Musings

Is it safe to come out of my flat yet? Really, I had to climb down the back fire escape just to not be bothered by those ridiculous reporters and such when trying to get to work. I swear they didn't sleep for three days straight. I thought it was crazy back home, but here... I may have to take up smoking to clam my nerves, or my flat will run out of wine.

Also someone tried to mug me while I was sneaking back in that night of the shooting. Luckily I got out of it with only a bloody lip and the man was crying, what the hell is up with my ability?

And other than that Mask March, everything is normal once more? Or as normal as you Yanks can get?

[The news reports of the Bat being out and about while Thomas Brandon is in the hospital are numerous.

Claims and blurry images are rampant, allowing people to compare the current Bat’s suit to the former Bat’s suit, in order to determine if the new Bat is an impostor attempting to protect Thomas Brandon. Tumblr and Twitter are filled with such discussions. Demands for a new story from Job Arakkis are loud and numerous, and Thomas, Inc., and Monarch Industries are being asked to make official statements. Orin Monarch, having been seen prominently having a drunken brawl with an unknown woman on Pike street, is exonerated. And even Brandon’s son, Luke Henry, was sighted at a local strip club while the Bat was out and about, silencing the insistence of some fangirls that the handsome young heir is truly the Bat.

Intrepid young internet bloggers are beginning to document the appearance of all Seattle’s vigilantes, searching to see if anyone is missing from their numbers, and websites are popping up to document appearances. Reports that the Bat is being seen in the vicinity of a lesser known vigilante called Night cause rumors to flare that the two are working in tandem, and there is even discussion of Night’s suit being a derivative of the Bat’s.

Among all the detective work, there is also an angry contingent that demands to know who the Bat really is. There are websites dedicated to devising strategy to “catch” the Bat, including information on staging crimes that will catch the Caped Crusader’s attention.]

[The afternoon the day the Bat is reported to have been sighted again, with Thomas Brandon still in the hospital and the mobs still gathered outside Aubade and the hospital and in a myriad other locations around the city, the rain starts.

Rain in Seattle is, of course, not outside the norm, but the day on which it starts was predicted to be intermittently sunny, cold, and standard spring fair. And so it is, until around four o clock, when storm clouds begin rolling in out of nowhere.

The clouds are heavy, black, and pendulous, and they sweep in suddenly. They look ominous enough that people begin walking a little more quickly to get back to their offices, running to their cars to escape the downpour on the way, pulling out umbrellas and ducking under awnings. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and those in taller buildings can see the flickers of lightning amongst the clouds.

The mobs are a little more hardy than the average pedestrian, however, and do not show any sign of dispersing. At least, not until the curtain of cloud closes over the city, and rain begins coming down with such a torrential force that even the most hardy of the protesters only hold out for a twenty minutes or so before abandoning their posts. The sidewalk outside of Aubade is littered with signs, washed clean of meaning and floating in the gutter. All around town, people take cover, driving slowly through the downpour. Lightning strikes every once in a while, coming in bouts. People assure each other that a downpour like this cannot last for long.

But it does. The rain continues on into the evening. Meteorologists cannot explain it. A storm front seems to have stalled over the city, and it shows no sign of budging, all through the night. Perhaps even more strangely, when a group of protesters try to surround the hospital again despite the rain, and their story makes the news for their perseverance in the face of inclement weather, the lightning surrounding the building increases tenfold, striking lightning rods on surrounding buildings and scattering the budding mob.

And through the night, and on into morning. And on. The rain lets up a little in intensity on the second day, but it continues.

And so it rains, and it rains, and it rains.

If anyone where to know where or how to look, how to trace the threads of the storm, they would find them leading to Aubade. But to the human residents of the city of Seattle, all they can say is that the vigilante debate has been cancelled due to rain for a few days, and any sort of trapping of the vigilantes or further mobs will have to wait a while.

[OOC: The storm will stretch from Wednesday afternoon until early Saturday morning.]

On Wednesday, the photography division of the Seattle Times receives an e-mail from aaron.abrams@gmail.com with the subject "Pictures of the Bat." The body of the e-mail is blank, allowing the 10 attached digital pictures to speak for themselves.

The pictures depict the Bat and two people, one man and one woman. If viewed in succession, from one to ten, they seem to tell a visual story that begins with the Bat's cowl barely visible in the shadows, continues with him disarming and incapacitating the armed mugger, and ends with the woman clutching her purse and staring at the Bat with both appreciation and awe.

[The Bat depicted in these photographs is the genuine Bat. They were taken before Thomas was shot, and Aaron has just been neurotically going over them to make sure they are perfect before submitting.]