The Main Stretch East Main runs east to west, a long flat ribbon of street that follows an almost perfectly straight course. Nicknamed The Main Stretch, the sides of the street are lined with all manner of apartment buildings, shops, restaurants and the occasional theater or other entertainment spot. The sidewalks are wide, if not a little worn, with pedestrian traffic late into the night, attracted by the shopping and entertainment. While buildings stretch up into the sky on all sides, and nearly any business can be found here with ease, parking is another matter entirely. The few parking lots are always filled near to capacity, and the metered parking along the street is heavily patrolled. The city supports a number of projects on parking fees and tickets alone. Holmes is, tonight, a strung-out junkie. Naming something else about him that is remarkable will be very difficult. His clothing: a grey long-sleeved flannel shirt torn and slightly stained, covered by a cheap windbreaker with an obscure logo on the chest pocket. His jeans are slighlty too short, some of his socks visible above his ratty sneakers. Not that anyone in the smoky bar is paying any attention to him. His kind - or the kind he is pretending to be - comes here all the time. He is smoking a cheap cigarette. His hair is grimy. He watches a closed door to a back room with hunted eyes. He doesn't try to eavesdrop - he already knows what is being said. He is interested in a dark blue satchel, which went into the room half an hour ago and has not left yet. If it leaves in the hands of one man, he will have to follow close. If it leaves in the hands of another, he will have to rush across town as quick as he can to prevent a murder...every possibility considered, every contingency covered. More or less. Through the grimy pane of glass looking out on the street, past the buzzing neon signs advertising a variety of cheap liquor, one can make out the black and blue shadows of a back alley. Steam rises from a manhole cover, rising up past the rusting fire escape ladders and boarded over windows of two grungy apartment blocks. The dim, distant sounds of traffic echo through the bar window, background to the tinny jazz number coming from the boom box behind the main counter. Flabby Moskowitz, owner and proprietor, stands behind this counter, his meaty fist shoved into a dirty rag squeezed into a dirtier glass. The others in the bar hunch over their drinks (or other, less regulated refreshments). Hushed, sneering voices whisper back and forth. Moskowitz casts a brief, sweaty look to the back door, where a slabside of man in a rumpled suit and black cap stands guard. The goon at the door shoots his cuffs and adjusts his tie, smirking at Moskowitz. The barman wisely shifts his gaze and pretends to be fascinated by a dead roach on the floor. Holmes straightens up briefly as if he were returning to his body after some distant, slightly brain-dead reverie. He drops his glass back on the bar and fumbles in his pocket for cash. Counting out a couple of crumpled singles and some change, he looks morose and self-absorbed. Maybe it's not as much of a stretch as he wants to think. Still waiting. He looks at the money he has left, as if considering using it to order something else, but then just shakes his head and puts the money under his glass. Both are gone promptly. It gives Flabby something to do besides watch the roaches and show how nervous he is. The rising steam in the back alley shifts with a silent, formless wind, starting to whip around like a tiny urban twister. A few scraps of old newspaper swirl up from the filthy concrete and asphalt. A homeless man's wet cardboard hovel leans toward the center of the wind pattern, and he rolls out, rubbing two bleary eyes half-covered by his ratty muffler. "Nuh?" he asks the air. His hair stands on end as a static charge runs up his spine. Flabby turns to work on refilling the 'junkie's order, evidently grateful for the distraction. He sets the glass down with a short spatter of liquor over its side. He licks the wetness from the edge of his hand as he walks over to another patron, hunching near him to answer a slurred question. >From behind the back door, there's a short, sharp laugh. The goon in the cap casts a short glance back to the door. A lock rattles. The door opens and the goon guarding it steps back to allow the best dressed man in the entire three block radius of this part of town to exit. He's a little short, greasy black hair cut short, dressed in a white suit with a red carnation. He is not the man with the satchel. The man with the satchel is taller, rangy looking, with a thin mustache. His skin is fishbelly white and his skin is pulled taut over his skull. He slips the blue satchel inside his jacket. The man with the carnation makes for the door out, leaving the goon in the cap and the pale man to exchange low mutterings. Holmes relaxes slightly - inwardly of course - this man is only one he has to follow. If the man with the carnation had had it...but it is not worth thinking about. He waits a couple of seconds, then skulks for the door in the shadow of a thickly built, very drunk, fat man. Almost scuttling - everyone will think they left together, if they remember him at all. His keen eyes pick out things about the tall man even as he saunters past: his shoelaces are stained with light oil used in small boats, so he is a hands-on smuggler, his skin being so pale indicates a nocturnal bent. Ah there. He was to be married at one point in his life but that never worked out...A cascade of facts and inferences from every movement, every detail. Holmes has a car ready if he uses a car, but from the wear on his sneakers combined with the expensiveness of his jacket, it's clear that the man does a lot of walking. And running. The pale man and the man in the cap approach the bar. The latter, who apparently handles the talking, gestures with a crook of his finger to Flabby. He pulls Flabby's shirt breast pocket out a ways with the same finger and deposits a roll of bills. He slaps the side of the man's face affectionately. "Silence is golden, Flabby. Golden." Flabby gulps and nods, smiling weakly. The man with the carnation pulls the flower up to his nose, sniffing from it. He glares at the homeless man who looks back at him. "Whadda you lookin' at, spud?" The gape-mouthed bum's gaze turns upward, his matted hair whipping about his head as the wind suddenly rises to a strong gust. " 's comin', 's comin'," he says. The man with the carnation mouth a faint profanity as he follows the homeless man's gaze. The portal rips open like a bullethole through the night sky above the alleyway. The electric blue flash crackles with sudden, transdimensional violence and an ozone scent. Against the blue circle of light, a silhouette from a nightmare appears - a length of fluttering wings, fringed with talons, a head with a pair of horn-likes protrusions, a pair of glaring white eyes. Thunder rolls as the circle of light closes behind the shadow, which drops in a strangely serene arc past the staring men in the alley and toward the front window of the bar... Holmes sees it coming. He freezes. So much for all his careful plans, all his calculated contingencies - he doesn't break character to look wounded, though. There's a split second of decision where he realizes that he's going to find out much more by staying than he will by following the man with the satchel. But even a junkie would notice this. So he screeches a single word of profanity and dives for cover...awkwardly. He even looks like he smacks his elbow into the ground too hard as he scrambles to get out of the way of...whatever it is swooping this way. By the time he's hit the ground, though, he knows what it is. It's a man. . o O ( God help us, another one. ) Two boots meet the window pane, and the glass splinters inwards into dozens of tiny shards. The frame of a neon sign is torn from its mounting as the black clad figure crashes into the bar, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. The new arrival rolls across the top of a table, the black leather across his back wound about him, knocking over a glass bottle and several drinks, landing upright. He stands to his full height and the cape hangs across his shoulders and back, tail end fluttering slightly as the portal's shunting closed causes another rush of air in the alley. Hands loose at his sides, a frayed end of a line dropped from his fingers, he looks at the stunned patrons of the bar. The cowl's eyeslits tense at their edges, a crinkle forming in his masked brow. Most of the patrons take an involuntary step back. They wait for him to say something. He doesn't. There is only the continued buzz of the boom box and the tinkling of settling debris and shifting bodies. Holmes also stays quiet, apparently cowering, not wanting to be the first to bolt for the door, front, back, or otherwise. In addition, the number of armed people here makes that an idea of only moderate quality, but such are the times Holmes now lives in. Inwardly, he is impressed, as an artist, at the construction of the outfit - as a detective, naturally, he is reading its occupant like a book, and is slightly surprised at how masterfully parts of the signs of identity that can't be disguised have been concealed. Clearly this is a madman of exceptional quality. Some of the patrons of the establishment - the more sober or inherently cowardly - make their way toward the rear exit. Stumbling, running, or with hesitant footsteps, but out the exit they go. Flabby quietly sinks behind the bar counter. The half dozen that remain look at one another. The goon in the cap says "Who the hell are you s'posed to be?" He produces a handgun from inside of his jacket. The pale man with the blue satchel glances at his cohort, and takes a step away from him, glancing at the exits of the bar. The circle of lowlifes tighten up, then close a little. Another handgun is produced. A bat. A chain. Some knives. A bar chair. A few shards of glass roll down the cape of the new arrival, like rain water off of a tarp. His stance shifts ever so slightly. The look on his face shifts as well - one of vague consternation masked by cool disinterest. Holmes winces in advance, in sympathy for the man with the gun, and that is both "in character" and in his own mind. It is not worth dwelling on. He crawls behind the bar and watches the confrontation through the splotchy mirror above the bar, as he too sidles for the back exit. The pale man with the satchel slinks in a crouch toward the back exit a little after Holmes, scowling viciously at this turn of fate. The man in the cap flicks the safety on his handgun off, then says "Well, Dracula. Lets see what color you..." There is a hiss of something being thrown. Then a cloud of smoke. It is followed by a pair of gunshots in rapid succession. Shattering glass. Breaking wood. Clanking metal. Shouts of "Get him!" and "Over there!" overlap with the cacophony, usually followed by a pained groan. The pale man peers over his shoulder at the shadows in the smoke, adjusts the satchel strap. Holmes keeps down behind the bar, to avoid the smoke that now comes whirling up. His sharp eyes pick out the pale man, still his quarry - and he moves quickly when his back is turned, hurrying towards the back door, looking just as scared as everyone else who's headed that way, although his head is clear and cool. But there he pauses - then suddenly lurches out apparently in a panic, rushing for the door, screeching in terror again, and putting his full shoulder into "accidentally" knocking the pale man over, laying him out to see what the newcomer will do with him, and vice versa. Still "in a panic", he bursts through the back door, but instead of continuing to run towards the rear exit, he swiftly secretes himself to one side of the door to continue to observe. The smoke begins to clear, and the man in the cape and cowl steps over the fallen form of one of the know unconcious bar patrons, boot crunching on some broken glass. He walks toward the rear exit as the 'junkie' flees through the back door. Slowing slightly, he hovers like a black shade over the form of the pale courier. The courier looks toward the exit with a hateful glare at the man who sent him to the ground, then up at the interloper. His expression is one of defiant contempt. He holds up his hands. "Okay, asshole, I'm not gonna do anythin'." The Batman looks down at the courier for a long, icy moment, then asks "What city is this?" "Beacon Harbor," the other man replies, gamely. "You're, uh, a long way from home, I bet." Batman doesn't respond. Holmes just keeps quiet, watching and listening. The second Batman speaks, it's confirmed that this is in fact a /different/ Batman than the one he knows. He rubs his forehead. It smears some of the dirt he artfully smudged there before leaving. He does not choose /this/ moment to come in, but he draws himself up to start. "Listen, there's these things, these, uh, portals, man," the pale man continues, hands still raised. "Sort of randomly pick frea...uh...metas like you. Pick 'em up from where they used to be, put 'em here. Fucked up, yeah?" Batman looks across the bar toward a calendar, apparently ignoring the courier as he continues. He walks over and glances down at the cowering form of Flabby Moskowitz. His head tilts to the side, glancing back to rear of the bar. "Anyways - listen. You don't wanna be here when the cops get here. I know some good places you can hide out. I -know- people. Important people. And if you don't know people around here, man, you're nobody." Holmes lights a cigarette and shifts slightly further back into the shadows of the rear hallway to zip up his windbreaker, tug the logo off, roll down the cuffs on his jeans, wipe the dirt and very faint makeup away from his face with a pre-prepared handkerchief, straighten his shirt-cuffs, gain four inches on his height by standing up straight, and completely alter his voice. In brief, the junkie has now fled, and he appears. "Nonsense." he tells the courier as he emerges from the back room. "You don't know anyone important. Only thieves and criminals of a particularly prosaic kind." He gives a slightly superior smile for a half-second or so, while the courier struggles for a response. "You can't even hang onto the package you were given." And it's true - right there in Holmes' hand is the blue satchel - or, more precisely, a duplicate of the blue satchel. The real one has been secreted for Holmes to retrieve later. This isn't how he intended to use this contingency plan, and it won't be effective, but there it is. Holmes now turns (painedly) and addresses Batman. "Your cable - although made of quite a fascinating polymer - has probably severed, but you carry at least three spares. Perhaps you will choose to use one of them to meet me..." The courier has recovered himself enough to make a grab at Holmes, which act Holmes punishes by sidestepping and bringing his heel down hard on the courier's hand. "...upstairs on an adjacent building. If you are like who I...surmise..." (the word comes with some difficulty and not a bit of contempt) "...you are ike, you will have no difficulty finding me. I can provide you with more truthful and less cloying answers than this gentlemen. In addition, I don't recommend the drinks here." The courier goes for his gun, only to find that it isn't there. Holmes tut-tuts, and takes it out of his pocket too. He empties the shells dramatically on the courier's belly, then drops it there. With a theatrical bow more suited to someone wearing full Shakesperean costume than a scruffy street outfit, he slips out the back door. Batman is, for the moment, speechless - and not because he's being mysteriously. He gives a brief warning look at the courier, then slowly backs out of the wreck of a bar, turning only once he's in the doorway with a slight flourish of his cape. He fades into the latticed shadows of the alleyway and through the steam from the manhole's vents, black mixing into gray-white. Holmes is not hiding on the nearby rooftop, and he has again changed - this time into his more comfortable-to-him suit. He is smoking a much more expensive cigarette, and isn't hiding. His sharp eyes are searching the skyline for Batman's approach. "You seem to have me at a disadvantage," the Caped Crusader says from somewhere nearby. Somewhere, to be specific, atop a convenient air conditioning unit not far from Holmes. He crouches there, a palm planted on the metal surface of his perch. Holmes looks surprised and pained, as he didn't see Batman's approach. The two emotions - surprise and a kind of weary painedness - seem to be inextricably intertwined for this man, never one without the other. "Yes." he says bluntly, and doesn't elaborate on that, but instead (apparently) changes the subject. "The city you've come to is one that will seem familiar to you because it is similar to the one you left in many ways. Similarities. It is on the East Coast of these United States. Its law enforcement is largely ineffectual, although there are some individual officers who are quite competent, for police officers. I do not know if...but I see by your expression..." (!) "..that the same is true in the city of your origin. The lawless element rules here, as perhaps it did there. The year is slightly more advanced here. It was autumn when you departed, for example, and here, it is just into the New Year." He thinks for a moment. "In your world there were those with supernormal abilities? They are very much in evidence here. I know little about them. There are also the blue portals which draw persons from worlds across all of God's existence to this place and these times. You travelled through one such portal." He thinks for a moment more, and seems a little smug. "It's not often that I explain these matters to someone of such high intellect. It's refreshing to know that anything which I omit you will invariably discover on your own." Batman listens, his grim visage normally unreadable, but currently betraying something like a dark sort of amusement. "I see." He hops down from the unit, boots crunching on the snow as they should have on his way up here. He folds his arms across his chest under the folds of his cape. His eyes turn toward the skyline of Beacon Harbor, then toward the coastline. "It's Massachusetts. 'Beacon Harbor', Massachusetts," he says to himself dubiously. Glancing back to Holmes, he asks "We haven't met before, have we?" There is, perhaps, a twinkle in his eye beneath the mask. Holmes replies crisply. "You and I? No. You and another man with a similar but not identical background and costumery? Yes. He broke into my home to question me about some irrelevancy or another - you have merely destroyed four days of careful planning, but you could not help it, it was an accident and therefore forgivable." He is saying this as much for his benefit as for yours. "My name is John Sigerson. I am a private detective." "Of course you are," Batman replies. His tone is ever-so faintly dry. He walks closer to Holmes, looking him over as if for the first time. Its solely for the detective's benefit, of course. "I'm not the same man you met, 'John Sigerson'. And I can assure you that I won't be bothering you with irrelevancies." Holmes exhales smoke at the sky. "I don't recommend it." he says. "Hopefully you are carrying some cash funds. Your wealth is inaccessible to you here." Batman's mouth tenses and his tone changes, slightly more wary. "I have other resources I can rely on." He rests a hand on his belt, a brow rising beneath his mask. "As I'm sure you already know." He looks past Holmes and back at the slums area that stretches toward the horizon. "I don't plan on sticking around long enough for that to become an issue, though." Holmes replies mildly, "As I constantly must re-learn, this world has a way of making the finest plans collapse. But I do wish you better luck than that which brought you here." His dark eyes regard Batman with uncanny coolness - not frigidity, just something of a blunted affect, like there wasn't much room back there for sincerity or coldness or duplicitousness or anything. He's thinking. Batman's sidelong glance is masked as he says "If its scientifically possible in this place to reach to my world and draw me here, it should be scientifically possible to reverse the effect." He frowns down at the grungy rooftops and the shadowy slits of the hundred other alleyways visible. "I've got unfinished business to take care of." Holmes gives a slight nod, "The finest minds of the age have tried and failed to reverse the effect. It's as disconcerting to the inhabitants of the world as it is to those who are drawn in...in most cases." The amendation comes a moment late and without the clear-cool-factual tone of the rest of his speech. Batman turns to face Holmes fully once more, the tonal change getting his attention. "How long has it been? Since you were brought here?" Holmes gives a little coy smile for about two seconds. "Two years this month." he says. "But I was thinking of the dragons and other alien, mystical and fell creatures who suddenly appear. For me it was no great task to fit in. Nevertheless you are a good guesser." It's about on par with a 'good plumber', from his tone. "Hnnh," says Batman. He turns away again, once more looking with pronounced dourness at the strange new place he finds himself in. He rests both hands on a ledge, peering straight down now. "Police," he announces. Sure enough, there's a few members of the BHPD visible a few blocks down, making their way in a casual fashion toward the bar. "This their usual response time?" he asks, his tone plainly disdainful. Holmes says with sardonic ease, "For this neighborhood, this time of night, the importance of the meeting you interrupted? ...it's actually on the quick side. The one on the left is eager to extort a free drink from the bartender, no doubt." Batman grunts in a fashion that may approximate a laugh or perhap an affirmative noise. Hard to say, really. "You were on the right track," he says, as if granting a point in a game of Scrabble, standing straight again. "This has a lot in common with where I'm from. Only...it might be worse." His mouth settles into a thin line of concentrated consideration for a moment, and then he's walking away, making for another corner of the rooftop. He spools some line from his belt, then prepares a batarang to affix to it. Holmes finishes his cigarette and drops it, putting it out with his sneakers - the last remnant of his earlier disguise. "Good night, then. I hope your theory proves false, but I fear it will not."