Steady On Forward

Chapter 5

"Great," Damian said. "So we're literally no further than before. What about The Woman? What did you find regarding her?"

"That I was going to wait until I could talk to everybody about. Not that there's a whole lot to say."

Damain huffed. "Well get everybody over here then."

Tim rolled his eyes, but reached for his mobile.

◇◇◇

They ended up all meeting at Barbara's place.

"So, like I said before," Tim said, "The Woman's name is Irene O'Leary, and she lives about five minutes from Gotham General. Her only living relation is her father, Ephram Davies — looks like she has her deceased mother's last name. She teaches self-defense classes at a studio downtown, which explains why she even bothered fighting Dick.

"Onto the actually relevant stuff: she was dating Matthew Scribner, an ER nurse at the hospital, for just over two years. They split recently and she's pissed about it, not very subtle on her Facebook and Twitter that she hates him now. Classic 'if I can't have you, then nobody can' idea.

"The question now is what do we do about her? Unless we catch her going after Scribner again, we can't exactly get the cops to arrest her."

"Hm," Barbara said. "The obvious thing to do would be to keep an eye on Scribner and wait until she tries again, but there's always the possibility that maybe she won't try again, and what do we do in that case? How long do we give it before deciding she's not going to try again?"

"I vote we threaten her," Stephanie said.

Cass tilted her head, considering the pros and cons of the idea.

"So do I," Damian agreed. "But that's not enough. She needs to be brought to justice."

"How about we take turns watching over Scribner, and if she doesn't do anything in two weeks, we reconvene and decide what to do from there?" Duke said.

Stephanie sat back, crossing her arms. "Fine. But I still vote we threaten her in the meantime."

◇◇◇

Dick had finally found a good lead on the main distributor of the new street drug — called 'Sifra' — making its way through Blüdhaven. The downside was that he had to go undercover and try to "accidentally" bump into one of his dealers at a certain club well known for its lax rules on public indecency.

Upon research, he'd found that the drug was named after the fairy city of gold; and Dick thought the creator must either be a massive folklore nerd, or someone who fancied themselves a friend of the fae. In any case, it was an appropriate name for a drug that purportedly made the user look on everything with new, awed eyes — as if every person and broken bottle and cigarette butt they stumbled across was made of gold.

It was especially popular in the club called The Dragon's Lair, because apparently taking a pill and grabbing the first stranger who caught your over-awed eyes led to the most mind-blowingly spectacular sex one could imagine. And with The Lair being the only club around that allowed the patrons to indiscriminately fuck each other against the wall, it was a natural fit. Dick would just take their word on it really being that spectacular — maybe as a fantasy it sounded hot, but the idea of actually having sex while high, especially with a random stranger, freaked him the hell out. It would be putting oneself in such a horribly vulnerable position and...no, just no.

Dick really wasn't looking forward to the crushing bodies and wandering hands he was going to have to deal with in the club, but he'd done it plenty of times for cases before, and he'd surely do it again.