The Clocktower, New Gotham City, Sunday Afternoon

[blondecanary]

There was brunch, and there was talking in Spanish to Barbara, and there was waiting for Karla to arrive for foodness and a day of goofing off. There might even be a Knights game, later.

Perfect Sunday in New Gotham. Well, if you weren't fighting crime at the moment.

[expecting one, then another, but open for phone calls earlier!]

Comments

After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

It was laaaate, but Alfred had left snacks; Chinese dumplings, egg rolls, pot stickers and won-tons.

"Right. That went well." Not even said with sarcasm, just thoughtfulness.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[heromaniac]

Momoko was silent, but glare-y as she reached for a pair of chopsticks.

Three dumplings and an egg roll later, she was a bit calmer and managed a sigh as she reached for another dumpling. "That was totally the weirdest patrol we have ever been on."

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[glacial_witch]

Karla kept giving Momoko sulkily injured glares right back, while making a pile of won-tons on her plate. "I think it went very well," she announced.

With her vast patrol experience, of course.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

"It did," Dinah said, meaning it, but... "It was kind of weird, though. The magic definitely helped; I wish we could get something to make an invisibility shield when you weren't here." She nibbled on a pot-sticker, then said carefully, "And no one got permanently hurt." Which was just as important as catching them.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[heromaniac]

"It was totally helpful," Momoko chimed in, considering the idea. "But I don't know how good it would be to always be invisible. Sometimes just seeing that there's a policeman or hero around will stop someone."

...

And then no one would get stuck in the ground. Not that Blossom was going to bring that up. Again.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[glacial_witch]

He was fine! Mother Night, what was the difference between being stuck in the ground and tied to a lamppost, huh?

"I could make some," Karla offered. "It's like the bracelet I made for Warren to hide his wings. And maybe braid a regular shield into it, since even your bulletproof armor doesn't extend everywhere."

SEE? SHE WAS HELPING!

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

"I'd love that," Dinah said, grinning a little and nodding. "Thanks." She gave Karla an assessing glance, and brought it out in the open. "You didn't get why we did some of the stuff we did tonight, did you?"

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[heromaniac]

Momoko didn't snort at that. Mostly because,

1. Karla was a good friend, and,
2. Dinah was within hitting range

"Is your world really that different?" She hasn't been, you see. "Don't you have policemen and jails?"

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[glacial_witch]

That was okay, Momoko. Karla was snorting for you.

"You could say that," she said, a tad dryly. It worked for both questions, really.

She paused, trying to think of the best way to say this without alienating either friend. "I think we did a lot of good out there. We protected those two females in the park, we stopped that car-napping--" car-jacking, but whatever "--and I can understand where my methods wouldn't work here in a land without Craft. But that big thing, with the drug deals..." She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "So long as no innocent bystander was caught in that...I didn't really see a crime."

There. It was out.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

"No crime in one of them shooting the other?" Dinah clarified bluntly. "Or no crime in one of them walking away, possibly, with all of what were probably drugs, and all the money? We don't know how that would've played out."

She had another ace-in-the-hole question, but not yet. Lay the groundwork first.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[heromaniac]

"Sometimes it's not about a crime, really." Momoko had to add in her bit. "I can't just stand by and watch people get killed when I can stop it. Not even criminals."

Which was kind of the point of the big argument that she and Reno had gotten into all those years ago.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[glacial_witch]

"Dinah, you know that..." She hadn't wanted to say it, but Dinah was leaving her no choice. After a slightly-nervous glance darted in Momoko's direction, Karla sat up straight and a said clearly, "Kaeleer has no laws against murder. Kaeleer also has no laws regarding illicit substances. We may have laws about how those substances are used--" hi, safframate "--but no laws saying that no one can buy them. So, yes. Had they shot one another, had they made a trade, had someone walked off with drugs and money, in Kaeleer, this would be no crime."

Yeah. That was going to go over like a brick. "I know this is not Kaeleer, and these things are crimes in your world. Our rules and laws vary and I understand that. But I don't understand why your world stacks the deck in the favor of criminals."

There.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

Dinah didn't look at Momoko, knowing how that was going to go over. "Yeah, I know all that. And I'm not judging... well, okay, I'm judging a little, on the murder. And I can explain the reasons why the drugs thing is different here." She took a breath. "So... Look. I think maybe you're forgetting that we can't read those guys' minds. We don't know who was guilty of what back there. Maybe bad judgment? Maybe panic? Maybe one or more were addicts?" She studied Karla. "Could you tell, just by looking at them, doing your psychic sensing, that they were all hard-core bad guys? What if one of them was an undercover cop?"

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[heromaniac]

Momoko...

Momoko was quiet. She took another bite of her won ton and was very very quiet.

Different worlds, different rules. Different worlds, different rules. Different worlds, different rules. Different worlds, different rules. Different worlds, different rules. Different worlds, different rules.

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[glacial_witch]

"Your world has plenty of sanctioned murder in it," Karla pointed out, talking over Dinah a bit. "You just call it other things."

Like warfare and the death penalty and self-defense. In Kaeleer, they didn't differentiate.

"But this isn't about semantics, it's--Hunh." She shut up and right quickly as Dinah made her final argument.

Karla hadn't thought of the 'undercover cop' angle, simply because it wasn't something in her frame of reference. "No, I couldn't," she admitted freely, chewing on her lower lip while in thought. "I can sense fear and hate and greed, though. But not enough to discern motive, with something like that."

Re: After the thrilling heroics.

[blondecanary]

"Controlled hatred coming from a cop pretending to be a criminal would be pretty reasonable. And they might have all been multiple offenders, but... even if we had them tied up later, and I went into their heads to check? There's no way anything I found out would be admissible in any court here. It's just not accepted. Saying 'I only let the bad ones die' wouldn't fly." Dinah floated another egg roll to herself, and nibbled. "You were on the right track, wondering about the evidence. We did all we could to preserve that. But it's like Momoko said, we weren't there to arrest them, that was secondary. We were there to save people from getting hurt. The people outside the theater first and foremost, but yeah, the ones waving guns around and being stupid too."