"Hey, sorry if I kept you waiting. Had to find a place to park," I say as I slide into the chair across from Barbara. We're seated at an exterior table at Meg's Daily Grind, a popular coffee shop that's kind of close to the library.
"It's fine, no worries," she responds as she slides me a disposable coffee cup, "I didn't know what to get you, so I hope black is fine with you."
"It's great, thanks," I responded, taking a sip of the coffee. It's a decent enough brew, mildly acidic but with a subtle nuttiness. About what I expected from a cafe in Gotham.
"You already asked me this, so I think I should return the favor. How're you doing?" Barbara says, starting the conversation with the ball in my court this time.
"I've definitely been better." I say as I take another sip of the coffee, "But I've also been a lot worse."
"Oh?" Barbara hums questioningly as she takes a sip of her coffee
"Well, I mean, I'm still not over Harleen, and I sometimes struggle to get out of bed in the morning. But something happened that kinda forced me to reflect and think about everything," I say before I take a deep breath and continue, "And since we're on this topic of introspection, I realised I was a shit friend. I didn't bother to send you a card in the hospital or anything because I was too busy drowning in my own self-pity."
"It's okay, Eddie, I understand that you were going through your own stuff," Barbara starts to say, trying to alleviate my guilt or something like that.
"Okay, you might have a point, but one: what you went through was way worse than what I was going through, and two: Harleen was gone for more than a year when you were hospitalized, so I had plenty of time to at least get out of my own ass." I say, my voice getting kind of tense towards the end, "All of that is to say, I'm sorry for being a shit friend and not checking in on you until now."
A small smile tugs at the corners of Barbara's lips, "Thanks, Eddie, it means a lot."
"So, other than dealing with your ex, what's been going on in your life?" I ask genuinely curious. I do feel like it would be good to reconnect on some level with Barbara. Even if it won't get anywhere close to how it was when we were younger.
"Eh, not much," Barbara responds, " I went to a friend's bachelorette party recently. That was fun. But other than that, not much."
"Same, the most interesting thing that happened recently was one of Wayne's kids ordering food at the O'Shaughnessy's I work at." I say as I take another sip of my coffee, "I think it was the…Circus One? Greyson or something like that."
"Dick Grayson? " Barbara asks. Huh, Dick…hmm.
"Yeah, I think that's the one," I say, not really wanting to voice my suspicions because talking about an ex is always uncomfortable.
"That's actually the ex I was telling you about," she starts to respond, but is interrupted by her phone ringing, prompting her to fish it out of her pocket and read the screen. "Damnit, Dinah. Ugh, I need to take this. Wait here"
Barbara wheels herself a bit away, out of earshot of a normal person with non-magically enhanced hearing.
"What is it, Dinah?" Barbar speaks into the phone tersely," You're kinda interrupting a reunion with an old friend."
Unfortunately for my snooping, my hearing isn't boosted enough to hear what the other person is saying. Maybe if Barbara were still seated at the table, I could hear the caller.
"What?" Barbara says, sounding kinda pissed off, "Damnit, alright, I'll head on over."
With that, Barbara hangs up the phone and rolls back to our table
"You gotta head out?" I ask with a small sigh
Barbara lets out a sigh, "Yeah, unfortunately. Something came, and I gotta go handle it. Sorry for cutting this short."
I stand up from my position at the table, "It's alright. This was an unplanned outing, so I'm not too surprised something came up."
"Yeah, I know. Still kind of annoyed." Barbara starts to wheel away, "Either way, thanks for seeing me. It was nice seeing you for a bit."
"Yeah, same. Well, thanks for the coffee. I'll see you later." I say respond with a wave goodbye as I start walking towards my car.
I get into my car, and I head back to my apartment. The streets are less crowded right now, which is nice.
I park my car out front and head into my almost certainly lead-piped apartment building.
Unlocking my apartment door, I enter and turn on the TV as I start looking through the maps.
The old sewage system map also includes the modern-day system, and the cave system one looks to be of the same scale as the sewage one. Both of which are nice, and probably only like that cause I know Barbara. Ah, gotta love having connections.
Looking at the cave map, most of the caves large enough for a sanctum are located under Arkham or under the southern island. There are a couple of caverns big enough for my purposes under the north island, but unfortunately, they look to require a good bit of crawling to get to. So, sewage system it is.
The sewage system map is a bit higher quality, including the names of major streets when they happen to go over parts of it. The map shows a decently large intersection of two minor pipes underneath an apartment building on the same block as me. That's pretty good; it means any teleportation stuff I'll do in the future should be low in the vulgar spectrum.
Unfortunately, all of the access points to the old system got paved over or built on when it got disconnected. Fortunately for my future sanctum, about a hundred feet north of the intersection, a major pipe of the modern system goes through one of the old pipes, splitting it in half. I'm guessing the builders only bothered putting a single layer of bricks to block off the old sewage system, so, assuming the wall is still up, I could just transmute the wall to butter and melt it.
Now that getting into the old system is dealt with, I just gotta find an isolated sewage access and use that.
Unfortunately, this is somehow the hardest part. I mean, most sewage access points are in the middle of streets or on the sidewalk, not in a dark alleyway or anything. So it makes sense that it would be difficult. I just figured that more access points would be in alleyways, so maintenance doesn't disrupt the flow of traffic.
Honestly, at this point, I might be better off finding some abandoned house in the middle of Slaughter Swamp and moving in there full-time, because my god, are there no access points within a reasonable walking distance.
While that abandoned swamp house idea does sound good for my magick, I can guarantee it'd be too far away from the city for reasonable day-to-day living. Maybe once I've gotten a better grasp of Ars Conjunctionis, I could set up some space fuckery. But until then, it's a sewage system, it is.
I snap my fingers as an idea hits me, I just gotta transmute myself into an access way into the old one. Which should be easy enough, just gotta go into the alleyway and bada bing bada boom new access tunnel.