It'd been happening a lot more lately; it started out with small, seemingly unconnected and irrelevant things. The kind of things people wouldn't even notice, not at first. Things like the salt shaker's lid snapping off, the little
plastic ends of her shoelace - aglets, the Question had told her in passing - not being able to find a pen when she was sureshe had at least a spare with her; small stuff. Inconvenient, sure, but never something anyone would notice.
Heck, she doubted even Batman would've connected the dots. Maybe Alfred though, he always had a knack for things like this.
But then, those little things started adding up. And she wouldn't have thought it, but they added up quick. It didn't stop at misplaced pens; it was soon misplaced gadgets and batarangs, ending up in the wrong pouches. The broken
aglets led to broken laces, which led to untied boots, which led to her tripping on a mission. Things breaking escalated; a broken salt shaker swiftly became a broken mirror, then it became rotted floorboards - which broke under her acceptableweight, shut up Drake-
and she benched herself for a few days to keep it from escalating to a falling ceiling or collapsing building.
She had to keep eyes on the back of her head now, definitely. This spell of bad luck had to end soon; it would, actually, as she was headed for Zatanna's for some help. She was taking a shortcut through one of the many malls of Gotham.
School was out for the day and Stephanie did not plan on prolonging her misfortune.
But that would have to wait. "AH! F-!" she cut herself from yelling a curse as she felt her head yanked backward. She managed to to tilt her head to glance at who - or what, in this case - had such a death grip on her hair. Her hair
was caught in the door. Sighing, she closed her eyes and grabbed a fistful of her blonde locks in one hand, with the other she propped herself against the wall. Her fist clenched around her hair as she finally decided to yank herself forward, to no
success except for producing a sharp jolt of pain in her skull. So maybe she was being a bit on the wimpy side, but whatever she went through she would always know one thing. Having your hair pulled hurt.
She released her hair, and wiped her sweaty palms on her school skirt. Only one attempt and her skin was already clammy. Her sweaty back felt cold against the strong AC of the ominously empty mall. In fact, she could feel it right on her neck-
A Childish giggle, warm breath, the ghost of his lips. "Wanna see a magic trick?"