Fowl tongue, have my words

Keepsakes of Past Years

"No, Babs. Barbara. Don't-" I hit the floor with a thud, groaning out with pain with my arms curling towards my sternum as I shriveled up on the cold hardwood floors. "I thought you loved me."

"Still do. But we need to get your ass ready to fight crime. What I had you doing before is just a taste of the fun you'll do today!" Barbara's voice, far too chirpy for Briar's liking, had an eerie resemblance to the antichrist.  "And you won't do that if you're just a cuddle bug in bed."

"I'll have you know I was very cozy. Maybe that's my life's aspiration, cuddle bug." I grumbled. I slowly rose from the floor and shuffled towards my discarded backpack. A blind hand reached into the abyss and pulled out a different shirt than I had on yesterday. "This'll do."

"Chop, chop. I'll be waiting in the kitchen."

I hummed rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. If you must know you already missed prime hunting time. "Yes Peter. But I am human and need not rely on dawn to get food." I rolled the shirt down my abdomen quickly to conserve the warmth Gotham was determined to leech from me. "How'd your huntin' go?" Quite well. Webs by those miniature suns are the optimal perch. Peter purred, very pleased with himself. I supposed light posts were a good spot for spiders. With prey being too blinded to see him and therefore snack time. I wasn't quite sure if I could use that myself though but then again Gotham's crime didn't care about shit. So maybe they were stupid enough?

I nudged Bab's who had her back turned to me in the kitchen. Holding a mug of coffee, she looked up from her laptop. "Welcome to the land of the living."

"Thanks for havin' me." I drawled out dryly. "Digitizin' my statistics?"

"Mhm, yeah. Once we run a few baseline tests today I can see where you fall on the enhanced level." She mused, "I'll probably start you off with some warmups and then we can move on to mock-fights. Which fair warning are typically the boy's way of entertainment."

"Uh-huh. Sounds...healthy?" I snorted lightly, peeking into her fridge and pilfering a glass of orange juice. "I'm stealin' a glass."

"Wouldn't expect anything else from you." She paused, "So citrus doesn't bother you?"

"Uh, I mean it's got a bit of a ting to it?" I shrugged. I mean spiders didn't care for citrus, but I'm human and fucking adore oranges, spider powers or not.

"Briar...I am running an allergen test too." She tossed her hand into the air, accompanied by a subtle eye roll. I frowned slightly, furrowing my brow as I studied the statistics on her screen. "I'm still working on that~" She hummed, pressing a finger to my forehead. "Back away. I'll give you a Briar version later."

"'Kay." I returned to my glass of orange juice and scrolled through my phone. "Furniture is supposed to start arrivin' later today. When? I don't know because delivery is vague, and it lies."

"Starting to sound like you have a grudge against them." I went on a brief and light rant about the two-time delay I had already experienced since the week had started. "Oh, is that why you ended up arriving earlier than expected?"

"Yeah, I had to book another flight and cancel the other ticket. Only person I know here is you and Dick but uh it seems y'all got some stuff going on? I know we didn't go over it yesterday but I'm assumin' it has to do with the, uh, night job."

"Yeah. I can only say so much sense the boys don't yet trust you yet. Which is understandable considering our line of work. Can't tell if it'd be better or worse if you were an established vigilante."

"Can I get a vague idea?"

"Hmm well there's a big bad that's kinda like Palpatine. Him and B got into it and neither made it out. We learned B was investigating something—one before he passed."