Walking [the] Straight [and] into the Narrows (COMPLETE)

[Barbara Gordon]

Being back in Gotham after a year in Metropolis had made for an...interesting summer. Metropolis had been all bright and shiny skyscrapers and busy streets, and Gotham was, well, also shiny skyscrapers and busy streets, but the vibe was totally different. In Metropolis there was always the looming threat (promise?) of Superman diving from the sky and saving the day. It all just seemed a bit too pat for Barbara's tastes, even if it was cleaner and safer there. It just wasn't home. School was equal parts boring and terrifying, and she'd quietly decided to take some time off.

In Gotham Barbara Gordon didn't have any pointless papers to write or university bullshit to deal with. She'd been living with her adoptive parents, her Aunt Barbara and Uncle Jim and their two biological children who were much younger than she was, and working long hours in the public Library. It had been, all things considered, a quiet summer. Interesting, and quiet.

Of course, that was all just the surface of what she'd been up to. Barbara had started Blogging, with a capital B, and was quietly investigating things that were going on around her in Gotham. Interesting things, as it were. Quietly interesting things that didn't effect the top 1% who seemed to make up at least 10% of Gotham, and instead were happening to the 99(80?)% of people who lived in places like the Narrows and Robbinsville, people who took their kids to Amusement Mile when school was out. Good people who lived lives of quiet desperation as they tried to make ends meet, who sometimes lied to their children so they would sleep at night, while staying up and watching the news about yet another gang shooting a few blocks away.

Sure, the Batman was around, and he either made a difference or was the root of all the crazier crazies who'd been popping up lately. The regular papers covered his appearances enough, Barbara didn't feel like he was going to be a focus of her blog, which she'd called Gotham's Dark Corners and had proclaimed in it that she was going to be shining a light in the places where others could (or would) not. She didn't use her real name, of course, she wasn't a complete nitwit, and was writing under the pseudonym of Oracle. She was tech savvy enough (more than enough, really) to add an extra layer of security to her posting, so that while it seemed obvious that "Oracle" lived in Gotham, the posts and the blog seemed to be originating in the UK, after bouncing off of several servers across the globe.

She looked down on her Qpad at the title she was working on. Stupendous Female Flies the Frightening Skies of Gotham. Barbara sighed, and hit "delete." It was a dumb headline and probably a worse story; it was just as well she hadn't gotten around to writing it yet. The previous article was much better. Might as well let it marinate on her front page a little longer. Benson Inc, Subsidiary of Queen Consolidated, Drops Off Maphad been her first attempt at a headline for it.

Local Gangs Using Latest Tech, QC Involved? had been the one she'd settled on. The Crows, a low level gang that pushed drugs and who knows what else in the Narrows, were all sporting the latest Qphones. Barbara knew they were involved in importing gross stuff into Gotham, so perhaps they were expanding their focus into black market electronics. A company that Queen Consolidated had acquired for their proprietary miniaturized cameras that they'd immediately pushed into the next generation of Q-electronics had quietly... disappeared. Benson Inc was missing, and Barbara had discovered it, and the connection to the Qphones, after a late night at the library hacking into Queen Consolidated shipping files trying to find which crate had fallen off the truck in the Narrows.

Insinuating that QC might be involved was probably too click-baity,, but it wasn't like her views had gone up much. They had gone up...a little. Barbara flipped through to the comment section, walking down the sidewalk toward the police precinct. It was mid afternoon, and she was more than ready for the cool bite of autumn in the air, but it was barely September and school was just back in session. It was a warm day.

Which had meant that Aunt Barbara had had a few things to say this morning regarding "are you sure you want to take this year off?" and "of course take all the time you want" while Uncle Jim had been quietly preoccupied with police business and yet also somehow supportive of his niece's choices. It was his way.

Barbara skipped past the usual conspiracy theorist nuts who seemed to flock to items like these, and then nearly ran into a light pole when she realized she had an actual real life comment from someone who might know something.

[Oliver Queen]

It had been a bad day.

Well, not a bad day. More of an average day in the grand scheme of things, but that average had always skewed a little more towards the bad in his experience. A good day was not getting out of bed until two in the afternoon because you'd done something equal parts brave and stupid the night before to heroically save the day. A good day was realising that the crooks in Star City were too spooked by your latest bust to do anything stupid for a day or two, which meant you might actually get the opportunity to pretend to be Oliver Queen after sunset for the first time in a while. An even better day was getting to spend a night in with a cold beer and a bowl of popcorn watching the Starlings show the Gotham Knights how the noble game of ice hockey was supposed to be played.

An average day was like today, where everything you'd tried to investigate came up empty. Where the subtle approach that you'd taken, trying to invite a Gotham Gazette reporter out for coffee to find out a little more about the Queen Consolidated story she'd written a few months previous, had basically turned into a conversation about how much her room mate had the biggest crush on you and had posters of you all over his wall. Where you'd spent hours pouring over archives of the business section from the Gazette and the Globe trying to map out some pattern to the acquisitions that Queen Consolidated had made over the last several years. Where you were rapidly approaching the realisation that the only way to uncover what was going on with the family business was to stride in the front door and demand answers in person.

Oliver ran his hands across his tired face, momentarily obscuring the depressing hotel room surroundings. If this investigation took any longer, he'd find himself needing to rent an apartment in Gotham, and that was a depressing notion all of it's own. Visiting Gotham was bad enough, but living here? Actually paying money for the dubious privilege of having Gotham City, New Jersey as part of your address? That was what made it a bad day.

A brief chirp from his Qphone solicited a grunt before he reached for it, discarded onto the bed that he'd perched himself on. A quick swipe and a certain someone's birthday later, and he pulled up the message he'd just received: a handful of words, and an attached link.

Thought you might find this interesting. - Skeets

Oliver's eyes swept across the webpage that opened. Gotham's Dark Corners. One of those internet blogs that the crackpots and conspiracy theorists used. Some of them were more robust than others - being a crazy loon didn't necessarily make you incapable of doing a decent bit of detective work - but usually they just stuck to vigilante sightings, or complex fallacies about how there was a secret society of supervillains puppeteering all of the world's criminal activity to some unified nefarious end. This one though... hmm. He reached for his laptop, pulling up the research he'd already conducted, tongue clicking against the inside of his mouth as he scrolled down the list. Benson. Benson, Benson... ah. Camera tech. No wonder that name was familiar - he'd acquired some of their tech to incorporate into his spy arrows, back when he'd first started out tinkering with something a little more imaginative than just pointy ends to his projectiles. But now they'd disappeared? Production plants closed down, employees quietly laid off - weird. The gangs with modern phones was one thing, but this?

He couldn't help thinking about Bruce: about the way that Wayne Enterprises managed to be so covertly helpful in assisting Batman with his technological efforts. He wondered ho many WayneTech subsidiaries had mysteriously disappeared or been subsumed by other parts of the company to prevent anyone from putting two and two together and seeing that the answer was holy crap Batman. Like most bloggers though, this Oracle was protective of their sources and methods. If Oliver knew reporters and their ilk - and he'd slept with enough to be relatively confident that he did - there'd be more this Oracle was holding back than they let on. Leads and theories that hadn't been robust enough to follow up on; rumours, apparent dead ends, something, anything.

Fingers rattling against the keys, Oliver pulled up the blog again, jumping through the necessary hoops to set himself up with an account. He hesitated for a moment, choosing his words carefully to craft the perfect comment. They'd need to meet somewhere public, but not too public. Somewhere easy for him to approach unseen, but somewhere this blogger wouldn't be afraid to visit; somewhere it wouldn't be strange for someone to be seen wandering around. Robinson Park, then. The Botanical Gardens.

Locksley:
Glad I'm not the only one noticing this. I may have more information.
Come find me at sunset. I'll be in the park, near the flowers.

[Barbara Gordon]

At the park, near the flowers.

At the park... near the flowers.

AT the park, near THE flowers.

Barbara had been thinking about the comment for an hour, nearly skipped dropping in on Uncle Jim entirely but managed to put in a distracted appearance, and was now walking toward Robinson Park and the botanical gardens. The sun was edging toward the horizon. This was a terrible, terrible idea. The Gardens closed at sundown anyway, so the only person she was likely to meet would be a security guard or park ranger, or whatever they were actually called.

Anyway, who said "by the flowers" when referring to Robinson Park? There were literally hundreds of flowers to choose from. It was probably just a troll, but she'd replied to the comment anyway.


ORACLE:
Sunset at the park? Sounds like a date


Lighthearted enough that it sounded like a joke, but also doubled as a serious reply. Barbara felt for the comforting presence of the mace she always carried in her satchel, and then pulled the hood of her lightweight sweatshirt up over her red hair. Not the best disguise, but she wasn't some socialite who was always in the gossip pages; outside of the detectives and officers who saw her with her uncle Barbara enjoyed a quiet anonymity in Gotham.

Maybe that was the problem - too many people were anonymous in Gotham. Just... faces in the crowd. Her mind started spinning out a new story, or maybe a group of stories, highlighting ordinary people... the People of Gotham City... and then she was walking through the Botanical Gardens toward the only noteworthy flower she could think of. The Titan Arum, or the corpse flower.

As the sun was going down and the Gardens were closing, the usual crowd of people around the corpse flower was thinning out. It was being broadcast 24/7 over the internet via a webcamera, so Barbara found a bench nearby to sit on after dodging an employee looking to shoo people out of the Gardens. She pulled out her phone and flipped to the memo recording app, and then put it on her lap screen down.

Yes, this was definitely a stupid idea. But then, what was the worst that could happen? Babs, this is Gotham City, you know better than to tempt fate. Killer clowns descending on ropes from the skylights was always a possibility, or maybe lunatics from the Asylum rampaging throughout the park.

Hopefully the worst that could happen was that no one was going to show up and she'd go home disappointed, but wiser.

[Green Arrow]

"A hood? Interesting choice."

It still felt strange, hearing the distorted voice coming out of his mouth as the gizmo on his collar pumped tiny vibrations into his throat to change the way his vocal chords resonated. Backwards helium, Oliver supposed. You'd have thought he'd be used to it by now. He wasn't. Still, hurt a heck of a lot less than trying to put on a fake accent through his own efforts.

Moving slowly so as not to cause alarm, Oliver emerged from the shadows that had concealed him, his costume choice providing unusually good camouflage, all things considered. Perhaps he'd have to lurk in gardens a bit more often. No wonder his forest-dwelling inspiration had such a thing for green. "You must be Oracle." He certainly hoped she was - it'd be a shame if she wasn't, and he'd wasted all of these awesome theatrics on some random member of the general public, but if he'd stayed crouching like that any longer, his leg was going to cramp up or go to sleep, and a vigilante unceremoniously hopping around in the shadows wasn't exactly the impression he was aiming for.

"I'm a big fan of your work."

[Barbara Gordon]

"Holy shit," Barbara said, as the Green F-ing Arrow came out of the shadows of an innocuous group of plants. She was so shocked that she didn't really hear what he was saying, but I'm a big fan of your work came through, and she just barely managed to keep her mouth from dropping open. Her hand tightened on her phone, and she hit the record button.

Of course, it was recording only silence as she stared up at the Green Arrow, and he stared down at her, waiting for her reply. Barbara jumped to her feet, some semblance of control over her body returning as she tried to get over her surprise and even the field between them by also standing. Her satchel fell to the ground, and she awkwardly dipped toward it, snatching it up and hoisting it over her shoulder while trying to maintain eye contact. "Locksley? Oh, Locksley." She mentally facepalmed. Robin Hood. Green Arrow. A-duuuh.

"I'm a big fan of your work," Barbara managed to continue. "Although, you're about the very last person I expected to see here tonight."

[Green Arrow]

"The feeling is mutual, Miss Gordon," Oliver replied, doing a slightly better job of disguising his own surprise than Oracle had managed. Of course he recognised who she was: Barbara Gordon was a high priority target to anyone who wanted to try and gain some leverage against the Commissioner and the GCPD. Gotham might not have been his city, but he certainly hadn't arrived here blind: he knew enough to get by; knew enough so that Bruce didn't have quite so many opportunities to show off how superior his knowledge was.

It wasn't even a surprise when he thought about it. You couldn't have James Gordon as such an important part of your life without a little bit of that detective urge rubbing off on you. An anonymous blog like that? Clever. A few steps back from danger, from vigilantism, from anything that would aggravate the Commissioner too much. He held up a hand in silent apology. "Oracle," he corrected. "Your secret is safe with me."

His eyes fell, following Barbara's arm down to the phone clutched in her hand. He didn't mind the recording per se, journalists and detectives alike often used such things rather than relying on fallible memories or hand-written notes; Oliver just would have preferred she do so without subterfuge. "I hope you aren't expecting me to say anything profound."

[Barbara Gordon]

So much for anonymity! Barbara resisted the urge to pull her hoody further over her face, and then followed his gaze down to her hand where it was holding her phone face down. She folded her arms across her chest, phone tucked underneath but with the microphone still mostly free (if more hidden). "I don't know what to expect you to say. You... you said you had information?"

[Green Arrow]

"I might."

Oliver echoed Oracle's defensive posture, and had half a mind to reach back for his quiver and snag one of his EMP arrows to fritz out her cell. That would have been mean, though, and it wasn't as if he could just buy her a new one the way he would if it was Roy or Mia getting all surly. He breathed out a small sigh.

"Queen Industries -" He caught himself; managed not to wince too much as he corrected. "- Queen Consolidatedstarted out in my city. I heart rumours from a... reputable, pointy-eared nocturnal source that something untoward might be going on. I'm in Gotham trying to find out what they are mixed up in."

What they are doing to my company. My father's legacy. Internally, Oliver seethed, frustration wrapping around all the organs in his chest. It was one thing to do all this underhanded crap. For better or worse, corporations got up to all sorts of shady crap, especially in Gotham. Usually it was someone else's problem. Too big to tackle. Leave it to the FBI, or ARGUS, or someone else with the resources to handle it. But this was different; this was his name on every letterhead, on every truck, on every building. His responsibility stamped across every underhanded action and every person harmed. That reluctance gripped him as he considered just how much to reveal to Oracle; but a dead end was a dead end.

"You're definitely on to something with Benson, but you're looking at it from the wrong side. Benson may have gone off the grid, but you're holding the fruits of their labours in your hand, embedded in that phone of yours. It's the other disappearing companies you need to worry about - the ones that aren't finding their way into QC devices. Medicine. Biotech. Chemicals. Queen Consolidated isn't funnelling those patents and that research into consumer electronics, so ask your self: why did they even want those businesses in the first place?"

[Barbara Gordon]

There were a bunch of reasons why Barbara considered she might be dreaming this entire encounter, but she pinched the inside of her arm while the Green Arrow talked and the sharp pain didn't change anything. "Well, I don't know if I can help you," she said, wishing she could. "I mean, I went looking for reasons why a small time gang like the Crows is suddenly sporting the latest tech without there being an obvious trail - I mean, of course I'll look into other companies. It shouldn't be too hard to find a list of what QC has assimilated..."

Her voice trailed off, considering the possibilities. "Did you consider that what you're looking into might be involved with QC's defense contracts with the government?" Of course he did, he's the Green Arrow. Don't be a dummy, Barbara!

[Green Arrow]

Defence contracts. The brick wall - and firewall - he'd been banging his head up against. Everything about companies disappearing screamed of people being whisked away for secret government purposes, so loudly that even thinking about it was enough to make you feel like a mentally unstable conspiracy theorist.

"It's possible," Oliver conceded, "But it doesn't explain where your Crows are getting their tech."

That in itself was something of a curveball. Every company had some kind of losses to petty theft, shipment heists, and situations of that ilk. It was the world that they lived in. It was the frustrating reality of doing business these days, especially if you were going to do it in a city like Gotham. That's what insurance was for; there were even rumours of some companies shifting around their old stock and leaking enough to make the trucks vulnerable to the city's gangs to help them convert obsolete product into liquid cash again when the insurance paid out. It was the kind of mild fraud that everyone in Gotham tolerated - so much in this city was shrugged off simply because everyone was relieved the crimes weren't considerably worse.

"Did your -" He almost said uncle, but he stopped himself in time. "- contacts at the GCPD run any of the serial numbers? Are we looking at tech from a shipment that Consolidated just hasn't reported missing, or are they all from different batches?"

It was possible that pride was at play here. Queen Consolidated's track record for crime-related losses was one of the best in the city. Part of Oliver had hoped it was just because his family's company wasn't resorting to the same corrupt tactics as the rest of Gotham, but it was almost too clean. If QC was trying to preserve the illusion of a perfect record, there were ways around it: ways to clean up after criminal activity without involving the police; reports couldn't reflect any incidents that hadn't been reported.

[Barbara Gordon]

"Weeeell..." Barbara grimaced. Don't tell him you ran the numbers yourself! "The GPD doesn't have this as a priority at all, I mean, the phones aren't even reported as stolen. I only know about it because I saw them myself. Uh, so... but they're all from one shipment, yeah."

She scratched an itchy spot on her hairline, and tucked some hair behind her ear under her hoody. "I mean, that is how I discovered about Benson, after all. Trying to track the shipment and getting sidetracked down another rabbit trail. Because, like other things around QC, the shipment just disappeared."

[Green Arrow]

One shipment was a lead. Not a great lead, but at least it was somewhere to start. If Oliver could work out where those phones had been manufactured, and when, maybe there was a trail he could pick up; breadcrumbs he could follow towards where the disappearance had occurred. It might lead to another dead end - probably would, in fact - but maybe if he ran head first into enough of those dead ends, he could start getting an idea of the shape of what Queen Consolidated was trying to protect.

Of course, if he was going to find out anything relating to those serial numbers, he wouldn't be able to do it as the Green Arrow. He'd need to get himself on the inside, a task that Oliver Queen was far better suited for. A task that Oliver had been hoping he could put off indefinitely. Apparently his options for that were rapidly depleting. Time for Mr Queen to stop hiding from his responsibilities behind a mask and a hood.

Reaching into one of his utility pouches, Oliver pulled out a burner phone - one with a fetching emerald green case, of course - and held it out towards Oracle. "I would appreciate a copy of those serial numbers. I know someone who might be able to get a look at Queen Consolidated from the inside. She'll need a place to start looking, and this could help."

t was a simple trick, a simple evasion. Most people wary about giving too much away might have been careful to avoid mentioning a gender; Oliver had trained himself to casually use the wrong one instead. Anything that the Green Arrow ever intended to do as Oliver Queen was always - in his mind - going to be performed by a pretty young blonde with glasses and a pencil skirt. It was a strange measure, true, but it was an unfortunate failing of Oliver's personality: lying always came naturally when there was an attractive woman involved.

[Barbara Gordon]

Barbara reached for the offered phone, careful not to accidentally brush against his gloved fingers. "I can send you what I've got. Do I...um..." she stuffed her own phone into her back pocket and looked into the speed dial of the new, green one. "Just text you, or something? Oh I see, got it. Speed dial one, easy to remember." She laughed nervously, her usually husky voice a little higher than normal.

He looked like he was about to disappear into the shadows again, and she added, "Thanks. I'll keep digging." In fact she already had something else planned for the evening, and now she was even more inspired to follow through with it.

[Green Arrow]

He should've left then and there. That'd have been the Batman thing to do. Blend in the shadows and, what, grapnel up to the roof while no one was looking? Lurk there in the shadows until people had left and then sneak out? Oliver had never really sussed out how Bruce pulled off his little disappearing act; annoyed the hell out of him, to be honest, same as pretty much everyone else who'd been on the receiving end of it. For Oliver, he'd always gone for the whole grapnel arrow approach, zipping off into the night, preferably with a leap off a building and a bit of Errol Flynn swagger thrown in for good measure.

It didn't feel right, though. He'd promised her information - or at least implied that he had some - and all he'd really done was confirm that there might be some substance to what she was delving into. He stood there for a moment in conflicted silence, before he spoke again.

"Tyler Chemical."

It was a small lead. A loose thread. A strand to grab hold of and pull.

"One of Consolidated's first mystery acquisitions. A small pharmaceutical firm founded back in the Forties. I can't find a single Tyler patent that has found it's way into any QC products since the company was acquired. So either they're working on something they haven't announced yet, or -"

He let that sentiment hang, his internal conflict over encouraging Barbara down this path stretching on a little longer. Did he have the right to help her endanger herself like this? Was he exploiting her as a potential resource, despite his good intentions, without due diligence for her well being? Or was he just being a better man than the Bat would have been, helping rather than hindering, leaving her to make her own choices regardless of whether Bruce or Jim Gordon would approve?

"Be careful, Oracle," was the last thing he added, retrieving the grapnel arrow from his quiver, holding her gaze for just a little longer. "If anything happens to you now, it's going to be me that the Commissioner skins alive."

[Barbara Gordon]

"Ah," Barbara said, "Another over protective father figure, just what I was missing in my life." She waggled the green phone in the Green Arrow's direction. "I'm always careful."

And with that, he was gone. Arrow flung into the distance by his bow, and ziiiiip he was flying away. Barbara smacked herself in the forehead. Did I really just call the Green Arrow of Star City a FATHER FIGURE? He's like ...maybe ten years older than me. Well, who knows really. But still! Way to make yourself seem cool, mysterious, and/or available, Babs.

Alone in the Botanical Gardens, Barbara swiped through the burner phone the vigilante had given her and located the GPS. She turned it off. No need to make it easy on the guy to stalk her. There was a thin line between hero and villain sometimes, and besides, she really didn't need a big brother type looking over her shoulder.

That had been one good thing about Metropolis. There she was just another cool co-ed, not the little teenage daughter of the police commissioner and all that entailed. She was NINETEEN for crying out loud, not some snot nosed kid who needed to hold hands crossing the street.

She was walking briskly now, straight to where she'd left her old beater of a car. Just a quick stop in the Narrows before she headed home...

[Barbara Gordon]

(thread is now open)

It didn't take long to drive to her destination, only about fifteen minutes in light traffic, and she parked in front of a convenience store somewhere in the middle of the Narrows. It had been a 7-11, but now was just another knock off with the owner's name on the front. Pete's Quick Stop. Also hopefully Barbara's quick stop, she thought.

Her research into the Crows had flagged this place as a possible hub for the gang. So why not go get some energy drinks after dark and see what was going on with her own eyes? Oh, I dunno, lots of reasons that Uncle Jim will probably yell at me if he ever hears about this. She hopped out of the car, zipped up her sweatshirt but left the hood down, and pushed her way into the store.

[Connor Kent]

The ring of the bell brought them to attention like a mob of meerkats, rigid, and alert. When the door rattled shut, they hunched together in the gloom, guarding their boxes jealously. Glances were exchanged in silence until the need for concern had passed, and then teeth, like strings of wet pearls, shone through shaken smiles. Connor felt a hand on his back: Turk, the oldest, gave him an ineffectual shove.

“Smiley, go,” hissed Mo. They called him Smiley because he didn’t seem to have anything to smile about - he supposed they were being ironic, or sarcastic, or both. The difference was difficult to distinguish.

“I went last time. And the time before that.”

“You’re the newbie. You go every time.” Owlish wheeled on him, pointing a fully-loaded finger. He was the small balding one, who put Connor in mind of a loud, and persistent, chihuahua. His gaze had the spark of snapping power cables, “Got a problem with that, beanstalk?”

“Easy, man. You made your point.” Turk’s voice rumbled. He subdued the chihuahua with a heavy hand, and sent Connor on his way with a nod that left no room for argument.

Up three stone steps and into the rank glare of fluorescent lights, he climbed. Pete’s Quick Stop was a shop typical of its sort: small, cluttered, a treasure trove of humble essentials and superfluous junk. Its grimy checkered floor sucked at his shoes as he walked. He positioned himself squarely between the condiments and the instant mash, where he folded his arms, and regarded the visitor down the brim of his cap. That hair: it blazed like a burnt copper kettle over a naked flame. He cleared his throat. As much as he liked red hair, he also had a job to do - she was a customer, and he had to get rid of her.

“What do you want?” he said, as gruffly as he could manage.

[Barbara Gordon]

The place had seemed empty, which was weird, but a door banged in the back and a guy about her age sidled into the cramped aisle she'd found herself in. Barbara pointed beyond him toward the back, and he might have stiffened, but she just said "I wanted a couple Monsters."

She edged by him toward the beer and soda coolers that made up the back wall, and then lengthened her stride and grabbed the glass door to open it. Everything seemed fairly normal for a convenience store except for how...dead it was. There were apartments all around it, surely there would be a couple people coming in and out of the Quick Stop at this time of the night. She looked up toward the corner and the big circular mirror there, and kept an eye on the guy behind her as she reached for a couple energy drinks.

[Connor Kent]

In the time it took for the girl to reach the fridge, Connor had resigned himself to waiting. If all she wanted was some energy drinks, he’d have her out of the door in no time. Maybe she could sense his impatience, snapping like a dog at her heels, for she put a little pace in her stride. He turned as if to watch her, but instead, his face creased with concentration while he listened.

“-before he gets back.”

“In there, hurry up…”

"Be careful with it!"

Three long strides closed the distance between himself and the girl. The fridge door slammed shut, almost catching her fingers. With his hand pressed firmly against the glass, he kept his gaze averted, and grunted, “We’re out of Monsters. Get out.”

[Barbara Gordon]

She jerked her hand out of the way just in time as he closed the door, and Barbara stared at him incredulously. "They're right there!" You should shut your mouth now, she thought, as he glowered at her. Of course, there's something going on here and this is certainly suspicious behavior.

"But yeah, I guess I'll be going," she added hastily, her hand on her satchel strap where it crossed her body. Barbara took a step backward and bumped into a display of chips, nearly upsetting it and making it spin a little. He wasn't wearing a Pete's Quick Stop uniform shirt (or name tag, for that matter, if they didn't do uniforms here), his demeanor was unsettling, and she was being told to get out.

Yeah, nothing going on here, for sure. She thought she heard a bump from the back room, and her eyes tracked toward it.