"Don't you ever get tired Dean ?"
Jill shook her head and laughed.

  Spooning up behind her, Dean wraps his arms around her.  Despite himself, he let out a yawn.  “Sometimes.” He murmured.  Just having her in his arms was a comfort, and he let his eyes close.  The stairs had been tough, but he didn’t want to let it show.  His breathing slowed, and sleep beckoned.  Dean succumbed to it’s lure.

The next morning the smell of cooking wafted through the previously sterile air.

Pancakes, sausage, eggs, and similar smells coming from a cafeteria area where Skye was busily cooking. A little holographic display hovered by one of her eyes as she worked.

Waking up the next morning, Barbara needed a moment to remember where she was and what was going on.  It was the first time she'd woken up in someplace besides her dorm room in months, which was a little disorienting.  That, and the last day or so has seemed more like a dream than reality.  And not just because one of the hunkiest guys she'd ever seen had carried her in his arms for man miles.

She looked around, embarrassed to admit that her first instincts were to check to make sure she hadn't been lured into a trap.   She seemed safe, though.
And, more importantly, she smelled breakfast.
It seemed weird that such a futuristic ship would have such a relatively mundane breakfast.  It smelled less like Star Trek and more like Denny's.
Still, food was food, and anything freshly cooked was a step up from the jerky and granola that Barbara packed for long trips.

She got up, stretching a little to work the kinks out of her arms and legs, looking at the sleeping chib who'd spent the night beside her.  She glanced over at Dean, feeling a sudden surge of jealousy, or was it envy?, when she saw Jill in his bed.
Granted, hopping into some strange man's bed, even a super hottie like Dean, wasn't her style.

Keeping quiet to let the others sleep, she padded silently over to the cafeteria.

"Good morning Batgirl, hope you slept well. I didn't know what any of you wanted so I checked resources and picked common things that I hope will apply to all of you."

She gestured, "Please just take a seat."

Sitting down,  Barbara smiled and nodded
"Thank you so much for your hospitality.   I'm sorry if it was a bit irate before.  All this is a bit much to take in.   Is there anything i can do to help you?"

"Well, I can understand trust me. I remember my own introduction to the Grand Stair it was traumatic. Annoying too, I had to take care of all the people on my ship, there was betrayal, an explosion of entropy, which changed me on a fundamental level. That little girl you are with going to be ok ?"

"If you want to help maybe you could help serve when the others wake up."

Barbara nodded
"I can help serve some breakfast.    When i was a teenager,  i worked in a fast food place for a big.  Their only breakfast was burritos,  but it was a good learning experience. "
She dug into her food.   She was curious about where it had come from, but decided that perhaps she was better off not knowing.
"I'm embarrassed to admit that my 'sidekick' Xantastic was someone I'd met for the first time less than an hour before i met all of you.  She apparently worked with, or for, the woman Jessica who says she was my cousin,  but she hasn't really had much information about any of this so far.  I'm hoping to get more conversation with her soon."
Chewing on what she hoped was real bacon, Barbara shrugged
"On my world, I'm usually pretty good at solving mysteries and finding clues.   Trying to do so on a sterile set of stairs and goodness knows how many different dimensions,  though,  might be unsolvable.   It's very daunting."

<Aqua>"Yes, that is something about the Grand Stair, it is nigh indestructible. Your right about it being sterile there are only very, very few places where this is untrue. There are some few materials that can stain the stair but not for long."<Aqua>


Barbara feels a slight tug at her sleeve and a sleepy eyed Xantastic looks up at her.
"Good morning."

Barbara looked down at the little girl, seeing her as a little girl for the first time,  since all this craziness began.
"Xantastic,  good morning!  Would you like some breakfast?  How are you feeling?"

Xantastic nodded enthusiastically but whispered to Barbara, "Do you know where the little girls room is ? Ive been holding it a long time."

Barbara smiled slightly, but was careful not to laugh.
_{"Let me ask Skye.  I'm new here as well, remember?"}
She looked at their hostess
"Ms. Skye,  ma'am?  Where do you have restroom facilities? "

Skye motioned to a set of doors to the side of the cafeteria.
"Down the hall on your left. Use either of them, there aren't enough people awake for it to make a difference."

That said there was the sound of little feet running for those doors.

Honestly curious about what the facilities would look like,  Barbara went to the restroom as well

  Dean awoke, but even before his eyes opened he felt Jill still laying on his right arm and heard her breathing.  It was a comforting thing to have her there.  It was a bit of normalcy in a strange place.  His right arm was mostly numb, and his shoulder ached from the position.  He let out a contented sigh.  He lay there for a long minute thinking about it all and watching her sleep before trying to extract his arm without waking her.  He smelled the food, and it smelled good.

  Rising, he dressed in everything he had except the leather jacket.  Jeans, tee-shirt and work boots.  He slid the iron knuckles into his back pocket.  Jill was still sleeping, so he let her rest a bit longer while he followed his nose.

  “Morning.” He said in a barely awake voice.  “Everyone good?”

Coming to the table,  Barbara smiled shyly to Dean.
"Good morning!  I slept surprisingly good.  Apparently hospitals are more comfortable in the future.   Would you like some breakfast?  Skye was able to make a fairly traditional Earth breakfast,  with eggs, bacon, pancakes and juice.  Would you like some?"

  "Oh hell yeah!" he smiled, "Oh wait, you do mean breakfast, right?  Still hell yeah!" he adds with a wink and a laugh.  Then he gets a serious look.  "It's meant as a compliment cause, well, you're a major babe. I wasn't trying to be crude.  Hope that wasn't over the top."

  That was the thing about Dean, he was rough around the edges, really rough, and a bit of an acquired taste...but for all his faults, he was the salt of the earth good guy who would help anyone who really needed it.
This message was last edited by the player at 06:12, Tue 26 Jan 2021.

Barbara looked confused,  and it was obvious that his innuendo went over her head.
"Well, yes, i mean breakfast.   Um, would you like some eggs and bacon,  some pancakes, or something else?  Skye can probably make anything for you"

  Ahh, to be young and naïve!  Dean though.  <i>Freakin' A, I'm getting breakfast served to me by Batgirl!  Man, I shoulda bought a lotto ticket yesterday!

</i>"That all sounds good, and if there's some coffee I might just sell my soul for some, but don't tell Millennia that." Dean says stretching and cracking his neck.  The pins and needles feeling had left his arm already.

Barbara grinned and poured some.  She didn't drink the stuff herself, but she'd made countless pots for her father growing up.
"No problem.  So, what do you know about this Stairway stuff so far?"

  Dean accepts the steaming cup of dark magic with a smile, his fingertips brushing Barbara's as he does.

  "Not a whole helluva lot, other than it's a long freakin' walk from where we were to here.  We got there through a door that was in the strip club at Vixens that nobody had ever been able to open.  The owner used to have a contest, and for ten bucks a try you could try to open it.  Winner was supposed to get ten grand.  Nobody could ever open it, but a lotta people tried.  I broke a crowbar trying one night after work and a couple of beers.  Lost ten bucks to my buddy Bobby on that bet.  Couple of weeks ago, Millennia, Skye's redheaded demon succubus counterpart, shows up out of nowhere and opens it, walks through, and vanishes with the door closing behind her.  I tried opening it again and damn near strained something trying.  No luck.  Yesterday she shows up again, opens it, and lets us in.  The door shouldn't have led anywhere....but it did.  Millenia led us to Skye, and that's when you popped in through another door."

Barbara listened intently, hearing that Dean's story wasn't that dissimilar from her own, in part.
She studiously ignored the part about Dean's door being in a strip club.

"Why did this Millenia person want to take you with her?  Did it know you from before that day?  What did she say to you?"

  Dean shrugs, "Well, it was weird.  I only saw her the two times in the club, and she was very surprised that I could see the hall beyond the door, because to everyone else it looked like just some dingy little closet with an old safe in it.  So, I called Jill because she was there the first time that Millenia showed up, and she looked and couldn't see it either.  I tried stepping through and it looked like I vanished.  I could still see back through the door, but only Millenia could see me.  Pretty weird, right?  So I came back, and then led Jill through to see if I had just gone crazy or was hallucinating or something.  Once through, she saw it too.  So, that's the long and the short of it.  How about you, how did you wind up getting to where we met you?"

Barbara nodded thoughtfully as she listened
"I was having a fairly typical day in my college when Xantastic over here showed up out of the blue with a package for me, from Jessica Gordon,  who claimed to be my cousin,  which contained a key and a note asking for help.  We went to her home and found it in ruins, as if it had aged 100 years in an instant,  though one door was still pristinely untouched.   I went through to find her and found you guys instead. "
She nonchalantly poired some juice for herself
"So, how long have you and Jill been dating?"

In reply to Barbara (msg # 107):

  Dean listened, sipping his coffee.  "College?  What's your major?"  he asks.  Dean waits for the answer before leading into the next part.

  "So this cousin of yours, did you know her well, or had you even ever met her or heard of her?  From the way you describe it, she almost sounds like a stranger.  Are you sure you even have a cousin by that name, or maybe someone was just trying to get you here?"

  Again, he waits for the answer before answering the last bit.

  "Dating?  Jill and I aren't really dating.  Not seriously, anyway.  She's my best friend, known her since I came back to NOLA and got a job at the club, 'bout a year and a half now.  She bartends and dances, I'm one of the bouncers, kind of the watchdog over the girls, making sure nobody hurts them.  They're nice girls trying to make a living, like Jill.  She's working her way through med school.  Anyways,  we're friends, sometimes with benefits, sometimes not.  You know, burn off a little steam, relieve some tension, have some fun, but it's mutually casual.  We've always been there for each other, but we're not exclusive.  We both date, but if there's nothing going on for either of us we got each other.  Feel free to ask her about it if you want, she's straight up about things.  It's one of the things I really dig about her, no BS."

  Another sip of the coffee.

  "Since we're getting all personal, what about you?  Is there a Bat-boy waiting back at home?  If so, he's a lucky dog.  Never saw any mention of him in the comics though."