Steph, wandering into the kitchen: hey, Alfie, B says you're doing a grocery shop later today, can i add tampons to the list of stuff for the patrol supplies?

Alfred, glancing over from polishing silverware: of course, Miss Brown. perhaps you'd like to add it to the list on the fridge?

Steph: hm-? oh, yeah, thanks.

Tim, working on his laptop at the kitchen island: the fuck do you need tampons for patrol?

Steph: *squints at him* well i sure as fuck ain't doing it in a pad? do you know how unsafe i would feel?!

Tim, raising an eyebrow: why do you need anything? doesn't it all stop once you start swinging around?

*silence*

Alfred: *pauses, slowly turns his head to stare into the side of Tim's skull*

Steph, calmly: ...what?

Tim: it's like swimming right? you start jumping around and moving a lot and your body recognises that you don't want to bleed, so it stops the flow until you settle down.

Alfred:

Steph:

Steph, keeping her face impressively straight: ...yes. it is- *throat clear* that is why that happens, you're right, it does usually stop on patrol. but- *thinking intensely* i... got a scratch on my thigh... earlier... and it keeps bleeding, has all day. so i'm kinda worried that blood coming out of my thigh will confuse my body, because of- *bites lip* because of the close proximity. and i think it might decide that since my thigh is bleeding that it should just keep all the other flows going as well, so i'm just- i'm just making sure. to be careful.

Alfred: *slowly turns to stare at Steph instead*

Tim:

Tim: ok i guess that makes sense.

Steph, once Tim turns back to his laptop: *gleefully punches the air*

Tim, eyes narrowing: wait,

Steph, the face of innocence: hm?

Tim: how come your body can stop the period blood but not the thigh blood?

Steph: oh. well, that's just a 'me' issue, really. i've never been that good at the whole blood-bending thing.

Alfred: *closes eyes in resignation*

Tim: blood-bending- what?

Steph: blood-bending? the- you know all girls can control their blood flow, right? that's why Avatar only showed women water-benders learning how to blood-bend. because it was already a thing irl.

Tim:

Tim, dubious: ok now you're fucking with me.

Steph, narrowing eyes in confusion: no? dude, i'm being completely serious, did you- how did you not know about this? that's how we control our periods, man. all females have a slight innate ability to bend their own blood. it's just that the extent to which we can varies from person to person and day to day. i've always been kinda weak with it, so i guess that's my bad. Babs has always been pretty good at it, though.

Dick, walking in: 'sup, kiddies. Babs is good at what?

Steph: i was just telling Tim about how all women can blood-bend and that's how they control their periods. can you believe the health education program at his school failed so badly he didn't know?!?

Dick:

Dick:

Dick, turning to Tim: yeah Babs was always really good at it.

Tim: seriously?!!?

Dick, without a hint of humor: 100%. anyway i gotta go, see you guys later.

Steph, perking up: oh, can i get a ride actually? i need a new jacket.

Dick: sure.

Damian, wandering in as Dick and Steph leave: Pennyworth, Jason is requesting he be alerted when you go to the store so he can accompany you.

Alfred, blinking: ...oh- yes, that sounds lovely, i'll be sure to let him know.

Tim, curiously: hey Dami, did you know that women can blood-bend, and that's how they turn off their periods when they go swimming?

Damian:

POV: you are a tiny tan and white Shih Tzu with dark ears and big brown eyes, and your Mama has been crying in bed for days, but you’ve just had a haircut and the groomer gave you a pretty, new bandanna and you know Mama likes it when you have a new bandanna so you run through the house at Mach speed and launch yourself into the bed, eager to show it off with a big goofy grin and a helicopter tail.

merperson: what’s a gender

marine scientist: like, are you a man or a woman?

merperson: i’m merfolk

marine scientist: no, like, what’s in your pants?

Merfolk: oh man, there are a lot of women here. Haha don’t worry guys, I got this :) *changes into a man to keep a balance because that’s culturally polite for merfolk*

This month people have been tearing Flock cameras off their poles. Perched above public streets, they are birdlike things, weatherproof, and they photograph every passing car and file it in a searchable national database. Somebody cut two of them in half at Washington Avenue and Westcott in Houston, spray-painted the wreckage, and left an American flag on one of them. Police were notified on the morning of the Fourth of July. Somebody severed a camera in Rutherfordton, North Carolina. The police department posted the photograph itself and collected more than twenty thousand comments. “Not all heroes wear capes.” “Give them a medal.” Here is what the cameras do when nobody cuts them down. Cops use them to hunt immigrants and to follow ICE targets across state lines and to find women who ended pregnancies in states where that is a crime and to watch exes and to watch women they want, without a warrant and without a judge. A cop types a reason in a box and the box does not check. A man in Burleson, Texas, told deputies his girlfriend had taken abortion pills. He showed them the photographs, the FedEx envelope, the instructions. Deputies opened a death investigation into a non-viable fetus, and the district attorney told them the state could not charge her, and they searched anyway: 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks, a month of everywhere she had been. The reason they typed was had an abortion, search for female. The search reached Illinois and Washington, where what she did was legal. They found her in Dallas. She came into the sheriff’s office a week later, and they thought she had come to explain the fetus, and she had come to report that the man who called them had put a gun to her head. A sheriff in Jerome County, Idaho ran his wife’s plate more than seven hundred times in three months. He typed the same reason every time. Test. The attorney general found nothing to charge him with. He retired in April. The Institute for Justice counts at least twenty-two officers who used the system to track people they were romantically interested in, and calls that almost certainly an undercount. And the cameras keep falling.