hello hello I don't know why you say goodbye I say hello [largely open]

[thegoshdarn]

Santa Claus' workshop is simultaneously incredibly surprising and not surprising in the slightest. It's certainly a new experience, but its design and decoration make it essentially exactly what she'd imagine if she was asked to imagine what it would look like. Admittedly, she hasn't really believed in its existence since - did she ever believe in its existence? Hmm.

At least the red in her suit sort of fits in with the general color theme. The vocal distorter's off but the mask is still on, so she's really just what you'd expect from your third Robin up until she starts talking.

Which, to be fair, she's not doing a whole lot of compared to glancing around with interest while she waits for Cassie to find her brother and Kon and whoever else she deems appropriate.

Comments

[thegoshdarn]

Not to mention one of the only ones with solid family experience.

"Not exactly." Their conversation hasn't happened yet had other things to focus on.

[circusbat]

"Come on, then. I'll give you the grand tour. Kinda light on rooftops, here, but there's some places here I'm sure you'll enjoy." He reaches up and ruffles her hair, because she's still Tim.

[thegoshdarn]

She ducks away before he can do any more damage to her hair. "Is there a magic wardrobe somewhere? Not the portal to a winter wonderland kind, just the kind with things I can wear that I haven't been patrolling in."

[circusbat]

Dick snorts and spreads his arms. "What more winter wonderland could you want than this, little brother?" Yeah, he did warn her. "But yeah, there's clothes that aren't your uniform here. Ask the yetis if you can't find something to wear, they'll make it for you."

He pauses a moment. "Ah, yeah. Apparently, elves don't actually do any of the work around here. They're just kind of annoying and try not to step on them because they're small, but it's pretty much the Yetis that make the toys."

[thegoshdarn]

...All right, she'll bite. "What are they here for, then? Bragging rights?"

[circusbat]

"Apparently? Testing the toys. Because they're kinda worse than toddlers."

[thegoshdarn]

"All right, makes sense." As much as anything does right now. "Nice to know they have some quality and safety standards."

[circusbat]

"Well, it's Santa's workshop. They're not going to give little kids toys that are going to hurt them, right?" Hey, it makes total sense to Dick.

[thegoshdarn]

"Don't try to make me apply too much logic to this. I'm still not completely convinced I'm not just having some impressively detailed hallucinations."

[circusbat]

Dick snorts. "Yeah, I felt like that to start with, too. But there comes a point where it's all just a little too weird, you know? Like, I hadn't been here a week before I got pulled for an other world mission? Evil Superman."

[thegoshdarn]

"So assimilation by saturation." She raises an eyebrow. "What was he doing?"

[circusbat]

"I wish I could say the 'usual stuff', but it was a lot worse than that." Dick steers her toward some chairs, mostly because it's more comfortable to talk about while sitting. "He was basically killing anybody who stepped out of line even the least bit. Had already killed a lot of the villains of his world but was working with Luthor. He nearly killed his Kon and convinced the Titans to go into the Phantom Zone with him so that he didn't die. Took Blue Beetle off at the knees, literally, and threatened his family if he didn't comply with staying out of things.

"Which all would have been bad enough if it weren't for the fact that so many of the members of the Justice League were helping him. Not Batman, but he had Wonder Woman helping him and Hal had become a Yellow Lantern and somehow he talked Barry into helping him..."

[thegoshdarn]

"Wow. That sounds like..." A little too similar to the future she and the other Titans encountered, actually. Not in the same ways, but... in tone. (She spares a brief thought for hoping no one told this Dick the full details about that little incident. It's awful to be grateful for a teammate's personal crisis, but she's just a tinY bit thankful her M'gann was too distracted by her own problems to turn that into a thing.) "...a nightmare," she finishes with a little sympathetic wince.

[circusbat]

"B was rallying the troops as much as possible, but...it was going badly. We managed, though. Got the shard, broke the awful government. Got B to loosen up a bit."

There were reasons why Batman should have a Robin, after all. It had been Tim who had taught him that.

[thegoshdarn]

Yes, well, no one wants their Batman to go diving off the deep end into hyper-violence.

"What was this shard?"

[circusbat]

"Shards of reality. This reality, since it seems to be kind of the epicenter of everything happening at the moment." He hums softly. "It's not that easy to explain, really. They don't have a particular shape, or they probably change for everybody that sees them. But losing them destabilizes this reality."

He held out his hand, bringing up his own brand. His was a line that came down to cover his ring and middle fingers, the way the lines on his Nightwing uniform did. "We've each got something like this. They each seem to take different forms, depending on the person. When we go looking for a shard, it works like a hot-and-cold compass. When you're facing the right way, it goes brighter so that you know what direction you're going." He grimaced, letting it fade. "Assuming, of course, it's not being hidden."