Austin
Annabelle sat at the front desk, halls to the left and right, with stairs adorning those same sides, all lead to the towers of literature and documentation. There was a small computer area which had a timer system that limited how long you could hog the devices, and next to them on a little shelf was a printer.

The library actually saw more use than one might expect, Annabelle would often see all sorts of people, from all walks of life, march through the doors. She helped them checked out books, or print off flyers, Give suggestions on books for entertainment and for research. Not so rarely, she'd even see some come here to talk about not so public things. Drug deals, Crime planning... The occasional make out session. Part of being smack dab between the residental district and the slums. The library was a place for damn near anything. Respite. Revenge. Research.

And she was the watchful eye of it all, or so she should be. Most days, much like now, She was tapping away at her laptop, writing down what ever came to mind, be it notes, journal entries, or even working on her short stories or novels. No one really bothered her unless they needed help, except for maybe children- though she didn't mind helping the little tykes.

There she sat today, engrossed in her craft, making a new story- the story of a heroic vigilante, with none of the pizzaz. He liked it that way, for, Why do heros do what they do? It should never be for the fame, no. It should be a service to the people, like any other, a job that must be done. He wasn't a celebrity, He wasn't a 'hero'. He was just your friendly neighborhood Bug-Man.
Barbara
*Little did Annabelle know that the Bug-Man himself was stepping into her library... Well... Not exactly as Bug-Man, but Kurt did step through the doors and start to climb the stairs towards the front desk.*

*He'd had a pretty interesting time going underground since the Princess Poppet encounter, although 'underground' for a Cape as thoroughly committed to secrecy and paranoia as Creepy-Crawly meant an almost absurd level of precautions: no Cape activities unless along a tightly controlled schedule of random hours kept in a secured drawer of his apartment, no use of his powers, and keeping chatter to a minimum. The fact his voice sounded exactly the same between his normal form and Breaker form wasn't lost on him, and so there was a possibility that someone heard him, even if they couldn't quite get a good look at his Breaker form.*

*The library was a place for research, for planning the next stage of his guerilla heroics. He wanted information on Capes, the history of New London, city blueprints; he wanted to become so attuned to his slums that he could navigate it as effectively as if he had a satellite link to his head.*

*He walks in, a non-descript black jacket drawn tightly around him, his head tucked slightly into it and a baseball cap pulled low to cover his face. With his hands stuffed in his pockets, he looked more like was about to rob the place than ask to check out the stacks.*

*As he nears the front desk, he raps the wood once to get the librarian's attention, pretending not to look at Annabelle and clearing his throat.* "Excuse me, uhh... Do you have any, uhh, city documents on file here?" *His voice is raspy and creaky, clearly a little unused in the time since the Poppet 'fight'...But to Annabelle's ears, it was very familiar sounding.*
Austin
Annabelle gave pause, the tapping on her keyboard ceased for a moment as she listened, and a small mischievous smile grew. Then she continued, without even looking up.

"What ever is publicly available online through the city's site, maybe a few old maps, newspaper archive has plenty of details from when the city was developing. They also had this come in the morning." Her eerily familiar voice may have haunted him as she pulled the day's newspaper from her side of the counter and up on the raised portion that barely hid her laptop.

She flipped it to page two- perhaps a relief in some way, when he could plainly see one of the articles talking of a rising hero of unknown origin gaining popularity and recognition in the slums, that recently tangoed with the similarly new villain, 'Princess Poppet'. The article seemed pretty surface level, documenting their confrontation from eye witness accounts, And settling on the cliffhanger of a mystery that was 'Just who is this Slum-Side vigilante?'

"You know. If I were you, I'd at least change the _Tone_ of my voice. Oh, and here." She left the paper where it was, bending down a little to her left to pull something out of her bag on the floor. She handed a bottle of water to him. "You sound like you need it."
Barbara
*Kurt squints at the paper, leaning in close to read the headline. He mutters a curse in Russian under his breath, mumbling some more phrases (curses, complaints, appeals to G-d?) in the same harsh tongue.* 

"I knew you sounded familiar... Annabelle, right? Shit..." *He takes off his baseball cap, exposing a slightly thinning mess of black hair, a few hairs already turning grey. His face is worn, tired, and affixed with a permanent scowl, as if pissed off that he had to wake up this morning. The closest thing that Creepy-Crawly's normal form resembled was a very crotchety middle-aged man, the kind that show up in movies to shake their fist at kids and break up little league baseball games.* 

*He takes the water bottle, frown deepening as he twists off the cap, throwing back some of the contents into his mouth like a shot.* "Haven't spoken in a while, for the same reason you already deduced." *He twists the cap shut, thanking her quietly before squinting at her more.* 

"If we want to talk more, it needs to be somewhere private. Otherwise, I just want access to any books on the Capes around here and if there's anything on New London's development."
Austin
"I told you where you _should_ find what you're looking for but.. Chances are you won't find anything good. It's true we have news paper archives dating back to the founding of New London and a little before, but there are several missing papers."

She leaned back in her chair, stretching some as she yawned. It was silent, not the infectious type, but with how tired Kurt always seemed to be, maybe it didn't matter. " It seems.. Almost deliberate." She added, staring at Kurt and getting a good look at the ragged old slavic fellow. " I'm not saying this city has something to hide, but all sorts of pages are missing. Specific dates to entire entire weeks of issues just gone. Online archive isn't as extensive, it only started about a year, and doesn't cover anything before 2020 very extensively."

Annabelle leaned back forward and closed her laptop, fingers tapping it ever curiously, anxiously. She made little clicking noises with her mouth before sharply turning her gaze back to him. "I guess it.. Still does depend on what you're looking for. Surface level stuff? Plenty of that, but nitty gritty details, disappearances of capes, retirees, even trigger events for heros and villains that, should have been plastered all across the net or the papers are out of the question. Same for blueprints to the city, but that might be a given that something like that isn't public. How ever, if you really want information... Maybe we can figure something out.. _together_."

Her word were almost like a hiss, a coy smile on her face as she narrowed her gaze. There wasn't a chance she wasn't playing him, atleast a little, but if what she said was true, how many options did he have?
Barbara
*Kurt leans in over the desk, the wood creaking under his weight. His face seemed like a brewing storm cloud, darkening with... What? Rage? Sadness? Annoyance? It was hard to tell, but it was probably not a good sign.*

"I'm not looking to uncover a conspiracy: I don't care about reading up on Quartermaster's Trigger Event, or what the city is trying to cover up. We're humans, and we made the same mistakes coming here from our past Earths: unless some of us came from Zion itself—" *He blinks, realizing how similar 'Zion' sounded to 'Scion'. He practically growls at himself for the reminder of the man who killed him; that similarity was just one reason he wasn't practicing religiously much nowadays.*

"—sorry, poor choice of phrase. My point is that my scope is limited intentionally. I only care about the slums' documents: if I can get a layout memorized, maybe find where sewers map out, that'd be helpful."

*He sighs when he realizes that Annabelle wouldn't give up on him so easily. If there was one thing he'd come to expect from the younger Cape, it was her persistence.* "Eugh... Oy vey... Fine. Whatever. Sure. We'll work together—" *He holds up a finger, as if to warn Annabelle.* "—but only on this." *He leans in again, before a hand juts out from his jacket pockets. It nearly goes into a handshake position, but he tilts his arm up at a slight angle, withholding the sealing of the informal agreement for a moment.*

"My question is, then, what would you want from me? I doubt I've got such a fan in you that you're doing this for charity: what do you want out of this arrangement that you want me for it?"
Austin
Annabelle made a wry smile and a thin glare. She knew she had him now. She outstretched her hand to shake his own when he pulled back, and her smug expression fell a little apart. "Well like you said, this is no place to talk about this stuff right? Give my your PHO handle, and we can talk about it later tonight when I'm off work. You can reserve the right to say no until after I've told you, that should suffice, right?"

She pulled her hand back and folder her arms atop the counter, resting her head in a way where she could look at him. Waiting patiently with a death stare of sorts. Anna had a certain thing of mind of course, a team up, against the Top Hats, or maybe even. She flared her nostrils a bit as she let out a deep breath. Thinking about that option was... Risky. 

The Songbirds.

A lot of the information the library should have on them, nearly all of it was missing. It made her concerned just _imagining_ that someone from or working for them might be an employee at the library. So many more ideas flowed through her mind when she thought of them. Perhaps, with how secretive they were... They had a higher probability of having the information he desired. She was certain though that the Top Hats knew about Sophia, and they could _potentially_ have the kind of knowledge he was after but... It was in truth, secondary to her plans.

"Well?" She pressed him again. She wasn't about to discuss any of her ideas here in the public library. That was foolish, and even he knew it.
Barbara
*Kurt looks at Annabelle with an utterly bewildered look. Her request to give her his PHO handle was met with the same reaction as if she asked to see his gleeple-glorp, or his exploding gazoo: that is, as if she said something totally incomprehensible and alien.*

"P... H...O? What's that? Why's it got a handle?" *He says, utterly confused by the other Cape's strange request.*

*In his mind, Annabelle clearly wanted something from him, likely concerning that friend of her's that went missing: the drug dealer, the one who may have fallen in with one of the gangs. He scowls a bit at even the thought of the scumbags that think they can run roughshod over the Slums; they were just as bad as the Heroes, only they were at least more honest with their arrogance.*

*He looks confused back at Annabelle again, looking around for a second with a baffled look on his face, as if she were talking to someone just behind him.* "Well, what?" *He says, his rusty Russian accent coming closer to the surface with the dual 'w's.*
Austin
Annabelle's expression was a mixture of sudden shock and embarrassment. She sat there, flabbergasted, at least until she remembered he _hated_ capes. No wonder he didn't know about PHO. On top of.. Well no need to make rash judgements about him based on age, she thought. 

With a sigh, she resigned herself to reaching into bag to pull her phone out. "What ever. I was asking for contact, but if you don't have a PHO account, then maybe you at least have a cellphone number?"

She prepared the device to accept a new contact, her fingers hung stiffly over the keys.
Barbara
*Kurt pulls something out of his pockets with an incredibly fluid motion, the snap click of plastic signaling the appearance of... An ancient flip phone. Part of it was taped together, and the 10 megapixel camera was shattered to bits.* "Still don't know what a P.H.O is, but I've got a cell." *He looks up, waiting for Annabelle number.*

"I'll contact you: until I know I can trust you, I'm not comfortable giving out my number. That kind of shit is too easy to trace back to someone's real name."

*He looks down at Annabelle's phone, a slightly impressed expression on his face.* "You have a...'smart phone'. Those are nice, I've heard. Been meaning to get one, but I can't give up on my *Ptichka*." *He says 'smart phone' separately, as if pronouncing some cutting-edge piece of technology that was only ever seen in science-fiction.*
Austin
Annabelle quickly flipped it around and showed him her own number. The screen was cracked, and it looked a few years old. Modeled off of Android. "Works for me. As for the phone." She paused, pocketing it after he'd gotten a good look at it. 

"It was... A gift." The somber tone of her voice, clinging onto the word 'gift', was impossible to miss. So much to expand on from just a little inflection, but she didn't linger on it to explain. " It's not exactly top of the line, wasn't even when I got it. It works though, that's all that matters. Suppose you'll be in touch when you're ready to hear my request?"

Annabelle flipped the screen of her laptop back up and wasn't waiting even a moment before she continued typing down what ever it is she was writing.
Barbara
*Kurt punches in Annabelle's number, thumb flying over the buttons with a satisfying click of plastic signifying each number entered.*

*He looks up when Annabelle mentions the phone being a gift, giving an almost librarian-esque look at her.* "From your friend, yes? I assumed, anyway..."

*He flips the phone shut, stuffing it back in his pocket as if holstering a pistol in an old Western movie.* "Yes, I'll reach out to you first. It won't be long, probably... Tonight, maybe tomorrow evening. Either way, when we work together? It has to be at night, it has to be in places where they don't expect... People like us, and it definitely has to be discrete. I'm already much more popular than I have any sense to be; last thing I want is talk of a 'team-up' or whatever bullshit the papers come up with."

*Kurt is about to walk away, stuff his hands in his jackets and go back to the Slums, but he pauses, looking back at Annabelle. Its more of a side glance than anything else, but he studies the young girl for a second before speaking.* "I look forward to our next meeting." *He says, a little stiffly... But not as gruff as before. He puts back on his hat and walks out the door, grumbling to himself about some irritating detail that had popped back into his mind, or maybe he was simply in the mood to kvetch for kvetching's sake.*
Austin
Anna paused her writing. She looked up to watch Kurt walk away, and smirked, before returning to her work.


_This hero lay shrouded in night's cold grasp, where wayward stars betray his distant bravado, and shine light upon where he makes darkness his home. The rough and tumble streets laden with waste and blood become illuminated as his glow grows ever brighter, and though his face twists in disgust at the mention of being a symbol of righteous justice, spotlights in the midnight sky expose actors on the world's stage. 

The Bug-Man argues one should do good from the shadows, to hide from fame and fortune like the plague. The nobility in the notion may be inspiring, but when such attention is thrust upon him, the question remains just how this vigilante will respond. 

Does he do good, because he is capable? Will he do good, inspite of the way the world will treat him? When the curtain calls, and all eyes are on him, does Bug-Man have what it takes to be the same in the light, as he is in the dark? Only time will tell._

 

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