A/N: Hey there, readers of all planets. I'm Spiral-of-Fools, but you already knew that. So, after getting home from seeing the amazing Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight Rises and almost immediately becoming obsessed with it and John Blake, I started writing this bit of beauty. I'm not going to deny it, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of my top ten favorite actors. Even if he has giant ears. So, I was thinking about the movie—surprise, surprise—when I thought, Hey, what about the girls' orphanage, huh? Where's that? Are you just going to leave the girls to die? What is this—China? But that's actually not what this story is about at all. Well, maybe a teeny tiny bit. Like, one paragraph of the whole story. What I really thought was, I'm sure there were people in Gotham than Bane's guys and the resistance. Maybe they possibly indirectly helped, like pulling out a gun or something because someone's bound to have a gun since they live in Gotham where someone always goes, "Hey, let's fail at taking over this city", even if Batman's there . . . kind of. And I decided to write something about an Average Joe in Gotham City who's just trying to survive those five months of bullshit. Read! Enjoy! Review! Let me know what you think about this! There's a lot more OCs, obviously. Side note: I also had to delete this story, along with Colorblind, because of some problems I had on the site. I lost my past stats, which I'm upset about for both stories, but I got to make the edits I needed, and I hope it never has to happen again. My sincere apologies to anyone reading, Spiral-Of-Fools.
Disclaimer: Uh huh, not mine.
Old Summary: In Gotham City's three months of living under a tyrant named Bane, there was more going on. There was more than just the city breaking up into the good side and the bad side, the light and the dark, Team Batman and Team Bane. Not everyone chose a side. Some people were just focusing on when their next meal would be and how to survive. Maybe they would be a bit biased because what good had Bane ever done them? None, that's what.
New Summary: Sitting ducks are dead ducks. She was always taught that, always taught to stand up and fight for freedom. She just wanted to move along from day to day until their inevitable end time. Then she's brought into it and now there's no way out but to fight.
Sitting Duck – Chapter 1
Day One:
I turned on the television in my small apartment just in time to hear CNN announce to the world that Gotham City had been taken over by a man who calls himself Bane. And to think I just got off a twelve hour shift at the hospital to come home to this. You've got to be kidding. I vote for my leaders! Isn't America supposed to stop this shit from going on?
See, this is the reason I chose to stop getting involved in foreign affairs in my seventh grade debate—those little bastards just decide to come on in this country where our army does shit to stop it.
The memory of seeing a tall, muscular man with a metal mask covering his mouth automatically crossed my mind. He had been the guy to attack the stock exchange and turn billionaire Bruce Wayne bankrupt. I remember reading that much from the newspapers. Let me put loaning Bruce some money that I'm forced to give in taxes so he can get the electricity and water back on in his mansion that he still gets to keep on my to-do list. What, is Bruce too good to be poor like the average poor person?
Anyways, Bane was one ugly, evil little bastard. I had to give him credit for being the most frightening villain in Gotham yet, though. For a second, I wondered how many hours he spent in front of his mirror practicing ways to be frightening.
As I watched the television more, a feeling of absolute terror crept into me. Almost every bridge had been blown up, which meant almost every escape route was gone. But, then again, it wasn't like most of us had a boat we could just cross the river with. Even if we tried, I had a feeling Bane would go through on his promise to the army or whoever guarding the last open bridge to detonate that nuclear bomb or just shoot us in the back.
It's almost fucking heartbreaking to know how everything besides this guy has a weakness that can take him down. Everything else has one. Zombies can only stay in the ground permanently by unicorns running them through with their horns, unicorns can only become food to zombies, werewolves can only become bloodless and dead by vampires, vampires can only officially become dead and stop looking so damn sparkly and hot by werewolves who tear them to shreds, clowns can only be defeated by mute mimes, and mimes can only die by the hand of a horrifying clown.
That damn mask stops all weakness, doesn't it? One of these days I'm going to steal that piece of metal. Then my bosses can't intimidate me and I can tell them to shove it up theirs without being fired.
It's funny how every news channel managed to get the story out to probably the whole world and no one was willing to help. Or at least send some food so we don't all starve to death.
Food. Motherfucker. Automatically, I went to my fridge and the cabinets to take inventory of what I had. Just a side note: My kitchen is the size of your closet, most likely. Maybe a little bit bigger so it's the size of two and a half of your closets, but it's still pretty shitty.
Milk, juice, water, Gatorade, a bottle of Coke. Not nearly enough to last a while. Bane and his "League of Shadows" or whatever villain name he gave his gang probably isn't going to give a whole lot of food so his city-state won't die off. He pretty obviously didn't take an economics class in college about how to run a city-state. Huh, maybe he did. Teachers and bosses suck, after all. Maybe this is his way of telling them to suck it.
Veggie burgers, veggie lunch meat, veggie nuggets, tofu, clams, mussels, white fish, frozen waffles, a few frozen bags of vegetables and fruit, and three frozen pizzas. Butter, more fruits and vegetables, about a thousand yogurts, leftover pasta and sauce, eggs, cheese. I'm not totally sure how long all of this will last. From what I've learned from reading every apocalypse novel in the library as a kid, I know the electricity probably won't stay on for too long, if at all now that we're isolated from the rest of the world. I hate island cities.
A whole variety of soups and broth, jars of tomato sauce, cans of canned fruit, canned vegetables. Geez, I have way too many fruits and vegetables. Those have got to go soon. I don't actually remember buying half of what's on my shelves in the bottom row of cabinets.
Hot chocolate mix, Ovaltine, chocolate syrup, rainbow sprinkles, whipped cream, chocolate chips, chocolate bars, marshmallows, gummy bears, a bag of Reese's minis. It's nice to know that if I die, I'll die fat from all the sugary things I keep in the top cabinets along with the spices and other baking ingredients. Maybe I can make brownies tomorrow. Mm, brownies sound delicious right now.
Crackers, pretzels, chips, salsa, white bread, wheat bread, rye bread, peanut butter, grape and strawberry jelly, Frosted Mini Wheats, a very rare box of Count Chocula, dog food. There's no way this box of precious unopened Count Chocula isn't surviving this horror with me. Do you know how impossible it is to find these delicacies? Yeah, it's pretty fucking difficult.
I did the math in my head. If I continue to stick to three meals a day, I'll have more than enough food for three months. And then there's Robby, who's a seven-year-old who should be here by now, seeing as I'm taking his ass in while his parents vacation somewhere tropical. I could have sworn school for him ended an hour or two ago.
So, between three mouths—Robby, my black lab, and me—we have enough food for a little over a month and a half. Damn Robby and Sirius Black's bottomless pits for stomachs.
I sighed, grabbed my coat and my wallet, and headed for the door. It would be getting dark soon and Gotham was probably preparing to loot every last grocery store until there was no food left. It's a good thing I have a best friend who just happened to have gotten promoted to manager last month. All those hours giving sponge baths to old fat perverts in college must have given me some good karma points.
Jogging down the stairs, I kept an eye out for Robby. That little midget probably was wandering around the city, pointing at things that blew up and going, "Whoa, cool! I wish I could get explosives like that for Christmas!" If I find him doing that or asking one of the many guys with guns if they can teach him how to shoot an MK-47, I'm sending the Millers' their kid back with his face strangled off.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped outside to head to the grocery store down the street was that Bane had an army. A fucking army of mental cases with guns who would probably shoot anything that moved. Who's idea was it to give them guns?
Some of them were eying me like a cop would look at a hardened criminal with a seriously badass criminal record that just got out of prison on parole. I was no insane criminal. I was just a small twenty eight-year-old girl who uses sarcasm as a final defense before beating whoever's ass needing beating.
No one in my apartment building had emerged yet, so I figured looting hadn't fully started yet. Thank God for that, because there was no way I could outfight a mob of frenzied people who were relying on pure strength and adrenaline. Especially when they target the small, weak-looking ones who they know they can mug. And that pretty much described me.
And most of these guys with guns were bordering on six feet tall, with huge muscles that were probably the size of my head. One punch to the face and I'd most likely get a concussion or maybe my neck snapped quick and clean. I kind of recognized them from the news. They were all criminals who were thrown into Blackgate Prison under the Dent Act. Of course, in Gotham, he gets a whole bunch of praise and Batman and Batgirl don't. Some fucking justice.
The General Store, as it had been known as forever despite the big sign that states Marshall's Grocers, looked abandoned. Boards covered the windows and the metal link that prevents break-ins after closing is down. I can see through the glass of the right side of the door that the alarm system is on and . . . is that a barricade of shelves against the back exit?
Shaun, the idiot. How does he expect to get home? By walking out the front door? Sure, the streets were pretty empty, save for some of Bane's league guys, but looting was sure to start soon. I knocked on the door, checking to make sure Bane's guys were busy taking care of something else.
Shaun walked to the door and moved a few chairs away from under the door handles, unlocked the door jambs, and disarmed the alarm system for a short time.
He opened the door and looked out, turning his head both ways to make sure the coast was clear. "Come on in, Marissa."
"Thanks, Shaun. I need a favor from you."
"Ah, right, food. Survival. Right this way." He headed over to the check-out counter. Uh, Shaun, survival does not mean useless piece of metal and other materials. His hand wandered over the underside of the counter, searching blindly. Finally hitting a button, he let out a quick, "Aha!" before leading me to the back of the room.
Rows and rows of magazine racks lined the walls here, from floor to ceiling, and full of every magazine ever published. Cooking, hunting, fishing, sewing, knitting, homecare, health, gardening, sports, movies, music, they had everything here. I'm pretty sure only about ten percent of the population of Gotham City bought them. The cheapskates usually read them in the store without paying. What freeloaders.
Shaun reached for a middle rack and pulled on it. Grunts of effort left his lips as he pulled with all his might to open it. When he did, he stood back and crossed his arms, proud of accomplishing to take my breath away. In this one room behind the rack, there were more canned goods than anywhere else in the store. Ah, now I get it. Secret button in a not-so-secret place equals secret door which leads to secret room full of secret stashes of food.
"When did this even get here? Was this always here?" I spluttered out in shock, still trying to get over it.
"No. Mrs. Anthony, the million-year-old insane lady who used to own this place before she died, built it because she was paranoid. Always had to have food so she could survive in Gotham. She loved this city. Refused to leave it, actually, so she made a room behind the three middle shelves."
We turned to the next hidden door, where he started up again. "See that little letter on the rack? This one's a C/J for canned/jarred. All sorts of canned and jarred fruits, canned and jarred veggies, soups, jams, jellies, and salsa in here."
I looked closely at the second one, straining in the dim light filtering through the door to find the letter. I finally found the letter DF engraved onto it.
"This rack has a DF on it. Obviously not dairy . . . dried foods, maybe?"
He made a finger gun and shot me. "Bulls-eye! She stocked up on chips, a billion types of bread, dried fruit, pretzels, and crackers. A few things of peanut butter are in the very back."
As he kept talking, I looked at the very last rack. He must have noticed me looking because he stopped talking and put on a mischievous smile. Like that ridiculous blue, purple, and green-yellow uniform he had to wear, emphasizing his lack of common sense, it was something that only he could pull off.
"Oh, you're going to love this one, Marissa." He opened the door with almost no effort. "Wait here while I show you."
Stupidly, I trusted him and focused my attention to a few people who were walking around the streets, looking in house windows. Shit. My Mickey Mouse watch told me that almost an hour had gone by. The hell? Shaun only was showing me food and explaining about how he was "on the inside" after being trusted with this top-secret info.
It was almost dark and Gotham City after dark was never a good thing. That's been drilled into my head since I was a baby. I believe the conversation went something like this:
Dad: Gotham gets young girls kidnapped and raped at night by evil criminals, corrupt government officials, and other sinister villains, Marissa. Remember that.
Mom: Don't tell her that! Just don't stay out past sundown, baby, and you'll be perfectly fine.
Dad: Well, don't you think she wants to know why there's a risk of her getting raped, kidnapped, and tortured in excruciatingly painful ways?
Mom: No, because our Marissa Gabrielle Douglas is an obedient girl. Aren't you, Marissa?
Me: Goo-goo, ga-ga?
I turned back to the rack, only to come face to face with a barrel of a .45 staring me down. I let out a strangled cry. The gun left my face and I heard Shaun's laugh. So, to express my anger I did the one sensible thing: I lunged at him with the gun still in his hand.
"What the fuck was that! A fucking gun! Why do you even have that here!" I shouted at him, a few minutes after I finished slapping him, angry he would stick a gun in my face and that I fell for his sick little joke. He always was dropped on his head as a baby. Seriously, Shaun bounced on his head one time when he fell off the porch railing at age two.
"Calm down, Marissa. Mrs. Anthony filled the third one with guns for this reason. She needed a way to protect herself from looters, burglars, and whatever alien life forms she thought were going to invade Earth. She was paranoid, remember?" Shaun explained to me. The bastard was smirking a bit. Some days, I think he should join some live action role playing community just to be the villain. He'd enjoy imaginarily killing them.
"How do you know all this anyways?" I finally asked after catching my breath. That motherfucker always finds a way to make my heart rate go up a full one hundred fifty percent. I was honestly confused, though.
He must have dubbed my bewildered expression as one that was sincere and not waiting for the right moment to kill him because he put the gun down on a table.
"Being the manager means that the owner now fully trusts me. She told me about all this. Showed me everything. All the food, all the weapons," Shaun told me. He paused and looked at me funny.
"I told you this about half an hour ago! Don't you listen to me brag?" Shaun asked, looking insulted.
Um, Shaun, I have a lot better things to do than listen to you gloat about being the king of the general store down the street. Like, I don't know, working in a hospital as a nurse and stuff like that.
He looked at the screen where the security feed was coming through. More people were out on the street now. The sound of windows breaking and shouts were heard even in our spot in the store.
Shaun went past the open door that led to the weapons. When he came out, he was holding four handguns, a shotgun, a sniper, a bow, a quiver of arrows, and ammunition. Did he expect me to use these? Sure, I know how to use a gun since living in Gotham as a kid isn't quite as safe as some might have thought, but really? Come on!
A backpack was tossed to me, which I caught in midair. Apparently, I was the new Rambo. I wasn't too psyched about that. Still, Shaun kept moving around the store, adding canned goods and pre-packaged foods to the pile building up in his arms.
"Okay, Marissa, you've got to get out of here soon. I already got my fair share of food a good couple of hours ago as soon as I heard explosions. You, on the other hand, didn't. Take these with you and only come back for the other food when you need it, okay? Help out some close friends, but don't lead them here. It'll look too suspicious." The blue backpack was now full of the food and weapons with the exception of two handguns. Those were pressed into my palm after I got the backpack on.
"Keep the quiver under your jacket, the handguns in your pockets, and the bow is compact, so you can just keep that with you, too," Shaun said, shoving me out the door. "Try not to die!"
I felt the cold metal in my right hand. I didn't want to have to use any of this stuff on people. They weren't animals, but I had a feeling both Shaun and I knew they would attack if it meant they survived a bit longer than me. Fucking paranoid old lady, thank God for her.
I caught sight of Robby's acidic green and blinding orange striped hat weaving through the trash spilling out of trash cans that had been knocked over, broken glass, and the occasional two guys rolling on top of each other, trying to get the last beer on the shelf or something.
Robby hopped right over them, calling to the two with his arms in a big O, "Excuse me! Thank you for rolling over that way. Watch out for that glass! You should stop—there is no tolerance for violence in Gotham!" over his shoulder.
Ah, him and his stupid manners and humanitarian ways. I pocketed the handguns so as not to freak him out and jogged to get to him. I picked him up from behind and started carrying him the other way before he decided to go tell a couple of guys off for breaking down a door of a multi-family house.
"Hi, Marissa! Is that a bow? Can I use it?" He grinned up at me with his puppy dog eyes. He perfected it when he wanted a bike and ramp last Christmas. He found it under the tree three weeks early and wrecked them both two weeks later.
"Uh huh, no. You'll shoot yourself or me in the leg before you shoot the thing you're aiming at. We have to go back to my apartment and wait this ridiculous apocalypse out."
"Will we get to kill things? That sounds fun! Maybe Bane! And we can steal food and T.P. their government's house! Ooh, Batman will help us, too! It's going to be so much fun. We'll be on a mission to reclaim Batman's Gotham City."
This was why I loved Robby. He knew what was happening and decided to make it sound like we're in Mission: Impossible or something fun like that.
"Robby, maybe a bit later when Batman gets back, okay? I think he's off somewhere else for now."
"Oh, that's okay. He'll come back. He's got to. Batman wouldn't leave us unless he knew we could handle ourselves for a bit. I bet he left someone in charge, too! Let's go find them and give them weapons and kill things!"
We walked in silence for a bit until we got into the apartment. Once we got inside and locked the door, my cellphone was blaring Queen at its highest volume. Seeing as it was Jessica Pennyworth, also known as Batgirl—yes, I know it's hard to believe I'm best friends with fucking Batgirl, but we've been friends since before she became all crime-fighting and ninja-of-the-night—I answered the thing.
Before I could even get one fucking word in, I was bombarded by this huge, giant, frantic rant coming from the other end. Most of it made absolutely no sense to me and I was tempted to just zone out completely and play Angry Birds on my iPod Touch. Being the great friend I am, I resisted that urge and patiently tried to decipher what the hell Batgirl was screeching in my ear. It took half an hour. I say I did pretty damn good.
My decipherments: Jonathan Crane—cough, cough, that dick Scarecrow with the stupid burlap sack face and creepy former D.A. complexion, cough, cough—was deciding the fate of all those wealthy socialites, all those wealthy socialites got brutally dragged out of their mansions and penthouses and are now on the street, the definition of criminals and persuasive rich people has gone totally Opposite Day, every cop is trapped in the sewer system with no way of getting out, Miranda Tate's clean energy thing that Bruce invested in and then shut down has been activated as a nuclear bomb which is why Bruce had stopped it in the first place, Bruce was dragged off somewhere by Bane and is possibly dead and is definitely not helping us anytime soon, the government decided to screw us over and not help at all, Selina Kyle—that clever Catwoman—plays some part in this, and there was some resistance being formed by ex-cop John Blake and Commissioner Gordon that Jess was not going to be a part of.
Now, I don't blame her. Jess has a six-year-old daughter to take care of. Ellie is the most adorable kid in the world. She looks more like her dad with her dark brown hair and slightly tan skin, but she has her mom's blue eyes. Thank God the only thing in her personality of her dad's is her hotheadedness. John Blake has literally seen her and never even suspected that she's his daughter. How did that idiot become a detective if he can't even observe how much Ellie is like him? Aren't detectives supposed to detect these things? Hence the name detectives. What fails.
Our police force is pathetic. Gotham got robbed in that department. Just like our stock market.
The resistance is going to be another member short because no way in hell I'm joining if there's a greater risk of me being shot than if I wasn't in the resistance. There's always about a ten to twenty percent risk of being shot in Gotham on a good day, depending on who you were, but this? Now it's up to just about fifty percent or higher for your Average Potato Joe who's just trying to cruise through life on his farm without selling a body part and probably a whopping ninety percent for the idiots in the resistance. I get that this is just an over-exaggerated estimate, but nuh-uh, no way. I've got mouths to feed.
After ten more minutes of Jess crying into the phone, me stopping her to kindly but irritably request for her to shut up and repeat everything she just said so I could comprehend what she was practically yelling at me, and me calming her down without reaching through the phone and slapping her upside the head, we finally hung up to go take care of our respective child. Robby wasn't mine biologically, but for now, he might have well as been. I'll be taking care of him for an indefinite amount of time, after all.
What I'd like to know is how Mr. and Mrs. Miller managed to get out of Gotham City in just the nick of time before all this bullshit happened. Those lucky, psychic, little rich bastards. I hate them for having more money than me. Probably paid a fucking psychic or joined those villains for a short time to know when to get the hell out.
With Robby passed out on my bed, I crawled in beside him and fell asleep in mere minutes. No dreams, no nightmares, no parting thought. Just a feeling things weren't going to be going as great as I had hoped my life would have been. And that absolutely sucked.