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Dinah comes up from the garage, wiping grease off her hands onto a rag, which she leaves with the bar in exchange for an egg cream. It's not really a fair trade.

She's dressed for shop work: hair pulled back from her face, dirty jeans and a Green Lantern T-shirt that's stained from where she's wiped her hands as she went.

Go on, ask her if she can recite the oath.

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"Intel briefs," Voodoo says, not bothering to hide them - they're practically indecipherable to someone who's not in the community, what with their military acronyms and brevity codes and eight-digit grids.

"Not as exciting as it sounds, believe me."

"Really? Cause they sounds really boring," says the girl who doodles through Batman's briefings.

"Even more boring than you think."

He flips over a page, switching his focus to the one beneath it.

"I could probably summarize what this whole stack says in about a paragraph and save everybody some time. Intel guys wouldn't like it, though."

He takes a drink from his bottle, then sets it aside. "So how you been?"

She shrugs. "Same ol' same ol. Been working on my motorcycles downstairs in the garage. Thinking about maybe starting another project."

Because she doesn't have enough hobbies.

Voodoo looks up. "You got motorcycles? Plural? No shit?"

He looks back down at the brief, making a quick notation in the margins about halfway down the page.

"Always wanted to ride one of those. Never found the time."

"Yeah," she says, easily. "Two downstairs, which I've been working on, and two at home for me and my Mom. You can't really keep a car in Gotham and expect to find a parking space."

"Don't doubt it."

It's a problem endemic to big cities.

"How long you been workin' with 'em?"

"All my life," she says. "Well, since fourth grade, anyway, when my Uncle Ted first showed me how to change the oil."

She jerks her head backwards towards the elevators. "You wanna come see my Triumphs? Or do you have too much homework?"

Voodoo thinks on this for a second.

Then stuffs the sheaf of papers into a folder.

"My homework," he says, tucking the folder under his arm and standing up out of the booth, "can go fuck itself. Sure, show me your bikes."

Dinah grins, and takes another mouthful of her beer, standing up from where she'd been leaning on the table, heading off towards the elevator.

"So you've never ridden a motorcycle before?"

Voodoo shakes his head as he follows. "Uh-uh. Always wanted to, though. Had a Chief back when I was with Four who'd rigged his so it'd shoot flames out the tailpipe on his command or something like that. Scared the shit outta commuters."

Dinah doesn't really know what four is, but feels like she should, so she nods.

"Shouldn't be too hard to rig that up," she says thoughtfully. "Flashy as hell, though."

"He was kinda like that," Voodoo says. "Flashy, I mean. Lotta stories about him. They're all probably true."

He gets into the elevator. "How would you rig that up, though? I can't think of anything."

"Spark plug in the exhaust," Dinah says. "Wire up a control box to your handle, hit the switch, whooosh your own fumes are on fire."

She wrinkles her nose and finishes her beer in the elevator, leaning against the wall once they're inside.

"The motorcycle equivalent of setting fire to your own gas. And about as classy."

"...huh."

He punches the button for the garage.

"...when you put it like that it don't sound too smart."

Not that that's ever, you know, stopped him before.

"There's nothing about motorcycles that are smart," Dinah says, and this times she's grinning. "They're fast, unstable, too heavy to control death machines."

And that's why she loves them.

And Voodoo grins back. "Sounds like just my kinda ride."

And sounds like the perfect thing for giving his neighbors heart attacks.

(They are annoying, sometimes.)

"Think you can teach me how to drive one?"

Edited 2012-11-30 03:52 (UTC)

Dinah shrugs. "I dunno, I've never taught this before."

Punching people she's on top of. Motorcycles, less so.

"I can tell you I'm not letting you drive my babies on your first go out. We'll find something suitable. What vehicle experience do you have?"

"Beyond the basic driver's license shit? Some defensive driving techniques - pinning cars, driving through ambushes, making other drivers spin out, that kinda thing. If you're asking what kinda vehicles I've driven - pickup trucks, some sedans, and a Humvee a time or two."

She smirks. "Alright, we can work with that."

Hey, someone who can drive through an ambush probably isn't going to lose his shit when she starts pulling crazy stunts.

Probably.

They reach the garage floor and the elevator doors open. "I keep my babies in that direction," she says, and points.

"Two motorcycles under tarps next to a pick-up."

Voodoo follows her finger. "What model are they?"

"Triumph, both of them," she says. "A 1955 Thunderbird, and a TR Trophy from the same year. You a James Dean fan?"

Voodoo shakes his head. "Never seen any of his movies. Why, he ride one of them?"

"There was a classic series of photos of him taken by Phil Stern," she explains, turning up an aisle and walking towards the bikes and truck as she promised.

The bed of the pick-up has been used as a workshop slash storage area, and it's recognizably hers. A pail behind a rear wheel is over flowing with trowel and garden forks and pruning shears, and a pair of boxing gloves hang from the corner of the truck. It's generally much used, very messy workspace.

"It made this particular model famous."

"No shit?"

Well that puts them in a different light.

He takes a look around her workspace, and his eyes, predictably, fall on the gloves.

"You box, too?" he asks, nodding to them.