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seriousficTitle: Duality
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,244
Characters/Pairings: Batman, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Batgirl, Tim Drake,
Previous Part: Chapter 24
Next Part: Chapter 26
Summary: The Joker and Lex Luthor make an alliance. So do Bruce and Barbara.
There was a freshman on Barbara Gordon’s doorstep. Or maybe a sophomore. Barbara couldn’t tell. He was short and slender, with spiky black hair and a bit of a fidgeting thing going with his hands. When she opened the door, he stuck out his hand.
“Hi. Tim Drake.”
“Hi, Tim Drake.” Politely, Barbara shook his hand. “Let me guess, saving up for college by selling Grit?”
“No, uh, you see, there’s this girl… well, okay, maybe a boy… and she’s leaving messages on my answering machine about the Joker and what he plans to do and I figure you might be able to help. Like you did last time.”
“Last time?”
“You know… in the Iceberg Lounge?”
“I’m not following.”
“Gunplay, day saving, people not being put on ice…” He bobbed his head as if trying to lead her to the idea.
“I think you have the wrong house.” She started to close the door.
”Hey Batgirl!”
She looked out the narrowing gap of the door. “Huh?”
“Ha! Do you always turn around when someone calls you Batgirl?”
“Yes.” She turned to Jim Jr., who was passing behind her. “Hey, Superman!”
He turned. “Huh?”
“See?” she asked Tim.
“Look, I was at the party. I saw the motorcycle Batgirl rode, I took down the license plate number. It led me to Dinah, but she’s obviously the wrong hair color, although I think she does bleach. So I staked out her house for a while and when I saw you… well, that mask really only covers the area around your eyes…”
“Are you stalking me?”
“Investigating,” Tim insisted. “Look, I need you to get a message to Batman. It’s important.”
“Like what?”
***
He told her what Spoiler (great name) had told him. She made a wink-and-a-nudge excuse and called the number Batman had given her. She just got a recording beep, so she explained about Luthor and the Joker and went over to Dinah’s house for their date.
***
“I think this is, bar none, the greatest artistic achievement since Rayner’s Lantern,” Dinah raved, applying a gluestick to the back of a newspaper clipping.
Barbara stared at her from across the poster board. “Dinah, it’s a collage.”
“Correction!” Dinah laid the clip out on the outskirts of the massive, feminized Bat-Symbol they’d put in Magic Marker on the poster board. “It’s a collage about Batgirl.”
“And she’d just that awesome,” Barbara said dryly.
Dinah replied in the utmost seriousness: “If I had to kiss a girl, I mean absolutely had to, I’d kiss Batgirl.”
Barbara had gone to work on Dinah’s proposal for a Bat-themed senior prom a strait-laced, straight-A student, and emerged a gay icon. So it was true, art did change people. She checked her cell phone again. No messages, no texts, not even a poke on Facebook. Not that Batman probably used Facebook. But if he did, would he be Team Edward or Team Jacob?
“Babs, you’ve been checking that thing every five minutes since you got here,” Dinah said. “Be honest. Is it another woman?”
“It’s just work.”
“Oh, you got a new job? What’s it pay?”
“…that’s a good question.”
The blonde (possibly bleached) laughed and hugged her. As she left Dinah’s place, Barbara started to seriously wonder about all those practice make-out sessions they’d had during sleepovers. She didn’t even notice the man coming up behind her until the pad of chloroform was over her mouth and nostrils.
***
Barbara woke up to a familiarly pointed ceiling and the omnipresent sound of dripping and distant bats shrieking. If she heightened her senses like Batman had taught her, she could hear the ultra-cooled hum of supercomputers and the whisper of the wind’s draft through the labyrinthine cave system. As expected, Batman was impatiently waiting for her to regain consciousness.
“You’re really not a people person, are you?”
Batman shut down the computer he had been working at. “You need to learn to mind your surroundings. Next time, you’ll wake up in a set of handcuffs. And your lesson will be escape artistry.”
“Won’t be a next time, you kinky bastard,” Barbara murmured, worriedly rubbing her wrists.
She was still in her street clothes, which weren’t at all adequate to the cave’s chill, but the heavy blanket she was wrapped in kept her nice and toasty. Must’ve been Jeeves. The Bat would consider pneumonia a fitting punishment for being off-guard in broad daylight, in the safest part of the city. With friends like these…
“Where’s my costume, boss-man?”
“From now on, it’s a uniform.” He stalked to her favorite practice area, the hallway where she was surrounded by bat-suits going back to the very beginning. Some of them couldn’t even move their necks. Barbara gasped. Her costume had joined their ranks.
“When you came to me, you possessed the will to protect Gotham, but not the tools, the training. Now you’ve become something more than a hero; someone Gotham needs, even if she doesn’t want you, even if she hates you. Barbara Gordon, do you swear to stand against injustice and corruption, no matter the cost?”
Every ounce of sass died in Barbara’s throat. “I do.”
“Then you’ll be needing this.” A new suit rose up opposite the empty rack which usually held Batman’s current armor. It was to her old costume what an Armani suit was to a tuxedo T-shirt.
“Awfully goth, isn’t it? Mind if I add some color?”
“Pink and stealth aren’t good bedfellows.”
“I was thinking yellow. Just on the chest. That way if some guy sees me, he’ll aim for the area where I have the most padding.” She colored. “Armor. I meant armor.”
“I’ll have the necessary modifications made. Have you been practicing the forms I taught you?”
“Leaving Dick and Dinah black and blue, sir!”
“Good. There’s no time for mistakes. If you can’t keep up, you get left behind. Tonight, you either prove yourself worthy of the mantle or die trying.”
“Okay, I’m gonna aim for the worthy option.”
He scowled. He seemed to do that a lot. “Suit up.”
Batman walked onto a ring of metal built into the rock floor. His weight triggered a holographic scale-model of Gotham to rise up around him.
“AHHH! BATZILLA!” Barbara cried, which was totally worth the look he gave her. Her arms were piled high with armor sections. She preserved her modesty behind a convenient stalagmite and started jig-sawing it together.
Batman would’ve given her the evil eye, but she was changing clothes. He walked to Slaughter Swamp. It lit up in his presence, data on the district floating in the air. “We’ll take the boat. Record something incriminating from Luthor, then capture them both. Simple.”
“Simple?” Batgirl tried to figure out where her cape was. “Yeah, what are you doing for an encore, tugging on Superman’s cape?”
He glared at her.
“And that was a joke.”
“The cape extends from the pack on your back. Use the dial on your belt to control its extension. Middle is recommended length, top is for motorcycle, bottom is for parachute.”
“I get a hog?”
“Show me a driver’s license,” Batman said, turning his attention back to Joker’s hideout. A good spot, easily defensible, hard to sneak up on.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I never kid.”
“So I gathered.” Batgirl snapped the latches on her cowl. “Car ride? I call shotgun.”
“Tumbler’s in the shop.”
“You mean the Batmobile’s in the shop? What, did it lose a wheel? How are we going to get there, call a cab?”
“Subway.”
“You’re kidding.”
Batman half-smiled.
***
“You never kid.”
The Bat-Train (as Barbara had dubbed it – the rocket car might’ve been more accurate) sped down subway tracks like, appropriately enough, a bat out of hell. Due to the extreme speeds, it could only be driven by autopilot and only to preprogrammed destinations where the abandoned subway lines ran. That just meant Batman was free to deliver more pearls of wisdom.
“Soil samples are a vital aspect of any crime scene investigation. Due to earthquakes, the soil in Gotham varies dramatically from district to district and even mile to mile.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“By our next meeting I want you to memorize every type of soil in Gotham.”
“Seriously, can we pull over a sec?”
“Do you think crime gets car-sick?”
***
Lex Luthor rued having a meeting in a swamp. He would have to replace his very comfortable shoes. A small expense, by his standards, and one that could easily be avoided by weakening his image with galoshes, but it was (as always) the principle of the matter.
Next to him, Mercy scoped out the hut with patented Lexvision goggles. “Seven clowns. Armed.”
“Dangerous?”
Mercy watched the way they carried themselves. “Not to me.”
“Then what are we waiting on?” As Mercy moved forward on point, Lex looked back at the nearly invisible commandoes he had brought. “If I give the signal, kill everything.”
***
The Bat-Boat glided into place below a bayou pier like a reflection on the water’s surface. Batman switched the cockpit to infrared. Two heat signatures were walking toward the hut, which already had seven inside.
“You really think the Joker’s in there?” Batgirl asked.
“I’m going to find out,” Batman answered. “Stay in the boat. Don’t touch the controls. Touch the controls and you’re fired.”
The windshield split open and he ascended onto the crumbling, weed-ridden pier.
“Are you always this easy-going?” Barbara said into her subvocalizer.
“No idle chatter.”
Batgirl switched it off. “Because people will walk all over you,” she said to no one but herself.
***
The floor creaked with each step Lex took (though Mercy was quiet as a shadow). Six clowns were seated in front of him, playing cards at a mildewy table. Lex cleared his throat. They didn’t respond. The dealer (identified by his kitschy visor) just reshuffled the deck and dealt seven hands… one to Luthor.
Mercy picked the hand up on unspoken order and showed it to Lex. All jokers.
“You made it! For a minute there I thought we’d have to start without you.” The Joker descended the stairs wearing a parody of Lex’s ensemble: a Brooks Brothers suit with a light purple sheen and polka-dot bow-tie. “C’mere, give Auntie J a kiss.” He smooched both of Lex’s cheeks.
“Don’t touch me, freak.”
Mercy drew, as did the clowns.
“You don’t swing that way?” Joker asked in surprise. “Then it seems cruel to string the jack-S around like you do. But with gals like this, who can blame you?” He kissed his way up Mercy’s gunhand, spewing Pepé Le Pew French.
“Are we going to do business or are you just wasting my time?”
Joker dropped Mercy’s arm. “Lexy, I would never waste you…r time.” He gestured for his men to put away their weapons.
“Good. Then let me tell you how I’m going to help you kill the Batman. And what you’re going to do for me in return.”
***
Batman had made his way up to the hut under the eyes of Lex’s snipers. Now he let himself sink into the mud and wade among the stilts that held up the house. He pressed his fingers to the floorboards slatting light down on him; microphones in the gloves transmitted the feed to Batgirl.
“Vocal recognition 71%. The love shack belongs to Lex and Joker. And I just put myself off food for the week. Should I call Da—the Commissioner?”
“Not yet. I want Luthor too. As soon as he says something incriminating…”
***
“And with Lexcorp’s resources at your disposal, there’s no end to what you can accomplish… provided you confine your activities to Gotham.”
Joker’s bow-tie spun. “You mean you don’t go gaga for Gotham?”
“Let’s face it. You can’t make this hellhole much worse.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” Joker smiled.
“And why would a greedy kid like you want to share your toys with me?”
“Somewhere in Gotham, Bruce Wayne is hiding a cache of Kryptonite. I want it.”
***
The low growl wasn’t Batman’s first warning of the alligator’s approach, but it was the first he couldn’t ignore. Withdrawing his fingers from the floor, he prepared to meet the gator’s lunge. It didn’t disappoint. Lurched forward with its jaws snapping. But Batman had dug an escape route out of the mud. He juked to the side and the gator’s teeth bit empty air. That was his last trick. Fortunately, he didn’t need another.
For all the muscles crocodiles had in their jaws, they were for closing the mandibles, not opening them. Batman easily held its jaws shut as he applied a sedative. After Killer Croc, a gator was no problem.
***
Joker heard the wet thwap of the gator’s tail hitting the mud. “Lovely creatures, alligators. Big friendly smiles. Chucky, go check on our wittle gator-waiter.” One of the clowns scurried off. “Now, Lexy, tell me what you have in the way of things that go boom.”
***
Chucky thought he saw something under the boards. Careful to keep his gun on it at all times, he opened the trapdoor. It was down there, lying in the mud, covered by some black cloth, and moving weirdly. He noticed too late the gator’s claws poking out from beneath the cape. Batman was upon him.
A nozzle on the underside of Batman’s glove spat ether, which Batman caught between his hand and Chucky’s face. Even as he rendered the clown unconscious, Batman grabbed his gun and switched the safety on. No incriminating gunshots. He gently laid the clown down and rose. The Joker was in the other room.
***
Joker put a finger to Lex’s lips. “Shh! Do not speak!” He picked up a machine gun from a baby carriage. “I tawt I taw a batty man.”
Lex calmly covered his ears as the Joker fired every bullet through the wall into the other room. Then the clown walked to the wall and put his fingers through one of the many holes he’d put in it. “This vermin problem gets worse every year. HAHA—”
Batman crashed through the wall, pile-driving into the Joker and carrying him out a window. They swept right by Lex.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said dryly.
***
Batman and Joker landed in a patch of swamp, Batman on top. His fist pistoned up and down with disturbing consistency, steadily reducing Joker’s face to mush. The Joker’s hand found Batman’s throat, almost like a caress. But they weren’t trying to dislodge him, they were sinking a joy buzzer into his flesh. Batman convulsed off the Joker, who rolled to his knees, rattling out a bloody breath.
Grabbing Batman by the back of his head, Joker dashed his face into a puddle of mud. “This isn’t a mudhole, it’s an operating table. And I’m the plastic surgeon. Tell me what you don’t like about yourself. The self-righteous narcissism? The sexual repression? I’ll cut it right out of you and put a smile on your face while I’m at it, free of charge.”
Batman slapped some mud into Batman’s eyes, then elbowed him in the face. They rolled away from each other.
Joker wiped the mud from his face. “Look at us, Bats! Just take off the mask and we could be twins!” His laugh was interrupted by a red and blue blur going by. “Heh, there goes the neighborhood.”
***
Lex was already going over the details of his next plan as Mercy led him out of the Joker’s lair. Then he noticed something amiss.
“Mercy, where’s my car?”
It landed in the swamp with an embarrassing plott, the Lex4 vanity plate following after a moment to plink against the upright rear bumper.
“In lieu of arresting me, you super-key my car. Are you a Superman or a boy of…” He cut-off in mid-sentence when he looked up and saw, not the expected boy scout, but a girl in jean shorts and a black T-shirt. A flying girl. Superman wasn’t the only one.
“I was right. All along, I was right!”
“No. You’re dead wrong.” She floated down to an inch above the muck, then crossed toward him.
Mercy packed a prototype secondary sidearm loaded with micro-missiles, each of which exploded with the force of an artillery shell. She drew and fired while Kara was focused on Lex. The explosions jerked Kara back like gusts of wind hitting a kite, leaving bruises which started to fade before their eyes. Kara took what was left of the last bullet and finger-flicked it into Mercy.
The bodyguard took a few steps back, then faltered as blood began pouring down her chest.
“Mercy,” Lex said, oddly soft.
“No,” Kara said, a great deal harsher.
***
Batman held Joker against a tree with one hand while he activated his headset with the other. “Batgirl, an unknown Kryptonian is assaulting Luthor. Stop her.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll just use my lucky chunk of Kryptonite—“
“It’s in the glove box. Type 1938 into the keypad.”
***
“The year Krypton exploded,” Barbara muttered to herself as she typed. Somewhere in the cockpit, a compartment clicked open and a pale green glow filled the space. “Oh, this is not how I planned to spend my Friday…”
***
Joker slipped out of his jacket, dipped his hands into his pockets, and brought them out shining with knuckle dusters. He hammered a right and a left into Batman’s ribs before a gloved backhand sent him sprawling into the mud.
“Call the cops too, if you’re not too busy,” Batman said before turning off the radio.
***
Lex struggled to get words past the dainty fingers Kara had wrapped around his throat.
“You stole Kryptonian property. You attempted to murder my cousin!”
“You can’t… prove… any of that!” Lex choked out with satisfaction.
“In court? I’m not your prosecutor, Lex. I’m judge, jury, and executioner.”
“You’ll make me a martyr!”
“I’ll make you a pancake.” She started to rise. “You’re not answering to Earth law now. You’re only answering to the law of gravity.”
Kara was so fixated on Lex’s growing desperation that she almost didn’t notice that she had stopped floating and started falling. Her feet sunk into the mud as she made a truly disgusted face.
“Yo, Superchick, let him go,” Batgirl said, brandishing Kryptonite knuckles.
“This is why I hate visiting Gotham,” Lex moaned.
***
Batman and Joker’s fight had moved under the hut. Each muddy step dragged at them, sapping their strength. Joker seemed to defy the laws of physics, appearing and disappearing to torment Batman.
“So, a Batgirl, huh? Planning on making her a Batwoman?”
Batman’s missed punch knocked a strut out from under the hut. “Didn’t touch a bat-nerve, did I?” Joker faded into the shadows, all but his omnipresent laughter. “How’d you like my Joker juice, by the by? I’m very open to constructive criticism!”
“It’s the product of a sick mind. You’re insane.”
“It really took you this long to notice?”
Out of the darkness, arms like steel cords wrapped around Batman’s neck from behind. “Be honest,” Joker cajoled, tonguing the horn of Batman’s cowl. “It felt good to stop hiding your inner freak behind a mask and just… let it all hang out!”
Batman backed the Joker into another strut, cracking it. Joker leapt up and drove his knee into Batman’s back. When he tried to do it again, Batman threw his head back and smashed in the Joker’s smile. “It felt like hell.”
“God, you are repressed. Anyone ever tell you to lighten up?”
“Once. I put him in an insane asylum.”
“See? You do have a sense of humor under all that kinky black leather.”
A hail of bullets cut across the hut, splintering struts and splashing mud. Batman pulled Joker behind the staircase that led to the front door, sheltering him with his body.
“Batsy, I’m not that kind of clown!” Joker drove a fist into Batman’s gut and broke free. “Hate to beat and run, but my ride’s here.” He ran out to the source of the gunfire, a swamp-boat with three of his men on board. They had to hold their fire as he approached. Batman took advantage of that interval to fire his grapple-gun into the staircase, then looped it through the struts.
Joker leapt onboard and wrenched the gun out of the gunner’s hands. His wild barrage kicked up swamp water at Batman’s heels, piercing his cape as Batman dove behind a tree.
“Circle around! It’ll be a real gas! Swamp gas, that—no, too SNL.”
The Batboat lit up, revving to life at Batman’s remote-control order. It fired a torpedo that detonated abreast of the swamp-boat’s hull. The clown was showered with mud.
“Exit, swamp left!” Joker ordered, wiping mud from his eyes.
Batman waited until they had roared to full speed before he stepped out of hiding and fired the other end of the zip-line through the boat’s engine cowling.
“You’re despicable,” Joker lisped as the line went taut, collapsing the Ha-Ha-Hacienda completely and violently disemboweling his boat.
***
Supergirl circled Batgirl, keeping well clear of the latter’s Kryptonite. “You would defend him? After all he’s done?”
“Looks that way.”
“If you stand with my enemy, then you are my enemy as well!”
“Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” Barbara retorted.
“Sith this!” Kara cried, throwing Lex into her. The humans went ass over teakettle into the swamp until they ran aground in some roots.
“Watch the hands, Kojak!” Batgirl sprung to her feet. The next missile was a branch, set on fire by Kara’s heatvision. Batgirl threw herself out of the way and it impaled the tree trunk over Lex’s head.
“Okay, Krypton Barbie, you’re starting to tick me off. Enjoy the Batarang diet.” She drew one and hurled it. It landed yards short of Kara.
“Give me a moment to compose myself,” Kara said sarcastically, just before the explosion buried her in mud.
***
Lex had belly-crawled to Mercy as the heroines fought. He rolled her over and grabbed the bandages she kept in her left pocket. “You don’t have permission to die,” he said under his breath as he began resuscitating her.
***
Batgirl smugly advanced on Kara, waggling the knuckles. “Super, Bat, I’m the girl with the Kryptonite.”
Kara kicked her in the gut, leaping up to weakly wrestle the knuckles off the winded Batgirl and throw them into deep waters. “All who defy the House of El must pay in blood!” Her strength returning, she headbutted Batgirl several feet back. “Fall before Zor-El, on your knees or as ash!”
Batgirl thrust herself beneath the dark waters as Kara’s heatvision set a copse of trees on fire. She felt the heat flash through the water, singeing her. She swam lower, trying to get under it, and that was when she saw the muted green glow half-buried in the silt of the lakebed.
The heatvision effort had exhausted Kara. She closed her eyes and Batgirl surfaced. “Look what I found,” she quipped just before she KOed Kara with Kryptonite knuckles.
***
“You were going to be the first,” Lex said, half to himself, as he pumped Mercy’s chest. “As soon as the process was perfected, I was going to give you a new body of steel and Kryptonite. We would never age, never tire, bestride this barbaric world like colossi… please don’t die. Please.”
***
“Joker?” Batgirl asked when her mentor returned.
“No sign of him.”
“Maybe he died in the crash.”
“No body, no such luck. The female Kryptonian?”
Batgirl pointed to Kara, bound and gagged with the Kryptonite sitting between her legs. “I’m planning to sell pictures on eBay, buy myself a mansion.”
‘Take the Kryptonite, wait in the boat. I’ll handle this.”
In the distance there were sirens. Police cars and ambulances.
“What about him?” Batgirl asked, tilting her head toward Lex.
Batman simply said “Not today.” He picked up Kara and disappeared into the darkness.
***
Lex heard sirens coming. And with police, he wouldn’t be far behind. The alien. The one who’d brought all this misery on him. He could feel the monster even now, inside his head, drilling into his soul.
Splattered in mud, he picked up Mercy and ran for the forest. If it was war the alien wanted, Lex would give him war.
***
Superman came almost as soon as Batman pressed the signal watch. Seeing his red and blue in the festering green of the swamp made Batman want to keep Clark out of Gotham not for the city’s sake, but for his.
“What’s the problem?” Superman asked, as oblivious as a puppy who’d just messed the carpet.
Batman stepped to the left, his cape billowing to reveal Kara’s unconscious form. “You are.”
***
John Corben went from pain to pain. He was dreaming of his father giving him his first broken bone, then he woke to an ache that had soaked into him like heat in a sauna. He was in Lex’s private hospital (it was far too well-furnished to be one of his public ones). By turning his head, he could see Mercy on the bed next to his. The number of tubes trailing from her couldn’t be good.
He heard a shriek of springs as Lex sat down on the bed beside him. His boss’s eyes were bloodshot. “You’re never going to walk again.” Lex smiled dazzlingly. “I can fix it.”
Fandom: Nolanverse Batman, Superman Returns
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,244
Characters/Pairings: Batman, Lex Luthor, the Joker, Batgirl, Tim Drake,
Previous Part: Chapter 24
Next Part: Chapter 26
Summary: The Joker and Lex Luthor make an alliance. So do Bruce and Barbara.
There was a freshman on Barbara Gordon’s doorstep. Or maybe a sophomore. Barbara couldn’t tell. He was short and slender, with spiky black hair and a bit of a fidgeting thing going with his hands. When she opened the door, he stuck out his hand.
“Hi. Tim Drake.”
“Hi, Tim Drake.” Politely, Barbara shook his hand. “Let me guess, saving up for college by selling Grit?”
“No, uh, you see, there’s this girl… well, okay, maybe a boy… and she’s leaving messages on my answering machine about the Joker and what he plans to do and I figure you might be able to help. Like you did last time.”
“Last time?”
“You know… in the Iceberg Lounge?”
“I’m not following.”
“Gunplay, day saving, people not being put on ice…” He bobbed his head as if trying to lead her to the idea.
“I think you have the wrong house.” She started to close the door.
”Hey Batgirl!”
She looked out the narrowing gap of the door. “Huh?”
“Ha! Do you always turn around when someone calls you Batgirl?”
“Yes.” She turned to Jim Jr., who was passing behind her. “Hey, Superman!”
He turned. “Huh?”
“See?” she asked Tim.
“Look, I was at the party. I saw the motorcycle Batgirl rode, I took down the license plate number. It led me to Dinah, but she’s obviously the wrong hair color, although I think she does bleach. So I staked out her house for a while and when I saw you… well, that mask really only covers the area around your eyes…”
“Are you stalking me?”
“Investigating,” Tim insisted. “Look, I need you to get a message to Batman. It’s important.”
“Like what?”
***
He told her what Spoiler (great name) had told him. She made a wink-and-a-nudge excuse and called the number Batman had given her. She just got a recording beep, so she explained about Luthor and the Joker and went over to Dinah’s house for their date.
***
“I think this is, bar none, the greatest artistic achievement since Rayner’s Lantern,” Dinah raved, applying a gluestick to the back of a newspaper clipping.
Barbara stared at her from across the poster board. “Dinah, it’s a collage.”
“Correction!” Dinah laid the clip out on the outskirts of the massive, feminized Bat-Symbol they’d put in Magic Marker on the poster board. “It’s a collage about Batgirl.”
“And she’d just that awesome,” Barbara said dryly.
Dinah replied in the utmost seriousness: “If I had to kiss a girl, I mean absolutely had to, I’d kiss Batgirl.”
Barbara had gone to work on Dinah’s proposal for a Bat-themed senior prom a strait-laced, straight-A student, and emerged a gay icon. So it was true, art did change people. She checked her cell phone again. No messages, no texts, not even a poke on Facebook. Not that Batman probably used Facebook. But if he did, would he be Team Edward or Team Jacob?
“Babs, you’ve been checking that thing every five minutes since you got here,” Dinah said. “Be honest. Is it another woman?”
“It’s just work.”
“Oh, you got a new job? What’s it pay?”
“…that’s a good question.”
The blonde (possibly bleached) laughed and hugged her. As she left Dinah’s place, Barbara started to seriously wonder about all those practice make-out sessions they’d had during sleepovers. She didn’t even notice the man coming up behind her until the pad of chloroform was over her mouth and nostrils.
***
Barbara woke up to a familiarly pointed ceiling and the omnipresent sound of dripping and distant bats shrieking. If she heightened her senses like Batman had taught her, she could hear the ultra-cooled hum of supercomputers and the whisper of the wind’s draft through the labyrinthine cave system. As expected, Batman was impatiently waiting for her to regain consciousness.
“You’re really not a people person, are you?”
Batman shut down the computer he had been working at. “You need to learn to mind your surroundings. Next time, you’ll wake up in a set of handcuffs. And your lesson will be escape artistry.”
“Won’t be a next time, you kinky bastard,” Barbara murmured, worriedly rubbing her wrists.
She was still in her street clothes, which weren’t at all adequate to the cave’s chill, but the heavy blanket she was wrapped in kept her nice and toasty. Must’ve been Jeeves. The Bat would consider pneumonia a fitting punishment for being off-guard in broad daylight, in the safest part of the city. With friends like these…
“Where’s my costume, boss-man?”
“From now on, it’s a uniform.” He stalked to her favorite practice area, the hallway where she was surrounded by bat-suits going back to the very beginning. Some of them couldn’t even move their necks. Barbara gasped. Her costume had joined their ranks.
“When you came to me, you possessed the will to protect Gotham, but not the tools, the training. Now you’ve become something more than a hero; someone Gotham needs, even if she doesn’t want you, even if she hates you. Barbara Gordon, do you swear to stand against injustice and corruption, no matter the cost?”
Every ounce of sass died in Barbara’s throat. “I do.”
“Then you’ll be needing this.” A new suit rose up opposite the empty rack which usually held Batman’s current armor. It was to her old costume what an Armani suit was to a tuxedo T-shirt.
“Awfully goth, isn’t it? Mind if I add some color?”
“Pink and stealth aren’t good bedfellows.”
“I was thinking yellow. Just on the chest. That way if some guy sees me, he’ll aim for the area where I have the most padding.” She colored. “Armor. I meant armor.”
“I’ll have the necessary modifications made. Have you been practicing the forms I taught you?”
“Leaving Dick and Dinah black and blue, sir!”
“Good. There’s no time for mistakes. If you can’t keep up, you get left behind. Tonight, you either prove yourself worthy of the mantle or die trying.”
“Okay, I’m gonna aim for the worthy option.”
He scowled. He seemed to do that a lot. “Suit up.”
Batman walked onto a ring of metal built into the rock floor. His weight triggered a holographic scale-model of Gotham to rise up around him.
“AHHH! BATZILLA!” Barbara cried, which was totally worth the look he gave her. Her arms were piled high with armor sections. She preserved her modesty behind a convenient stalagmite and started jig-sawing it together.
Batman would’ve given her the evil eye, but she was changing clothes. He walked to Slaughter Swamp. It lit up in his presence, data on the district floating in the air. “We’ll take the boat. Record something incriminating from Luthor, then capture them both. Simple.”
“Simple?” Batgirl tried to figure out where her cape was. “Yeah, what are you doing for an encore, tugging on Superman’s cape?”
He glared at her.
“And that was a joke.”
“The cape extends from the pack on your back. Use the dial on your belt to control its extension. Middle is recommended length, top is for motorcycle, bottom is for parachute.”
“I get a hog?”
“Show me a driver’s license,” Batman said, turning his attention back to Joker’s hideout. A good spot, easily defensible, hard to sneak up on.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“I never kid.”
“So I gathered.” Batgirl snapped the latches on her cowl. “Car ride? I call shotgun.”
“Tumbler’s in the shop.”
“You mean the Batmobile’s in the shop? What, did it lose a wheel? How are we going to get there, call a cab?”
“Subway.”
“You’re kidding.”
Batman half-smiled.
***
“You never kid.”
The Bat-Train (as Barbara had dubbed it – the rocket car might’ve been more accurate) sped down subway tracks like, appropriately enough, a bat out of hell. Due to the extreme speeds, it could only be driven by autopilot and only to preprogrammed destinations where the abandoned subway lines ran. That just meant Batman was free to deliver more pearls of wisdom.
“Soil samples are a vital aspect of any crime scene investigation. Due to earthquakes, the soil in Gotham varies dramatically from district to district and even mile to mile.”
“I think I’m going to be sick.”
“By our next meeting I want you to memorize every type of soil in Gotham.”
“Seriously, can we pull over a sec?”
“Do you think crime gets car-sick?”
***
Lex Luthor rued having a meeting in a swamp. He would have to replace his very comfortable shoes. A small expense, by his standards, and one that could easily be avoided by weakening his image with galoshes, but it was (as always) the principle of the matter.
Next to him, Mercy scoped out the hut with patented Lexvision goggles. “Seven clowns. Armed.”
“Dangerous?”
Mercy watched the way they carried themselves. “Not to me.”
“Then what are we waiting on?” As Mercy moved forward on point, Lex looked back at the nearly invisible commandoes he had brought. “If I give the signal, kill everything.”
***
The Bat-Boat glided into place below a bayou pier like a reflection on the water’s surface. Batman switched the cockpit to infrared. Two heat signatures were walking toward the hut, which already had seven inside.
“You really think the Joker’s in there?” Batgirl asked.
“I’m going to find out,” Batman answered. “Stay in the boat. Don’t touch the controls. Touch the controls and you’re fired.”
The windshield split open and he ascended onto the crumbling, weed-ridden pier.
“Are you always this easy-going?” Barbara said into her subvocalizer.
“No idle chatter.”
Batgirl switched it off. “Because people will walk all over you,” she said to no one but herself.
***
The floor creaked with each step Lex took (though Mercy was quiet as a shadow). Six clowns were seated in front of him, playing cards at a mildewy table. Lex cleared his throat. They didn’t respond. The dealer (identified by his kitschy visor) just reshuffled the deck and dealt seven hands… one to Luthor.
Mercy picked the hand up on unspoken order and showed it to Lex. All jokers.
“You made it! For a minute there I thought we’d have to start without you.” The Joker descended the stairs wearing a parody of Lex’s ensemble: a Brooks Brothers suit with a light purple sheen and polka-dot bow-tie. “C’mere, give Auntie J a kiss.” He smooched both of Lex’s cheeks.
“Don’t touch me, freak.”
Mercy drew, as did the clowns.
“You don’t swing that way?” Joker asked in surprise. “Then it seems cruel to string the jack-S around like you do. But with gals like this, who can blame you?” He kissed his way up Mercy’s gunhand, spewing Pepé Le Pew French.
“Are we going to do business or are you just wasting my time?”
Joker dropped Mercy’s arm. “Lexy, I would never waste you…r time.” He gestured for his men to put away their weapons.
“Good. Then let me tell you how I’m going to help you kill the Batman. And what you’re going to do for me in return.”
***
Batman had made his way up to the hut under the eyes of Lex’s snipers. Now he let himself sink into the mud and wade among the stilts that held up the house. He pressed his fingers to the floorboards slatting light down on him; microphones in the gloves transmitted the feed to Batgirl.
“Vocal recognition 71%. The love shack belongs to Lex and Joker. And I just put myself off food for the week. Should I call Da—the Commissioner?”
“Not yet. I want Luthor too. As soon as he says something incriminating…”
***
“And with Lexcorp’s resources at your disposal, there’s no end to what you can accomplish… provided you confine your activities to Gotham.”
Joker’s bow-tie spun. “You mean you don’t go gaga for Gotham?”
“Let’s face it. You can’t make this hellhole much worse.”
“That sounds like a challenge,” Joker smiled.
“And why would a greedy kid like you want to share your toys with me?”
“Somewhere in Gotham, Bruce Wayne is hiding a cache of Kryptonite. I want it.”
***
The low growl wasn’t Batman’s first warning of the alligator’s approach, but it was the first he couldn’t ignore. Withdrawing his fingers from the floor, he prepared to meet the gator’s lunge. It didn’t disappoint. Lurched forward with its jaws snapping. But Batman had dug an escape route out of the mud. He juked to the side and the gator’s teeth bit empty air. That was his last trick. Fortunately, he didn’t need another.
For all the muscles crocodiles had in their jaws, they were for closing the mandibles, not opening them. Batman easily held its jaws shut as he applied a sedative. After Killer Croc, a gator was no problem.
***
Joker heard the wet thwap of the gator’s tail hitting the mud. “Lovely creatures, alligators. Big friendly smiles. Chucky, go check on our wittle gator-waiter.” One of the clowns scurried off. “Now, Lexy, tell me what you have in the way of things that go boom.”
***
Chucky thought he saw something under the boards. Careful to keep his gun on it at all times, he opened the trapdoor. It was down there, lying in the mud, covered by some black cloth, and moving weirdly. He noticed too late the gator’s claws poking out from beneath the cape. Batman was upon him.
A nozzle on the underside of Batman’s glove spat ether, which Batman caught between his hand and Chucky’s face. Even as he rendered the clown unconscious, Batman grabbed his gun and switched the safety on. No incriminating gunshots. He gently laid the clown down and rose. The Joker was in the other room.
***
Joker put a finger to Lex’s lips. “Shh! Do not speak!” He picked up a machine gun from a baby carriage. “I tawt I taw a batty man.”
Lex calmly covered his ears as the Joker fired every bullet through the wall into the other room. Then the clown walked to the wall and put his fingers through one of the many holes he’d put in it. “This vermin problem gets worse every year. HAHA—”
Batman crashed through the wall, pile-driving into the Joker and carrying him out a window. They swept right by Lex.
“Meeting adjourned,” he said dryly.
***
Batman and Joker landed in a patch of swamp, Batman on top. His fist pistoned up and down with disturbing consistency, steadily reducing Joker’s face to mush. The Joker’s hand found Batman’s throat, almost like a caress. But they weren’t trying to dislodge him, they were sinking a joy buzzer into his flesh. Batman convulsed off the Joker, who rolled to his knees, rattling out a bloody breath.
Grabbing Batman by the back of his head, Joker dashed his face into a puddle of mud. “This isn’t a mudhole, it’s an operating table. And I’m the plastic surgeon. Tell me what you don’t like about yourself. The self-righteous narcissism? The sexual repression? I’ll cut it right out of you and put a smile on your face while I’m at it, free of charge.”
Batman slapped some mud into Batman’s eyes, then elbowed him in the face. They rolled away from each other.
Joker wiped the mud from his face. “Look at us, Bats! Just take off the mask and we could be twins!” His laugh was interrupted by a red and blue blur going by. “Heh, there goes the neighborhood.”
***
Lex was already going over the details of his next plan as Mercy led him out of the Joker’s lair. Then he noticed something amiss.
“Mercy, where’s my car?”
It landed in the swamp with an embarrassing plott, the Lex4 vanity plate following after a moment to plink against the upright rear bumper.
“In lieu of arresting me, you super-key my car. Are you a Superman or a boy of…” He cut-off in mid-sentence when he looked up and saw, not the expected boy scout, but a girl in jean shorts and a black T-shirt. A flying girl. Superman wasn’t the only one.
“I was right. All along, I was right!”
“No. You’re dead wrong.” She floated down to an inch above the muck, then crossed toward him.
Mercy packed a prototype secondary sidearm loaded with micro-missiles, each of which exploded with the force of an artillery shell. She drew and fired while Kara was focused on Lex. The explosions jerked Kara back like gusts of wind hitting a kite, leaving bruises which started to fade before their eyes. Kara took what was left of the last bullet and finger-flicked it into Mercy.
The bodyguard took a few steps back, then faltered as blood began pouring down her chest.
“Mercy,” Lex said, oddly soft.
“No,” Kara said, a great deal harsher.
***
Batman held Joker against a tree with one hand while he activated his headset with the other. “Batgirl, an unknown Kryptonian is assaulting Luthor. Stop her.”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll just use my lucky chunk of Kryptonite—“
“It’s in the glove box. Type 1938 into the keypad.”
***
“The year Krypton exploded,” Barbara muttered to herself as she typed. Somewhere in the cockpit, a compartment clicked open and a pale green glow filled the space. “Oh, this is not how I planned to spend my Friday…”
***
Joker slipped out of his jacket, dipped his hands into his pockets, and brought them out shining with knuckle dusters. He hammered a right and a left into Batman’s ribs before a gloved backhand sent him sprawling into the mud.
“Call the cops too, if you’re not too busy,” Batman said before turning off the radio.
***
Lex struggled to get words past the dainty fingers Kara had wrapped around his throat.
“You stole Kryptonian property. You attempted to murder my cousin!”
“You can’t… prove… any of that!” Lex choked out with satisfaction.
“In court? I’m not your prosecutor, Lex. I’m judge, jury, and executioner.”
“You’ll make me a martyr!”
“I’ll make you a pancake.” She started to rise. “You’re not answering to Earth law now. You’re only answering to the law of gravity.”
Kara was so fixated on Lex’s growing desperation that she almost didn’t notice that she had stopped floating and started falling. Her feet sunk into the mud as she made a truly disgusted face.
“Yo, Superchick, let him go,” Batgirl said, brandishing Kryptonite knuckles.
“This is why I hate visiting Gotham,” Lex moaned.
***
Batman and Joker’s fight had moved under the hut. Each muddy step dragged at them, sapping their strength. Joker seemed to defy the laws of physics, appearing and disappearing to torment Batman.
“So, a Batgirl, huh? Planning on making her a Batwoman?”
Batman’s missed punch knocked a strut out from under the hut. “Didn’t touch a bat-nerve, did I?” Joker faded into the shadows, all but his omnipresent laughter. “How’d you like my Joker juice, by the by? I’m very open to constructive criticism!”
“It’s the product of a sick mind. You’re insane.”
“It really took you this long to notice?”
Out of the darkness, arms like steel cords wrapped around Batman’s neck from behind. “Be honest,” Joker cajoled, tonguing the horn of Batman’s cowl. “It felt good to stop hiding your inner freak behind a mask and just… let it all hang out!”
Batman backed the Joker into another strut, cracking it. Joker leapt up and drove his knee into Batman’s back. When he tried to do it again, Batman threw his head back and smashed in the Joker’s smile. “It felt like hell.”
“God, you are repressed. Anyone ever tell you to lighten up?”
“Once. I put him in an insane asylum.”
“See? You do have a sense of humor under all that kinky black leather.”
A hail of bullets cut across the hut, splintering struts and splashing mud. Batman pulled Joker behind the staircase that led to the front door, sheltering him with his body.
“Batsy, I’m not that kind of clown!” Joker drove a fist into Batman’s gut and broke free. “Hate to beat and run, but my ride’s here.” He ran out to the source of the gunfire, a swamp-boat with three of his men on board. They had to hold their fire as he approached. Batman took advantage of that interval to fire his grapple-gun into the staircase, then looped it through the struts.
Joker leapt onboard and wrenched the gun out of the gunner’s hands. His wild barrage kicked up swamp water at Batman’s heels, piercing his cape as Batman dove behind a tree.
“Circle around! It’ll be a real gas! Swamp gas, that—no, too SNL.”
The Batboat lit up, revving to life at Batman’s remote-control order. It fired a torpedo that detonated abreast of the swamp-boat’s hull. The clown was showered with mud.
“Exit, swamp left!” Joker ordered, wiping mud from his eyes.
Batman waited until they had roared to full speed before he stepped out of hiding and fired the other end of the zip-line through the boat’s engine cowling.
“You’re despicable,” Joker lisped as the line went taut, collapsing the Ha-Ha-Hacienda completely and violently disemboweling his boat.
***
Supergirl circled Batgirl, keeping well clear of the latter’s Kryptonite. “You would defend him? After all he’s done?”
“Looks that way.”
“If you stand with my enemy, then you are my enemy as well!”
“Only a Sith deals in absolutes,” Barbara retorted.
“Sith this!” Kara cried, throwing Lex into her. The humans went ass over teakettle into the swamp until they ran aground in some roots.
“Watch the hands, Kojak!” Batgirl sprung to her feet. The next missile was a branch, set on fire by Kara’s heatvision. Batgirl threw herself out of the way and it impaled the tree trunk over Lex’s head.
“Okay, Krypton Barbie, you’re starting to tick me off. Enjoy the Batarang diet.” She drew one and hurled it. It landed yards short of Kara.
“Give me a moment to compose myself,” Kara said sarcastically, just before the explosion buried her in mud.
***
Lex had belly-crawled to Mercy as the heroines fought. He rolled her over and grabbed the bandages she kept in her left pocket. “You don’t have permission to die,” he said under his breath as he began resuscitating her.
***
Batgirl smugly advanced on Kara, waggling the knuckles. “Super, Bat, I’m the girl with the Kryptonite.”
Kara kicked her in the gut, leaping up to weakly wrestle the knuckles off the winded Batgirl and throw them into deep waters. “All who defy the House of El must pay in blood!” Her strength returning, she headbutted Batgirl several feet back. “Fall before Zor-El, on your knees or as ash!”
Batgirl thrust herself beneath the dark waters as Kara’s heatvision set a copse of trees on fire. She felt the heat flash through the water, singeing her. She swam lower, trying to get under it, and that was when she saw the muted green glow half-buried in the silt of the lakebed.
The heatvision effort had exhausted Kara. She closed her eyes and Batgirl surfaced. “Look what I found,” she quipped just before she KOed Kara with Kryptonite knuckles.
***
“You were going to be the first,” Lex said, half to himself, as he pumped Mercy’s chest. “As soon as the process was perfected, I was going to give you a new body of steel and Kryptonite. We would never age, never tire, bestride this barbaric world like colossi… please don’t die. Please.”
***
“Joker?” Batgirl asked when her mentor returned.
“No sign of him.”
“Maybe he died in the crash.”
“No body, no such luck. The female Kryptonian?”
Batgirl pointed to Kara, bound and gagged with the Kryptonite sitting between her legs. “I’m planning to sell pictures on eBay, buy myself a mansion.”
‘Take the Kryptonite, wait in the boat. I’ll handle this.”
In the distance there were sirens. Police cars and ambulances.
“What about him?” Batgirl asked, tilting her head toward Lex.
Batman simply said “Not today.” He picked up Kara and disappeared into the darkness.
***
Lex heard sirens coming. And with police, he wouldn’t be far behind. The alien. The one who’d brought all this misery on him. He could feel the monster even now, inside his head, drilling into his soul.
Splattered in mud, he picked up Mercy and ran for the forest. If it was war the alien wanted, Lex would give him war.
***
Superman came almost as soon as Batman pressed the signal watch. Seeing his red and blue in the festering green of the swamp made Batman want to keep Clark out of Gotham not for the city’s sake, but for his.
“What’s the problem?” Superman asked, as oblivious as a puppy who’d just messed the carpet.
Batman stepped to the left, his cape billowing to reveal Kara’s unconscious form. “You are.”
***
John Corben went from pain to pain. He was dreaming of his father giving him his first broken bone, then he woke to an ache that had soaked into him like heat in a sauna. He was in Lex’s private hospital (it was far too well-furnished to be one of his public ones). By turning his head, he could see Mercy on the bed next to his. The number of tubes trailing from her couldn’t be good.
He heard a shriek of springs as Lex sat down on the bed beside him. His boss’s eyes were bloodshot. “You’re never going to walk again.” Lex smiled dazzlingly. “I can fix it.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 10:29 pm (UTC)Oh Bruce, you dick.
After Killer Croc, a gator was no problem.
Wasn't that just in Gotham Knight, or did you mention him earlier in this little tale?
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 11:58 pm (UTC)He's coming up. Read on, MacDuff.
no subject
Date: 2009-02-17 10:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-18 06:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-02-19 04:28 am (UTC)