Alfred wanted nothing more than for Bruce to settle down but he refused to give up his idea of becoming Gotham's protector.
"Successor?" Waylon asked, his laughter barely contained. "Please. He'd barely got started. It was just an idea. He barely had gear. I showed 'im a place to park his car."
He shook his head from side to side emphatically. Whoever they were talking about, it couldn't have been the Batman that he knew.
"Who would want to succeed him? I told him the costume was stupid-"
He stopped abruptly. The irony of him insulting an outfit he had been wearing until a few moments ago was lost in the train of thought that had begun in his mind. What the girl had said. This Batman they spoke about. The strange means he got to this new world.
Clawed hands grabbed at his head. He could feel a searing pain building in his brain. That tug from before became a pulling, dragging him to a place he'd been to once before. He began to breathe harshly as if he was being attacked as he fought the urges and beat back that sinking feeling. He couldn't afford to give in. Not now. Not here.
Seconds later his right hand slammed into the wall beside him, brick and cemented caving in and barely holding together. The random flail of emotion failing to bring to bear the full magnitude of his strength.
"I get it..." he said through laboured breaths, his left palm rubbing against his temple. "These memories. They ain't mine."
He hadn't been talking to them, he was simply thinking aloud for a moment. It was clear when he was addressing them again when he looked up, red orbs glowing in the dark.
"You from another Gotham?"
A tentative question. He wasn't some fancy educated man; he could be wrong. He could have been here longer than he thought. The process of travelling here could have taken years. But the facts he had... this just made sense. He looked to the girl.
"Do you know me?" he asked desperately. She had said his old name. The one he'd discarded so long ago. Back when he was a wrestler.
"Did Batman tell you who I was?"
Tag: @robin
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 21:15:30 GMT
Nibble, nibble, on my house Imagining a world where his father was inept enough to not know where to park his vehicle was baffling on a level that Damian didn't know how to handle. He stared at the beast man in confused silence as he made fun of the costume he'd just been imitating a few seconds ago. A hypocrisy that Damian himself was often guilty of. Things seemed to get weirder from there.
Mar'i was doing her child-of-the-ring thing and the giant reptile was pounding on walls. As the only, in his own head, sensible one present Damian sighed and rolled his eyes at the pair. The brightly colored little boy backed a step closer to Mar'i as the wall caved in from the large man's strike and bathed their alley in plaster dust. As though he wanted to keep the creature from reaching for her again. As though he wasn't afraid of fists that could reduce a wall to rubble effortlessly.
"TT," the boy made his clicking noise as the reptile man asked if they were from another Gotham. "Obviously," Damian drawled, his upper lip curled back with contempt. "Or you're from the past," he considered. That seemed unlikely, especially since Mar'i referenced the man in front of them as a killer and there was nothing Bruce hated more, but the little Wayne hadn't really been around to know.
He did know how visceral Batman's reaction was to death, though. And how much trouble he'd gotten in for stopping crime the only way he knew how. Masked eyes trailed to Mar'i as the monster addressed her. Damian had barely known his father and giant people crocodiles had never actually come up as a topic of their rare conversations. Usually the topic was how he was horrible, and undisciplined, and needed to stop trying to murder Tim. Lame.
Tag: @nightstar & @croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2018 2:36:41 GMT
Mar'i had turned away from the two. Her only contribution was soft sniffles joined by the occasional hiccup. She missed her grandfather a lot. The ache of never ever seeing him again overwhelmed her ability to pay attention to what was going on behind her. They were talking, but she wasn't really listening. It took the smash of a fist against the concrete to get her jumping. Her watery green eyes darted back back as she stared at him frightfully for a moment, her body hunching in with her tiny fists raised under her chin. It took her some time to relax her shoulders when she realized he wasn't attacking, but she made no move to draw in closer.
She wiped the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. "You were a bad man, Mr.Crocodile," Mar'i replied sadly. "And I never heard stories of you being friends with grandpa Bruce so I think... you're from a different Gotham--which is good!" she exclaimed. "I'd rather have a friend of Batman's around than an enemy."
She tried to smile but it was a weak little thing on her face, weighed down by loss. "What are you doing out here? Do you have someplace to hide?"
@croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 8, 2018 5:39:49 GMT
While he looked at Damian when he spoke, he dismissed the child's haughtiness with a refocusing of his gaze immediately. The Kid seemed to be a little anti-social. Well, it wasn't hard to have figured that out from his immediate attack, but Waylon was actually more used to that than talking, but his attitude definitely spoke volumes.
As it was he was left waiting for the friendlier of the two to fill him in. Though she seemed content to withdraw from him as well. For a fleeting moment he wished that either of them was more like Molly.
He knew what she was going to say before she said it, but it still stabbed into his heart like a poisoned blade. A part of him had hoped that he wasn't from their past as the boy had said, for that would have meant he'd been hear much longer than he'd realised. But now confirmed that he was from another Gotham, and that in their world he was as evil as the reaches of his mind told him he was, he felt a deep sadness his face couldn't help but convey.
"I knew it" he mumbled inaudibly to himself, the girl's exclamation falling on deaf ears as he turned his head away into the dark. He looked at the hole he'd left in the wall. A monster inside and out.
His head slowly, tiredly, turned make to the girl as her warbling continued. For some reason he couldn't focus on what she was saying for a moment, but as if someone had adjusted a dial on a volume mixer, her words came back into focus.
"What am I doing out here?" he repeated back, before his eyes went suddenly very wide. "Ah crap!"
He spun on his heel, his enormous tail smashing a huge dent into a dumpster beside him. He didn't have time to stop though as he began thundering down to the end of the alley, poking his head around the corner to look to the left.
He saw the man he'd send packing moments before and the woman he'd insisted he return the stolen item to; but his heart skipped a beat when he saw that police were on the scene. The criminal pointed in Waylon's direction and for the briefest of moments, he locked eyes with the police officer.
"sh*t" he cursed, swiftly turning back and coming back down the alley at speed toward the children he'd forgotten to censor himself for.
"Been hiding the same place I have been my whole damn life" he said with impatience, brushing past both children without breaking stride. He pulled the childish bat-hood over his head, as if that was going to help at his point, and called over his shoulder as he sought to escape out the other end of the alley.
"I suggest you make yourself scarce too" he said quickly, stopping only long enough to finish his warning.
"They hate 'costumed creeps' in this world"
Tag: @robin
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 0:41:01 GMT
Nibble, nibble, on my house
She was crying again. As soon as it was clear the behemoth before them wasn't about to attack Damian edged away from Mar'i and her tears. The little boy was clearly uncomfortable to have been caught between a crying girl and a crazy giant crocodile man. The crocodile would have been preferable if he didn't feel some small level of responsibility towards the girl besides him.
The last Wayne watched as Mr. Crocodile went down the alleyway to go do something, smashing a dumpster in his wake, and scowled at how stupidly obvious the large man was. Damian stiffened as the monster came running back at them, and only relaxed when the man had passed. The kid couldn't fathom why the Batcowl was being put back on. Cotton couldn't stop gunshots.
Without too much thought, Damian reached for Mar'i's hand and endeavored to give chase. "We need to leave," he whispered to the sullen little girl besides him and tugged at her to follow. There wasn't any pulling her against her will, but Damian also wasn't going to bother if she proved stubborn. Especially now that there were obviously police near where the alleyway spilled into the street and they were shouting at them to stop.
"If you fly, they'll see your light," he pointed out and raced after the crocodile man down the alley.
Tag: @nightstar & @croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 1:02:32 GMT
Mar'i was getting used to being dragged around by Damian, but the hand-holding was kind of nice. "Not always!" she retorted when he mentioned her tendency to light up the night sky with her flying. Her feet lifted off the ground as she opted to float rather than try to catch up with the speeding ninja. Even if she could keep up, sometimes he made really sharp turns and then she'd get a face full brick. It was easier to be a balloon.
Though, they were following Mr.Crocodile, and she had an idea of where his hidey-hole was and she was not too pleased with the idea. "But--" she threw a furtive glace at the man in front of them and lowered her voice. "The seweeeer." It was gross and smelly. It was sad that it was his home, but it was true.
@croc
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 3:01:08 GMT
He didn't have far to go. He knew a place near here that would give him quick access to the sewer system, a convenient little hole that had once-
sh*t.
As he turned the corner after a few twists and turns, he cursed upon seeing the barriers of construction around the break in the concrete that he had made a mental note of if he needed to make a quick escape in this area. He should've known that they wouldn't leave the hole there for long, especially since it had caused a kid to fall down it before, but from the looks of it they were making slow progress.
To balance out the unfortunate circumstance of the street being repaired, it seems that at the moment no one was actually present working on it. The discoloured ground suggested that they were far from completion, having only simply filled in the bottom part.
To be honest he felt bad about it, but he didn't have much choice.
He took a few steps back, then launched himself forward with a few massive bounds before taking off from the ground to a respectable height for a monster his size. Mid-air he somersaulted forward just enough to bring the entire weight of his frame down through his tail into the newly-placed foundations, sundering the ground and sending him tumbling down into the darkness.
His landing was less graceful as the manoeuvre before it. So was his scrambling to his feet and brushing the muck and dust from his scales.
He then looked up at the shaft of light from above and the slowly floating particles of dust. He could hear the footsteps of the two children from before. They had been following him, though he doubted very much that they would make their escape down here.
Still, he waited. On the off chance they felt like they had to follow him, they'd need him to be able to find anything down here. And besides, it seemed before like they might have had more to talk about.
Tag: @robin
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