In The Blood
By Dannell Lites
SPIFFY DISCLAIMER THINGIE:):)
Ah do not own any of the characters in this story:):) DC Comics does! No money is being made
from this enterprise (*sob* *sob*) and no infringement of copyright is intended.
Rated PG just because!
Tarnation if'n Ah know what to call this:):) An AU of an Elseworlds?? Mercy that sounds deep,
don't it? Truth is Ah just read the last part of "JLA: Created Equal" and this story started bugging
moi so here it is! Hopefully it's pretty self-explainitory!
So, when I was about ten I asked my mother; I said, "Mom, what's a 'cuckoo's egg' and why did
Aunt Babs just call me that?" She frowned, smashed out her cigarette in the nearest ashtray and
lifted one eyebrow like she does when she's hacked.
"Little kittens have big ears, kiddo," she accused, but I could tell she wasn't mad at *me*. "And
your 'Aunt Babs' had better watch her tail or I'll take that Power Ring of hers and stuff it up her left
nostril. She may be Green Lantern these days but I knew her when!" I used to wonder if all
mothers hissed like that when they got really pissed. I gulped and didn't say anything.
When she looked at me again she looked so sad. She's a good mom, really she is. But she's not
usually so open, you know? For a moment I wondered if she'd maybe been drinking again, you
know, just a little? She does that sometimes when she thinks no one's paying attention. Usually
while I'm around. She just gets so very, very sad. It used to make me sad, too. It still does.
But when she pulled me close and ran her fingers through my hair, I could tell she hadn't been
drinking. She was just sad.
"You look more like him every day," she whispered. And then she bit her lip. "Every day."
Finally, as if it were a really hard thing to do, she let me go and smiled at me. "You'd better get
ready, BeeTee," she told me, "it's almost time for you go back to the Dormitory, kiddo. Don't want
to be late, now do we?"
That last came out a little sarcastic, I guess. Mom doesn't get along with most of the Amazon
authorities here on Thymiscira. Nobody has forgotten her past, that's for sure. But she's been a
good girl for a long time, now. She says that was the only way she could convince Diana and the
rest of the Amazons to let her have me.
I'm one of the Children of the Spring.
BeeTee Kyle, that's me! And before some wiseacre says, "What kinda name is *that*?" or maybe,
"What does the B. T. stand for, anyway?", the answer is: I don't know. Mom won't tell me.
"When it's time," she says whenever I ask. "When it's time, BeeTee. Not now."
My father is gone. "Well, duh!" you snort. "Everybody's father is gone. All the men are dead.
What's the big deal? I mean, that's what the Children of the Spring are all about, right?"
Sure, sure, sure. I mean he was a carrier of "the Fall" so he had to leave, but he was also the
primary source of DNA to continue the human race. Even if he was an alien. He might not have
been precisely human but he *was* Superman, okay?
When that cloud of radiation covered the Earth no one was all that worried. "Harmless," scientists
assured everyone. Right. Perfectly harmless.
Unless you were a human male. Then you were dead.
So before he left to poke around the galaxy for a cure for "the Fall", Superman left behind some
insurance that guaranteed the survival of humanity. All the Children of the Spring have different
mothers but he's our father. It was the only way, they said. So ... BOOM! There we were.
Only ...
Only, I think there's something wrong with me.
I'm not much like the others.
I mean, okay, all we Children are half breeds. Half human-half Kryptonian. And I guess I look
more like Superman than a lot of the others do. Geez, Alexander Maxima doesn't look anything like
Superman. He looks exactly like his mother. Acts like her, too, from what I've heard. But let's face
it, tall dark haired men with blue eyes weren't exactly scarce, now, were they? Before, I mean.
The Children of the Spring may have the same father but we all have different mothers, just the
same. "Different people mature at different rates, young BeeTee," General Philipus assured me. "In
time you'll be just as powerful as your play fellows, never fear. Patience, little one." I thought I was
just a late bloomer or something. Hey, it made sense.
I mean look what happened with Adam Kent. What a mess *that* was. Gods of Olympus, they
didn't expect him to develop his powers that soon. No way! Talk about a nightmare ... there you
go. A toddler sized Superman. It took the whole of what was left of the JLA to calm him down.
Paula was very careful to explain it to everyone. I've read all the debate. Adam was *supposed* to
develop his powers just like Kal-El did. When he was in in late teens or so. After a lot of years of
energizing exposure to yellow sunlight and plenty of time to cope with his emerging abilities. He was
NOT supposed to develop them almost overnight, unannounced, at the age of *five* and then kill
someone with them. I've even seen the video footage although I'm not supposed to.
I'm good at that kind of thing.
"I hugged mommy," Adam kept sobbing. "I hugged mommy and she stopped movin' ... "
What could be more natural than a five year old hugging his mother, huh? Mom, apple pie, and the
American Way all in a nutshell, right there.
Unless that five year old is strong enough to crush coal into diamonds with his bare hands. *Then*
he's going to snap mommy's spine like a burnt out matchstick. Which is exactly what happened to
poor Lois Kent. I never meet Lois Lane Kent. She died about five years before I was born. But I
grew up with Adam.
I guess my friendship with Adam started out because we were both sort of outcasts. After what
happened with his Mom, Lois, Adam wasn't exactly the most popular of The Children. Even the
Amazons were leary of him, I guess. And none of the others were precisely fighting to take him
home to meet their Mom's, either, you can bet on that. So he was alone a lot. When the rest of us
had "family time" Adam didn't have a family to spend time with. So he stayed in the Dormitory. He
was lonely, I think.
Somehow ... I understood that.
Me? I didn't have too many friends, either, to be honest. It was, "Aw geez, BeeTee! I didn't mean
to hurt you! Are you sure you're all right?" Or, even worse, "Damnit, BeeTee! You mean you
*still* haven't developed your powers? What the heck's wrong with you, anyway? Rao!" And off
they'd fly to play with someone who wasn't quite so breakable. And it didn't matter how many times
I insisted that everything was all right. That I didn't mind playing rough. They never listened. I could
never decide which was worse, the pity or the anger. The pity, I guess. The anger I could deal
with. I broke my hand at least three times hitting Alexander Maxima before I wised up.
About the second time I showed up for "family time" sporting bandages Mom took matters into her
own feline paws. No, she didn't complain to General Philipus or Diana. Screw that. She didn't
coddle or embarrass me. No way. She *taught* me. Before I knew it, thanks to her, I was one
hell of a fighter. Still not a superpower to my name, but I could hold my own with the majority of the
other Children. Mostly because they were still learning how to use what they had and I discovered
quickly *exactly* how to use that against them.
"You've got good genes, BeeTee," she assured to me and smiled that mysterious cat-smile of hers,
as if she knew a secret no one else was privy to, yet.
Well, Duh! I guess Kryptonian genes are about the best you can find in the Universe. Mom is weird
sometimes.
Alexander Maxima turned out to be a total putz. All I had to do was make him mad (trust me,
*not* that difficult to do) and there he'd be: on the ground before he could blink twice. Angry
people don't fight very well. It got kinda boring after a while. I mean, he was pitiful as a fighter. All
bluster and show ... no go. I couldn't much hurt his body ... but I could damn sure injure him in the
only place he was vulnerable: his pride.
AM *hated* it when the others laughed at him for losing another fight to "the weakling". They
stopped calling me that after a while, though. They grew to respect me, I think, but they never liked
me very much. I'll settle for that.
So Adam and I were sort of drawn together right from the beginning. When I was a real little kid,
maybe five or six, he used to kinda protect me from the Children who came into their powers early
the same way he did. Made them play nice. Kinda like training a kitten or a puppy to soft paw, I
guess. Whatever. All I know is it worked.
'Course, when I was that young no one really thought very much about the fact that I didn't have my
powers just yet. It wasn't until I hit my mid-teens that I decided it was just going to be my rotten
luck that I'd have to wait the full damned eighteen years or something before Earth's yellow sun
worked her magic on me.
In the meantime, there was Adam. We'd whisper together late at night in the Dormitory after "lights
out" and it just seemed sort of natural that we ate together, too, since no one else was really crying
for the privilege, you know what I mean? Relationships among The Children were strange. I mean,
technically, we were all half brothers and sisters, right? And nobody much talked about the fact that
someday it was likely that the boys among us and the girls were going to have children together.
Hey! That was the whole purpose, after all. So, you can imagine that we weren't precisely raised as
siblings.
The night it happened, I woke up in the middle of the sleepcycle, instantly alert. Some sound?
Some ... feeling? A...lack. A void ... I didn't need my not-yet-developed supersenses to tell me that
something was way wrong. My ears are pretty sharp even without super-hearing. And they were
screaming at me that I was alone. I sat up and slid off the bed noiselessly. Mom would've been
proud. It seemed as though I could feel it through the pores of my skin. Sense it with something
primal lurking coiled inside me.
They were gone.
All of them.
Adam, Alex, Darius, Hidalgo ...
I was the only one left in the Dormitory.
I made my own through search and found not a single sign of any of them. Except for me ...all the
rest of the Children were gone. At least, the boys were gone. When I peeked into the Girls Dorm, I
was kind of surprised to see them all still there, Kara and the others. I crept away without waking
anyone, trying to think.
Every instinct I had was yelling at me that something bad, something really, really *bad* was going
on here. So what did I do? Why, I did the first thing that came to my mind, of course.
I ran home to Mom.
It was pretty late, so I thought it was kind of odd to find her still awake and watching some old JLA
case films. Okay. Maybe the awake part wasn't that odd, I'll admit Mom takes after her name
sake about that. She catnaps during the day. Prowls the night. Figures, right?
But the JLA case files? That was definitely weird. Aunt Babs has asked her several times if she
wants to join the League. She always sneers and says no. So why - ?
Watching her curled up comfortably on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, enrapted in the
images on the screen, I decided I didn't have time to really think about it.
I didn't even have to tap on the window. Almost from the moment my feet hit the ledge, she knew
that I was there. In silence, she rose, glided to the window, and opened it.
"Kitten, I'm glad to see you, but what in the Hell are you doing here?" she hissed, pulling me inside.
It took me a few minutes to explain. She didn't interrupt me once. Just listened, absorbed what I
had to say, then made a bee line for the comm unit sitting in the corner.
"I haven't used this channel since ... before you were born," said my mother.
I made no reply.
I watched her carefully. Zues' Beard. Whoever she meant to talk to, she sure wanted it to be
*private*. She bounced the signal around the planet about six times by way of various transmitters.
Some of which I didn't even recognize. I mean, who knew there was a station in the middle of the
Lanhgostani desert, for God's sake? Rao, she even bounced the blasted signal off the old JLA
Watch Tower on the Moon before she was satisfied with the security. Just *try* tracing that!
The whole thing took nearly five minutes. But, in the end, her private comm screen lit up like a
Christmas tree and I found myself staring at one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And,
raised among the Amazons as I was, that's saying quite a lot. Not, I guess, that I've seen a great
many women. They keep us Children pretty isolated.
Jet dark eyes stared back from the screen. Long waist length hair the color of deepest midnight
framed a heart-shaped face that made me catch my fifteen year old breath. Mom smiled, then turned
her attention back to the screen just in time for the figure on the screen to speak.
"Many years have passed, Selina Kyle, since last we spoke." That low, throaty contralto voice
insinuated itself into my nerve endings and began hammering. I swallowed hard.
'Get a grip here, BeeTee,' I chastised myself. I began taking regular, even, calming breaths and that
helped some.
When Mom ignored her, the lovely woman creased her dusky brow with an unpleasant frown.
"What need have you," she demanded, "of The Daughter of the Demon and the League of Assassins,
Catwoman?"
My eyes widened until they nearly popped right out of my skull. Holy spit. Talia Al Ghul. I was
gawking at Talia Al Ghul. What in the name of Hera did my Mom have to talk about with the most
wanted woman on the planet, I wondered? I decided to keep my mouth shut and maybe find out.
"Cut the bull, Talia!" Mom advised with her patented hiss. "You know damned well why I'm calling.
Now, where are they? What have you done with the Children?"
The Demon's Daughter looked bored. "Why should I do anything with them, Daughter of Bast? I
have no need of them. I have all that I desire."
Mom's eyes narrowed and she studied her opponent for long seconds before she spoke. Her voice
dripped scorn. "I'm not stupid, Talia. Don't treat me as if I were. You *know* better than that.
Are you trying to tell me that The League of Assassins has no use for almost a hundred young
Kryptonian half-breeds? With all their powers?"
Talia laughed, a sound like tinkling bells. "And would I be fool enough to believe that they would
ever follow me? No, Selina Kyle. I've enough Assassins, in any case."
The former Catwoman lifted one elegant eyebrow skyward in disbelief. "Is that a fact?" she purred.
Her feline green eyes probed the background where Talia Al Ghul stood. I followed her gaze, but
she saw the shadow first and she must have recognized it, because she smiled.
"Well, you always did hire the best, Talia. No amateurs for you." Lifting one supple, talented hand
she waved merrily at the screen. "Hi, Vic," she called. "You may as well come on out and join the
party, babe."
Chuckling, a tall, well muscled blond woman stepped from the shadows, smirking. "How are you,
Selina?" she inquired loftily. "Long time no see."
"Not long enough, Vic," came the grim return. "So how did you end up working for The League?"
Lady Vic stretched. "Oh, you know," she temporized. "A little mayhem, a little action. A girls got
to eat, after all. And killing's what I do. It just seemed like a natural, you know?"
Mom snorted. "Yeah. And I hear that the price of crow and the warm piss to wash it down with has
gone *way* up, recently."
Lady Vic snarled under her breath, but quelled with a cold look form Talia, stepping back into the
shadows to disappear once more. The Daughter of The Demon waited for Mom to speak again.
Mom didn't oblige her. Looks like I was the only one getting nervous here. When Talia Al Ghul's
onyx black eyes fell on me, I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. I couldn't help it.
She studied my face for long endless moments. The hard edge in her eyes seemed to soften then.
Not sure why. Then she turned to Mom.
"Is that *him*?"
Mom only nodded. But I could tell she didn't like the way Talia was watching me.
When Talia turned her piercing gaze back on me once more, I forced myself to stand fast, to face
her squarely. But it wasn't easy. Again that curious softening. Finally, she spoke to me and I only
just managed not to gulp.
"What is your name, child?" she inquired softly.
"BeeTee," I answered quickly, trying to sound much more together than I felt.
The peal of rich laughter that escaped her full lips was low and melodious. It went straight to my
belly and set all the butterflies there loose. Mom's eyes flashed green fire and I knew that trouble
was on the way.
"Ah , Selina," Talia marveled. "Hiding in plain sight! How very, very like you."
She regarded me again, even more closely this time. Her smile was quite genuine. "There's
someone you should meet, young BeeTee," she said. With a small gesture she summoned someone
into camera range.
He was taller than she, over six feet, I guessed, about my age maybe two, three years older. Long
dark hair, but his eyes were dark as night and that threw me for a second. I paled. Jesus Christ.
He *had* to be one of the Children. Had to be. But where had Talia Al Ghul gotten hold of The
Seed? I decided almost immediately that I didn't really want to know. This was crazy. Insane. My
head spun with sickening dizziness.
"This is my son," The Demon's Daughter said, "Ib'n Al Xu'ffasch, your - "
"SHUT UP, Talia!"
Now that really shook me. I'd never heard my Mom yell like that. Never. She was so angry she
was white faced. One of the first things Mom ever taught me about fighting was how to recognize
and use an opponents rage. Red faced and sweating means they're so pissed they're about to do
something really, really stupid. Take advantage of it. But white faced ... white faced and pasty pale
means that you'd damn well better pay attention. Because, then, they *will* hurt you if they can. If
Talia'd been in the same room with my Mom, she'd have been a corpse.
Talia sighed. "Very well, Selina Kyle. Play your games. It matters not to me." Her eyes
narrowed. "But beware of whom you play them with, Catwoman. Beware."
Mom sneered. "Or what, Talia? Are you going to kill me the way you did poor Pammy?"
Talia's lips skinned back from her teeth in a feral twitch of dusky flesh. "Poison Ivy was not worthy
of my gift!" she cried. "She perverted it, fouled it with her - "
"You never gave her your 'gift', Talia," Mom observed calmly. "You refused her. And when she
sought what she wanted in the only other way left to her ... you killed her."
The Daughter of The Demon's eyes blazed hot fire. "Yes! I killed her. She and those abominations
of hers ... those ... those *things* she created! She was not worthy of him."
Have you ever felt lost and almost totally confused? Like you came in right in the middle of a
conversation and hadn't the least idea what was being said? Welcome to the club. This was all
news to me. Okay, I knew Pamela Isley, Poison Ivy, was dead. That's in the JLA records. But ...
according to those same JLA records Isley died in a laboratory accident. Some sort of inadvertent
release of toxic fumes or something. No one was really all that certain. I mean, it was at least a
month after she died that they found her, surrounded by piles of rotting plant fibers. It was pretty
messy. No one asked a lot of questions as far as I know.
See, after "the Fall", Poison Ivy moved lock, stock, and plant flora onto an island just off the coast of
Costa Rica, the Isle d'Nublar, the Island of the Clouds. Nobody objected. Geez, with more than
half's the worlds population dead, the survivors had a lot more to worry about than Pamela Isley.
And it wasn't like there wasn't room to spread out, you know? Since she had what she wanted,
now, a home for she and her precious plants, Poison Ivy soon settled down to become a good little
girl; just like Mom. She was even doing research for the JLA into "the Fall".
At least that's what the records *say*.
"If you have no further need of me .. " Talia said and, suddenly, the screen was blank. She was gone
as quickly, as unexpectedly, as she arrived. I had the feeling that was pretty natural for her. Mom
smiled, though, and that worried me for a minute or two. Why?
Time for not-so-little-Kittens to keep their ears open and their mouths shut. Be surprised how much
you can learn that way. And I've gotten real damned good at it over the past few years. I was
always a quick study. I'm almost certain that Mom hasn't realized just *how* good at it I am, now.
And that suits yours truly very well.
"Got her!" the Catwoman hissed in triumph. "Ohhhh, Talia, you're as predictable as your old man in
so many ways. Now that I've put the bug in your ear, you're going to have to *know* what
happened to the Children, aren't you? Uh huh. You'll have to know who's got them. And what
they plan to do with them. For your own protection. I know you. And when you find out .... you'll
call me. You always did like for someone else to do your dirty work, didn't you?"
I'd like to say that things happened quickly after that. But, the truth is, they didn't. It was nearly a
month and a half before that screen lit up again, signaling an incoming call. With the male half of the
Dormitory empty, I just moved in with Mom. Nobody said a thing. Diana and Philipus, the JLA,
and even the returned Kal-El, Superman, were just too busy to care, I guess. Didn't make a big
deal about it; just did it. Fact is, Mom never told them I was there, I'm pretty sure. She just let them
assume that I'd disappeared with all the other boys.
Mom and I practiced a lot; Mom smoked like a chimney. She does that when she's nervous. But
she didn't drink at all. Not even a drop and that kind of surprised me. We were pretty much
ignored by one and all. Otherwise we just waited. I discovered I was very good at that. Waiting, I
mean. Patience is an art form and like any art form it has to be learned. I got a lot of practice that
month.
But, then, one fine Spring day, just after breakfast, the comm signaled "Incoming Communication",
Mom and I left those delicious, hot pecan waffles to get cold and soggy and went running. Literally.
Talia, all right. She stared out at us with impatience from the large screen with those black, black
eyes and spoke four words.
"Luthor. Fortress of Solitude."
That was all. Then she melted away into the cyber-ether like a ghost. Mom smiled.
Then the "Data File Transfer" transponder began to flash bright green and some *very* interesting
data files downloaded themselves into Mom's computer.
Mom burned a quick CD of the info, printed it out and erased the file.
The biggest shock, I guess, was that Lex Luthor was still alive. No one should have been very
surprised, really. And, naturally, if he were alive, he was plotting and scheming his black heart out.
Geez. Imagine that. Maybe *the* only fully human male left alive on the whole planet and what was
he planning to do? Why take over the place, of course. Using the Children as his foils.
Nice guy.
Mom and I studied the blue prints (DO NOT ask where she got them!) of Superman's Fortress of
Solitude in the Antarctic very carefully. Not exactly the easiest place in the world to break into, trust
me. But that was the plan. It didn't take us very long to realize that the key to the whole she-bang
lay with Luthor's captive, lobotomized telepaths. They were the ones maintaining the stealth shields
around the Fortress. And aside from Luthor himself (and maybe some of the Children) *they* were
going to be one of the most formidable obstacles to overcome.
Hey, it can't be real pleasant to have your psyche ripped out by the roots, okay? And at least one of
those telepaths, a really noxious piece of work by the name of Mind Boggler, had a very bad habit
of doing just that very thing. And enjoying it.
Nasty.
Oh, yeah. You can bet we planned our assault on Castle Lex damned well and very meticulously.
Better believe it. But not as well as we'd have liked, I'll admit. We just didn't have the time. Rao's
light. Luthor'd already had the Children for more than a month and a half by now. The Light only
knows what he'd done to them in that time. We had to hurry. Or at least we felt as if we did.
About the only thing we had going for us was stealth.
We had to count on that.
Still, when Mom contacted Faora Hu-Ul, I have to admit I was shocked. Oh, sure. She's free of
the Zone. And after the League exposed her to gold Kryptonite as a precaution, she's no more
powerful than the average woman, now. Aunt Kara keeps an eye on her and makes her tow the line
pretty hard, usually. Frankly, I've never been exactly certain why they let her out of the Zone in the
first place. Damned stupid thing to do, if you ask me. No one did, of course. Beats me what they
were thinking of, though ... unless she was supposed to be some kinda trophy/reward for Kal-El if
he ever made it home again.
Yeah. I know. Not a very nice thought, huh? Maybe not, but they *are* two of the very last
pure-bred Kryptonians in the entire Universe. You use what you've got.
Couldn't tell you why she was willing to help with this, either. She's got no love for the Earth or the
JLA, trust me on that. I try not to think about what Mom might have offered her in exchange. I
didn't listen. But I do know that Mom got what she wanted: *lots* of information about the
Phantom Zone.
And the location of a working Phantom Zone projector.
After that, it was all gravy.
The biggest problem, I soon discovered, with having an intricate, well thought out, precisely timed
Plan Of Attack is that your enemy is rarely foolish enough to fall for it, step by step. I was still pretty
amazed that things were going so very well. Hey, I was *not* happy about the idea of entering the
Fortress via the Phantom Zone, okay? The fact is, I was nervous as Hell. Got to admit it worked
like a charm, though. Mom set the timer, we stepped in front of the silly looking thing and the next
instant -- BLAMMO!
We were ghosts, floating around ... well, in a big empty void, I guess is the best way to describe it.
Big, empty, cold ...
And lonely.
Geez, I didn't think I was ever going to feel warm again. I don't think I've ever been happier to be
*away* from some place in my entire life. When the tart stinging scent of ozone engulfed me,
burning my nose and mouth, I almost cried I was so glad to be able to smell something; feel
something. Involuntarily I blinked down at my chrono.
We spent a total of *two* seconds, all told, in that Hellish place.
I'll say one thing. It damned sure made me determined to succeed. There was no way under any
sun in the whole blasted Universe, that I was *ever* going back there. I decided I'd take my
chances walking home instead.
We hit Luthor sharp and hard, like a boxer with a strong left jab. One-two. One-two. First we cut
his communications and then we narcotized his captive tepes. Figures Luthor'd have a way to do
that, doesn't it? Just in case. I love a cautious paranoid, don't you? Uh huh. Like a boy scout,
Luthor's always prepared. So, naturally, we used it against him.
The robots were a problem, at first. We had no specs to work with. No real idea of what all they
were capable of. And, honestly, Kryptonian tech scares the crap outta me. So we improvised.
Well, okay, prayed is actually a lot closer to the truth. Prayed and hoped that neutrinos were as
destructive of Kryptonian positronic brains as they were of earthly ones.
We guessed right.
I never said anything to Mom, but one of *my* major worries was my fellow Children of the
Spring. What if Luthor got really, really smart (as if he weren't smart enough already) and sent them
against us? We were cranberry puree, in that case. No question about it. One on one, Mom and I
could maybe hold our own even against the really powerful ones like Adam. Once. But in groups?
Again and again? No way.
I didn't let myself think about fighting Adam.
Turns out, Luthor really had filled the guys head's with all kinds of crap about what it was
supposedly like to be a man ... before "the Fall" ... and how the Amazons were afraid of men, so
they raised us all to be wimps and feebs. I dunno. Maybe. It's for damned sure that Philipus was
frightened of us. And she definitely thought that Diana'd spent waaaay too much time in Man's
World. All I really knew was that, whatever Luthor actually thought about it, he was only planning
to use the Children to take down the existing authority. Then he was going to kill them.
We found the kryptonite, okay?
The only other thing that was plain was that all Luthor's philosophy *hadn't* taught Darius not to
telegraph his every move nor David not to lead with his not-so-invulnerable chin. They went down
pretty easily, all told. I stood guard while Mom cut Luthor's communications and, then, when the
tepes were in Snoozeland, we watched the low earth orbit satellite display. The look on Aunt Babs'
face when the stealth shield went inoperative was priceless. I grinned like a cream fed tom cat. She
didn't waste any time, I'll give her that. The JLA were there within five minutes, kicking major butt.
But, true to form, Luthor still had a few tricks up his slimy sleeves.
If it hadn't been for the timely arrival of Superman ...
And even then it was a close thing. Much too close.
When I saw Alexander Maxima sucker-punch poor Kara, I nearly lost it. Rao! Kara was always
nice to me. She never made fun of "the weakling" nor patronized me the way so many others did.
Kara takes after her Mom like that. She's smart and almost too brave. It hurt to see her abused like
that. AM sort of threw her on the growing pile of bodies, making some crude and nasty comment
about needing scullery maids when this was all over.
I tapped him politely on the shoulder.
When he spun around, I wasn't there.
Not that he could *see* anyway.
With a scissors sweep, I cut his legs out from underneath him and watched him fall hard to the
ground. From the belt pouch around my waist, I surreptitiously withdrew a small gas capsule and
broke it under his nose.
"Nighty-night, creepazoid ... " I rasped and watched his eyes roll back into his head. "Hope the
bed-bugs bite."
Hey. I was really getting into this witty repartee thing.
I looked up to find Adam staring at me. Oh crap. But that was all he did; stare at me. I looked
around and spied Mom fighting back to back with Diana. No help there. Too busy. Catwoman
had her own probs. If I called out for her help I'd only distract her; might get her hurt or even killed
I stared back at Adam for whet semed like forever..
I guess we may never know what might have happened because Luthor chose that moment to pull
his trump card: the kryptonite. I guess he thought it was the only way to deal with Superman. At
just about the same time Kal-El's containment suit was breached and Luthor screamed in rage when
he saw that. Me? I figured we were all dead. The cacophony of painful howls and confusion grew
louder and louder in my ears as, one by one, then in little groups, the Children began to collapse in
agony from exposure to the deadly shards of their heritage. I watched with huge eyes as Adam fell
to the ground writhing and suffering. I was so stunned that it took me almost a full minute, in fact, to
realize that I didn't feel a damned thing. Not even a twitch.
Superman was down. Strangely, he didn't appear to be in quite as bad a shape as I would have
thought, given that he's fully Kryptonian. He was pale and sweating and obviously in a lot of pain,
but not totally out of it. Weird. But I didn't have time to wonder too hard about it. Moving silently,
I slipped behind Luthor and rabbit punched him in the back of the head. I'll bet he felt that even
through the suit.
"Hey, Cue Ball!" I snarled, "you forgot about *me*. Bad move."
He went down like a sack of grain, flat on his face, and didn't move. Superman struggled to his feet,
smiled like a supernova, and patted me on the back.
"Good job, son," he congratulated me.
I looked away.
"Yeah, thanks ... *Dad*." I replied.
He regarded me rather oddly at the ironic pronunciation I gave that word "Dad". But he didn't say
anything else as he moved off. I was glad of that, let me tell you.
There were a few other hairy moments, but, in the end, Good Triumphed Over Evil ... yadda, yadda,
yadda. And all was right with the world, right?
Well, not quite.
Standing very still, I watched Adam face his father for the very first time. I'm really good at reading
body language. Especially with people I know. Adam was very frightened, I could see that; my
eyes told me that. What could he say? What could he do? My heart was a dull ache for him in my
chest until Superman reached out and touched his sharp chin with tender hands.
"You've got your Mother's eyes," Kal-El said and, suddenly, Adam was smiling. I bite my lip and
turned away from the intimate scene. This was for family, I knew; and that didn't mean *me*.
Not anymore.
My jaw set, I turned to my mother.
"Selina ... we need to talk ... " I'd never called her anything but "Mom" before and the name damned
sure got her attention. Slowly she turned to face me.
I like to think my voice was firm and authoritative, but I'm not taking any bets on it. To my utter
humiliation it sounded high and squeaky in my own ears and, just that suddenly, I was ten years old
again, asking stupid juvenile questions about cuckoo's eggs.. Damn, damn, damn.
She turned her green cat's eyes on me and sighed. "Yes, we do, BeeTee," she admitted. "You're
right. It's time. And you've earned it."
That last was nice to know. Catwoman's not much for giving praise. I forced myself to brush it
aside, though. I had more important fish to fry, you betcha. Oh, yeah.
"Who am I, Selina?"
Involuntarily, I turned to see the many Children cluster around Kal-El, reaching out to touch him, to
feel the reality of their father. "I'm not one of the Children of the Spring, am I? That's why the
kryptonite didn't affect me. I'm not Kryptonian. And that's why I've never developed any powers,
isn't it? I'm not just a late bloomer ... I don't *have* any powers."
She reached out and brushed a stray strand of ebony hair off my moist forehead. "No, you don't,"
she whispered. "Not one single superpower. You're perfectly human." I closed my eyes and
waited.
It seemed like a small eternity before she spoke again, but I'm sure it was only a few moments in
actuality.
"I told you once that when the time was right, I'd tell you your name. That I'd tell you what the B.T.
stood for. It's time."
I swallowed hard, then met her eyes.
"What's my name, Selina?" I asked, not at all sure I wanted to know this. No, not at all sure.
She reached up and kissed me chastely on the cheek. It seemed to surprise her that she had to do
that. Reach up to kiss me, I mean. I'm pretty tall for my age. Just over six feet. The memory of it
seemed to haunt her eyes as if her body remembered reaching up to kiss someone many times. Her
embrace was clinging, as though she never wanted to let me go.
"Your name," my mother, Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, whispered in my ear, "is Bruce. Bruce
Thomas. B. T. If we were still using patronymics in this Brave New World of ours, your full name
would be Bruce Thomas Wayne, II."
Dazed, I could only hold onto her as tightly as I could. My God. The son of The Batman. I gulped.
That was a lot to live up to. Selina stroked my cheek.
"I couldn't let him die," she mourned. "I - I just couldn't."
I gathered her in my arms, hugging for all I was worth.
"He won't," I whispered back. "I *promise* you. As long as I'm around he'll never die. I won't let
him. *We* won't let him."
Her eyes sparkled like emeralds when she nodded.
The End
By Dannell Lites
SPIFFY DISCLAIMER THINGIE:):)
Ah do not own any of the characters in this story:):) DC Comics does! No money is being made
from this enterprise (*sob* *sob*) and no infringement of copyright is intended.
Rated PG just because!
Tarnation if'n Ah know what to call this:):) An AU of an Elseworlds?? Mercy that sounds deep,
don't it? Truth is Ah just read the last part of "JLA: Created Equal" and this story started bugging
moi so here it is! Hopefully it's pretty self-explainitory!
So, when I was about ten I asked my mother; I said, "Mom, what's a 'cuckoo's egg' and why did
Aunt Babs just call me that?" She frowned, smashed out her cigarette in the nearest ashtray and
lifted one eyebrow like she does when she's hacked.
"Little kittens have big ears, kiddo," she accused, but I could tell she wasn't mad at *me*. "And
your 'Aunt Babs' had better watch her tail or I'll take that Power Ring of hers and stuff it up her left
nostril. She may be Green Lantern these days but I knew her when!" I used to wonder if all
mothers hissed like that when they got really pissed. I gulped and didn't say anything.
When she looked at me again she looked so sad. She's a good mom, really she is. But she's not
usually so open, you know? For a moment I wondered if she'd maybe been drinking again, you
know, just a little? She does that sometimes when she thinks no one's paying attention. Usually
while I'm around. She just gets so very, very sad. It used to make me sad, too. It still does.
But when she pulled me close and ran her fingers through my hair, I could tell she hadn't been
drinking. She was just sad.
"You look more like him every day," she whispered. And then she bit her lip. "Every day."
Finally, as if it were a really hard thing to do, she let me go and smiled at me. "You'd better get
ready, BeeTee," she told me, "it's almost time for you go back to the Dormitory, kiddo. Don't want
to be late, now do we?"
That last came out a little sarcastic, I guess. Mom doesn't get along with most of the Amazon
authorities here on Thymiscira. Nobody has forgotten her past, that's for sure. But she's been a
good girl for a long time, now. She says that was the only way she could convince Diana and the
rest of the Amazons to let her have me.
I'm one of the Children of the Spring.
BeeTee Kyle, that's me! And before some wiseacre says, "What kinda name is *that*?" or maybe,
"What does the B. T. stand for, anyway?", the answer is: I don't know. Mom won't tell me.
"When it's time," she says whenever I ask. "When it's time, BeeTee. Not now."
My father is gone. "Well, duh!" you snort. "Everybody's father is gone. All the men are dead.
What's the big deal? I mean, that's what the Children of the Spring are all about, right?"
Sure, sure, sure. I mean he was a carrier of "the Fall" so he had to leave, but he was also the
primary source of DNA to continue the human race. Even if he was an alien. He might not have
been precisely human but he *was* Superman, okay?
When that cloud of radiation covered the Earth no one was all that worried. "Harmless," scientists
assured everyone. Right. Perfectly harmless.
Unless you were a human male. Then you were dead.
So before he left to poke around the galaxy for a cure for "the Fall", Superman left behind some
insurance that guaranteed the survival of humanity. All the Children of the Spring have different
mothers but he's our father. It was the only way, they said. So ... BOOM! There we were.
Only ...
Only, I think there's something wrong with me.
I'm not much like the others.
I mean, okay, all we Children are half breeds. Half human-half Kryptonian. And I guess I look
more like Superman than a lot of the others do. Geez, Alexander Maxima doesn't look anything like
Superman. He looks exactly like his mother. Acts like her, too, from what I've heard. But let's face
it, tall dark haired men with blue eyes weren't exactly scarce, now, were they? Before, I mean.
The Children of the Spring may have the same father but we all have different mothers, just the
same. "Different people mature at different rates, young BeeTee," General Philipus assured me. "In
time you'll be just as powerful as your play fellows, never fear. Patience, little one." I thought I was
just a late bloomer or something. Hey, it made sense.
I mean look what happened with Adam Kent. What a mess *that* was. Gods of Olympus, they
didn't expect him to develop his powers that soon. No way! Talk about a nightmare ... there you
go. A toddler sized Superman. It took the whole of what was left of the JLA to calm him down.
Paula was very careful to explain it to everyone. I've read all the debate. Adam was *supposed* to
develop his powers just like Kal-El did. When he was in in late teens or so. After a lot of years of
energizing exposure to yellow sunlight and plenty of time to cope with his emerging abilities. He was
NOT supposed to develop them almost overnight, unannounced, at the age of *five* and then kill
someone with them. I've even seen the video footage although I'm not supposed to.
I'm good at that kind of thing.
"I hugged mommy," Adam kept sobbing. "I hugged mommy and she stopped movin' ... "
What could be more natural than a five year old hugging his mother, huh? Mom, apple pie, and the
American Way all in a nutshell, right there.
Unless that five year old is strong enough to crush coal into diamonds with his bare hands. *Then*
he's going to snap mommy's spine like a burnt out matchstick. Which is exactly what happened to
poor Lois Kent. I never meet Lois Lane Kent. She died about five years before I was born. But I
grew up with Adam.
I guess my friendship with Adam started out because we were both sort of outcasts. After what
happened with his Mom, Lois, Adam wasn't exactly the most popular of The Children. Even the
Amazons were leary of him, I guess. And none of the others were precisely fighting to take him
home to meet their Mom's, either, you can bet on that. So he was alone a lot. When the rest of us
had "family time" Adam didn't have a family to spend time with. So he stayed in the Dormitory. He
was lonely, I think.
Somehow ... I understood that.
Me? I didn't have too many friends, either, to be honest. It was, "Aw geez, BeeTee! I didn't mean
to hurt you! Are you sure you're all right?" Or, even worse, "Damnit, BeeTee! You mean you
*still* haven't developed your powers? What the heck's wrong with you, anyway? Rao!" And off
they'd fly to play with someone who wasn't quite so breakable. And it didn't matter how many times
I insisted that everything was all right. That I didn't mind playing rough. They never listened. I could
never decide which was worse, the pity or the anger. The pity, I guess. The anger I could deal
with. I broke my hand at least three times hitting Alexander Maxima before I wised up.
About the second time I showed up for "family time" sporting bandages Mom took matters into her
own feline paws. No, she didn't complain to General Philipus or Diana. Screw that. She didn't
coddle or embarrass me. No way. She *taught* me. Before I knew it, thanks to her, I was one
hell of a fighter. Still not a superpower to my name, but I could hold my own with the majority of the
other Children. Mostly because they were still learning how to use what they had and I discovered
quickly *exactly* how to use that against them.
"You've got good genes, BeeTee," she assured to me and smiled that mysterious cat-smile of hers,
as if she knew a secret no one else was privy to, yet.
Well, Duh! I guess Kryptonian genes are about the best you can find in the Universe. Mom is weird
sometimes.
Alexander Maxima turned out to be a total putz. All I had to do was make him mad (trust me,
*not* that difficult to do) and there he'd be: on the ground before he could blink twice. Angry
people don't fight very well. It got kinda boring after a while. I mean, he was pitiful as a fighter. All
bluster and show ... no go. I couldn't much hurt his body ... but I could damn sure injure him in the
only place he was vulnerable: his pride.
AM *hated* it when the others laughed at him for losing another fight to "the weakling". They
stopped calling me that after a while, though. They grew to respect me, I think, but they never liked
me very much. I'll settle for that.
So Adam and I were sort of drawn together right from the beginning. When I was a real little kid,
maybe five or six, he used to kinda protect me from the Children who came into their powers early
the same way he did. Made them play nice. Kinda like training a kitten or a puppy to soft paw, I
guess. Whatever. All I know is it worked.
'Course, when I was that young no one really thought very much about the fact that I didn't have my
powers just yet. It wasn't until I hit my mid-teens that I decided it was just going to be my rotten
luck that I'd have to wait the full damned eighteen years or something before Earth's yellow sun
worked her magic on me.
In the meantime, there was Adam. We'd whisper together late at night in the Dormitory after "lights
out" and it just seemed sort of natural that we ate together, too, since no one else was really crying
for the privilege, you know what I mean? Relationships among The Children were strange. I mean,
technically, we were all half brothers and sisters, right? And nobody much talked about the fact that
someday it was likely that the boys among us and the girls were going to have children together.
Hey! That was the whole purpose, after all. So, you can imagine that we weren't precisely raised as
siblings.
The night it happened, I woke up in the middle of the sleepcycle, instantly alert. Some sound?
Some ... feeling? A...lack. A void ... I didn't need my not-yet-developed supersenses to tell me that
something was way wrong. My ears are pretty sharp even without super-hearing. And they were
screaming at me that I was alone. I sat up and slid off the bed noiselessly. Mom would've been
proud. It seemed as though I could feel it through the pores of my skin. Sense it with something
primal lurking coiled inside me.
They were gone.
All of them.
Adam, Alex, Darius, Hidalgo ...
I was the only one left in the Dormitory.
I made my own through search and found not a single sign of any of them. Except for me ...all the
rest of the Children were gone. At least, the boys were gone. When I peeked into the Girls Dorm, I
was kind of surprised to see them all still there, Kara and the others. I crept away without waking
anyone, trying to think.
Every instinct I had was yelling at me that something bad, something really, really *bad* was going
on here. So what did I do? Why, I did the first thing that came to my mind, of course.
I ran home to Mom.
It was pretty late, so I thought it was kind of odd to find her still awake and watching some old JLA
case films. Okay. Maybe the awake part wasn't that odd, I'll admit Mom takes after her name
sake about that. She catnaps during the day. Prowls the night. Figures, right?
But the JLA case files? That was definitely weird. Aunt Babs has asked her several times if she
wants to join the League. She always sneers and says no. So why - ?
Watching her curled up comfortably on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, enrapted in the
images on the screen, I decided I didn't have time to really think about it.
I didn't even have to tap on the window. Almost from the moment my feet hit the ledge, she knew
that I was there. In silence, she rose, glided to the window, and opened it.
"Kitten, I'm glad to see you, but what in the Hell are you doing here?" she hissed, pulling me inside.
It took me a few minutes to explain. She didn't interrupt me once. Just listened, absorbed what I
had to say, then made a bee line for the comm unit sitting in the corner.
"I haven't used this channel since ... before you were born," said my mother.
I made no reply.
I watched her carefully. Zues' Beard. Whoever she meant to talk to, she sure wanted it to be
*private*. She bounced the signal around the planet about six times by way of various transmitters.
Some of which I didn't even recognize. I mean, who knew there was a station in the middle of the
Lanhgostani desert, for God's sake? Rao, she even bounced the blasted signal off the old JLA
Watch Tower on the Moon before she was satisfied with the security. Just *try* tracing that!
The whole thing took nearly five minutes. But, in the end, her private comm screen lit up like a
Christmas tree and I found myself staring at one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. And,
raised among the Amazons as I was, that's saying quite a lot. Not, I guess, that I've seen a great
many women. They keep us Children pretty isolated.
Jet dark eyes stared back from the screen. Long waist length hair the color of deepest midnight
framed a heart-shaped face that made me catch my fifteen year old breath. Mom smiled, then turned
her attention back to the screen just in time for the figure on the screen to speak.
"Many years have passed, Selina Kyle, since last we spoke." That low, throaty contralto voice
insinuated itself into my nerve endings and began hammering. I swallowed hard.
'Get a grip here, BeeTee,' I chastised myself. I began taking regular, even, calming breaths and that
helped some.
When Mom ignored her, the lovely woman creased her dusky brow with an unpleasant frown.
"What need have you," she demanded, "of The Daughter of the Demon and the League of Assassins,
Catwoman?"
My eyes widened until they nearly popped right out of my skull. Holy spit. Talia Al Ghul. I was
gawking at Talia Al Ghul. What in the name of Hera did my Mom have to talk about with the most
wanted woman on the planet, I wondered? I decided to keep my mouth shut and maybe find out.
"Cut the bull, Talia!" Mom advised with her patented hiss. "You know damned well why I'm calling.
Now, where are they? What have you done with the Children?"
The Demon's Daughter looked bored. "Why should I do anything with them, Daughter of Bast? I
have no need of them. I have all that I desire."
Mom's eyes narrowed and she studied her opponent for long seconds before she spoke. Her voice
dripped scorn. "I'm not stupid, Talia. Don't treat me as if I were. You *know* better than that.
Are you trying to tell me that The League of Assassins has no use for almost a hundred young
Kryptonian half-breeds? With all their powers?"
Talia laughed, a sound like tinkling bells. "And would I be fool enough to believe that they would
ever follow me? No, Selina Kyle. I've enough Assassins, in any case."
The former Catwoman lifted one elegant eyebrow skyward in disbelief. "Is that a fact?" she purred.
Her feline green eyes probed the background where Talia Al Ghul stood. I followed her gaze, but
she saw the shadow first and she must have recognized it, because she smiled.
"Well, you always did hire the best, Talia. No amateurs for you." Lifting one supple, talented hand
she waved merrily at the screen. "Hi, Vic," she called. "You may as well come on out and join the
party, babe."
Chuckling, a tall, well muscled blond woman stepped from the shadows, smirking. "How are you,
Selina?" she inquired loftily. "Long time no see."
"Not long enough, Vic," came the grim return. "So how did you end up working for The League?"
Lady Vic stretched. "Oh, you know," she temporized. "A little mayhem, a little action. A girls got
to eat, after all. And killing's what I do. It just seemed like a natural, you know?"
Mom snorted. "Yeah. And I hear that the price of crow and the warm piss to wash it down with has
gone *way* up, recently."
Lady Vic snarled under her breath, but quelled with a cold look form Talia, stepping back into the
shadows to disappear once more. The Daughter of The Demon waited for Mom to speak again.
Mom didn't oblige her. Looks like I was the only one getting nervous here. When Talia Al Ghul's
onyx black eyes fell on me, I shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. I couldn't help it.
She studied my face for long endless moments. The hard edge in her eyes seemed to soften then.
Not sure why. Then she turned to Mom.
"Is that *him*?"
Mom only nodded. But I could tell she didn't like the way Talia was watching me.
When Talia turned her piercing gaze back on me once more, I forced myself to stand fast, to face
her squarely. But it wasn't easy. Again that curious softening. Finally, she spoke to me and I only
just managed not to gulp.
"What is your name, child?" she inquired softly.
"BeeTee," I answered quickly, trying to sound much more together than I felt.
The peal of rich laughter that escaped her full lips was low and melodious. It went straight to my
belly and set all the butterflies there loose. Mom's eyes flashed green fire and I knew that trouble
was on the way.
"Ah , Selina," Talia marveled. "Hiding in plain sight! How very, very like you."
She regarded me again, even more closely this time. Her smile was quite genuine. "There's
someone you should meet, young BeeTee," she said. With a small gesture she summoned someone
into camera range.
He was taller than she, over six feet, I guessed, about my age maybe two, three years older. Long
dark hair, but his eyes were dark as night and that threw me for a second. I paled. Jesus Christ.
He *had* to be one of the Children. Had to be. But where had Talia Al Ghul gotten hold of The
Seed? I decided almost immediately that I didn't really want to know. This was crazy. Insane. My
head spun with sickening dizziness.
"This is my son," The Demon's Daughter said, "Ib'n Al Xu'ffasch, your - "
"SHUT UP, Talia!"
Now that really shook me. I'd never heard my Mom yell like that. Never. She was so angry she
was white faced. One of the first things Mom ever taught me about fighting was how to recognize
and use an opponents rage. Red faced and sweating means they're so pissed they're about to do
something really, really stupid. Take advantage of it. But white faced ... white faced and pasty pale
means that you'd damn well better pay attention. Because, then, they *will* hurt you if they can. If
Talia'd been in the same room with my Mom, she'd have been a corpse.
Talia sighed. "Very well, Selina Kyle. Play your games. It matters not to me." Her eyes
narrowed. "But beware of whom you play them with, Catwoman. Beware."
Mom sneered. "Or what, Talia? Are you going to kill me the way you did poor Pammy?"
Talia's lips skinned back from her teeth in a feral twitch of dusky flesh. "Poison Ivy was not worthy
of my gift!" she cried. "She perverted it, fouled it with her - "
"You never gave her your 'gift', Talia," Mom observed calmly. "You refused her. And when she
sought what she wanted in the only other way left to her ... you killed her."
The Daughter of The Demon's eyes blazed hot fire. "Yes! I killed her. She and those abominations
of hers ... those ... those *things* she created! She was not worthy of him."
Have you ever felt lost and almost totally confused? Like you came in right in the middle of a
conversation and hadn't the least idea what was being said? Welcome to the club. This was all
news to me. Okay, I knew Pamela Isley, Poison Ivy, was dead. That's in the JLA records. But ...
according to those same JLA records Isley died in a laboratory accident. Some sort of inadvertent
release of toxic fumes or something. No one was really all that certain. I mean, it was at least a
month after she died that they found her, surrounded by piles of rotting plant fibers. It was pretty
messy. No one asked a lot of questions as far as I know.
See, after "the Fall", Poison Ivy moved lock, stock, and plant flora onto an island just off the coast of
Costa Rica, the Isle d'Nublar, the Island of the Clouds. Nobody objected. Geez, with more than
half's the worlds population dead, the survivors had a lot more to worry about than Pamela Isley.
And it wasn't like there wasn't room to spread out, you know? Since she had what she wanted,
now, a home for she and her precious plants, Poison Ivy soon settled down to become a good little
girl; just like Mom. She was even doing research for the JLA into "the Fall".
At least that's what the records *say*.
"If you have no further need of me .. " Talia said and, suddenly, the screen was blank. She was gone
as quickly, as unexpectedly, as she arrived. I had the feeling that was pretty natural for her. Mom
smiled, though, and that worried me for a minute or two. Why?
Time for not-so-little-Kittens to keep their ears open and their mouths shut. Be surprised how much
you can learn that way. And I've gotten real damned good at it over the past few years. I was
always a quick study. I'm almost certain that Mom hasn't realized just *how* good at it I am, now.
And that suits yours truly very well.
"Got her!" the Catwoman hissed in triumph. "Ohhhh, Talia, you're as predictable as your old man in
so many ways. Now that I've put the bug in your ear, you're going to have to *know* what
happened to the Children, aren't you? Uh huh. You'll have to know who's got them. And what
they plan to do with them. For your own protection. I know you. And when you find out .... you'll
call me. You always did like for someone else to do your dirty work, didn't you?"
I'd like to say that things happened quickly after that. But, the truth is, they didn't. It was nearly a
month and a half before that screen lit up again, signaling an incoming call. With the male half of the
Dormitory empty, I just moved in with Mom. Nobody said a thing. Diana and Philipus, the JLA,
and even the returned Kal-El, Superman, were just too busy to care, I guess. Didn't make a big
deal about it; just did it. Fact is, Mom never told them I was there, I'm pretty sure. She just let them
assume that I'd disappeared with all the other boys.
Mom and I practiced a lot; Mom smoked like a chimney. She does that when she's nervous. But
she didn't drink at all. Not even a drop and that kind of surprised me. We were pretty much
ignored by one and all. Otherwise we just waited. I discovered I was very good at that. Waiting, I
mean. Patience is an art form and like any art form it has to be learned. I got a lot of practice that
month.
But, then, one fine Spring day, just after breakfast, the comm signaled "Incoming Communication",
Mom and I left those delicious, hot pecan waffles to get cold and soggy and went running. Literally.
Talia, all right. She stared out at us with impatience from the large screen with those black, black
eyes and spoke four words.
"Luthor. Fortress of Solitude."
That was all. Then she melted away into the cyber-ether like a ghost. Mom smiled.
Then the "Data File Transfer" transponder began to flash bright green and some *very* interesting
data files downloaded themselves into Mom's computer.
Mom burned a quick CD of the info, printed it out and erased the file.
The biggest shock, I guess, was that Lex Luthor was still alive. No one should have been very
surprised, really. And, naturally, if he were alive, he was plotting and scheming his black heart out.
Geez. Imagine that. Maybe *the* only fully human male left alive on the whole planet and what was
he planning to do? Why take over the place, of course. Using the Children as his foils.
Nice guy.
Mom and I studied the blue prints (DO NOT ask where she got them!) of Superman's Fortress of
Solitude in the Antarctic very carefully. Not exactly the easiest place in the world to break into, trust
me. But that was the plan. It didn't take us very long to realize that the key to the whole she-bang
lay with Luthor's captive, lobotomized telepaths. They were the ones maintaining the stealth shields
around the Fortress. And aside from Luthor himself (and maybe some of the Children) *they* were
going to be one of the most formidable obstacles to overcome.
Hey, it can't be real pleasant to have your psyche ripped out by the roots, okay? And at least one of
those telepaths, a really noxious piece of work by the name of Mind Boggler, had a very bad habit
of doing just that very thing. And enjoying it.
Nasty.
Oh, yeah. You can bet we planned our assault on Castle Lex damned well and very meticulously.
Better believe it. But not as well as we'd have liked, I'll admit. We just didn't have the time. Rao's
light. Luthor'd already had the Children for more than a month and a half by now. The Light only
knows what he'd done to them in that time. We had to hurry. Or at least we felt as if we did.
About the only thing we had going for us was stealth.
We had to count on that.
Still, when Mom contacted Faora Hu-Ul, I have to admit I was shocked. Oh, sure. She's free of
the Zone. And after the League exposed her to gold Kryptonite as a precaution, she's no more
powerful than the average woman, now. Aunt Kara keeps an eye on her and makes her tow the line
pretty hard, usually. Frankly, I've never been exactly certain why they let her out of the Zone in the
first place. Damned stupid thing to do, if you ask me. No one did, of course. Beats me what they
were thinking of, though ... unless she was supposed to be some kinda trophy/reward for Kal-El if
he ever made it home again.
Yeah. I know. Not a very nice thought, huh? Maybe not, but they *are* two of the very last
pure-bred Kryptonians in the entire Universe. You use what you've got.
Couldn't tell you why she was willing to help with this, either. She's got no love for the Earth or the
JLA, trust me on that. I try not to think about what Mom might have offered her in exchange. I
didn't listen. But I do know that Mom got what she wanted: *lots* of information about the
Phantom Zone.
And the location of a working Phantom Zone projector.
After that, it was all gravy.
The biggest problem, I soon discovered, with having an intricate, well thought out, precisely timed
Plan Of Attack is that your enemy is rarely foolish enough to fall for it, step by step. I was still pretty
amazed that things were going so very well. Hey, I was *not* happy about the idea of entering the
Fortress via the Phantom Zone, okay? The fact is, I was nervous as Hell. Got to admit it worked
like a charm, though. Mom set the timer, we stepped in front of the silly looking thing and the next
instant -- BLAMMO!
We were ghosts, floating around ... well, in a big empty void, I guess is the best way to describe it.
Big, empty, cold ...
And lonely.
Geez, I didn't think I was ever going to feel warm again. I don't think I've ever been happier to be
*away* from some place in my entire life. When the tart stinging scent of ozone engulfed me,
burning my nose and mouth, I almost cried I was so glad to be able to smell something; feel
something. Involuntarily I blinked down at my chrono.
We spent a total of *two* seconds, all told, in that Hellish place.
I'll say one thing. It damned sure made me determined to succeed. There was no way under any
sun in the whole blasted Universe, that I was *ever* going back there. I decided I'd take my
chances walking home instead.
We hit Luthor sharp and hard, like a boxer with a strong left jab. One-two. One-two. First we cut
his communications and then we narcotized his captive tepes. Figures Luthor'd have a way to do
that, doesn't it? Just in case. I love a cautious paranoid, don't you? Uh huh. Like a boy scout,
Luthor's always prepared. So, naturally, we used it against him.
The robots were a problem, at first. We had no specs to work with. No real idea of what all they
were capable of. And, honestly, Kryptonian tech scares the crap outta me. So we improvised.
Well, okay, prayed is actually a lot closer to the truth. Prayed and hoped that neutrinos were as
destructive of Kryptonian positronic brains as they were of earthly ones.
We guessed right.
I never said anything to Mom, but one of *my* major worries was my fellow Children of the
Spring. What if Luthor got really, really smart (as if he weren't smart enough already) and sent them
against us? We were cranberry puree, in that case. No question about it. One on one, Mom and I
could maybe hold our own even against the really powerful ones like Adam. Once. But in groups?
Again and again? No way.
I didn't let myself think about fighting Adam.
Turns out, Luthor really had filled the guys head's with all kinds of crap about what it was
supposedly like to be a man ... before "the Fall" ... and how the Amazons were afraid of men, so
they raised us all to be wimps and feebs. I dunno. Maybe. It's for damned sure that Philipus was
frightened of us. And she definitely thought that Diana'd spent waaaay too much time in Man's
World. All I really knew was that, whatever Luthor actually thought about it, he was only planning
to use the Children to take down the existing authority. Then he was going to kill them.
We found the kryptonite, okay?
The only other thing that was plain was that all Luthor's philosophy *hadn't* taught Darius not to
telegraph his every move nor David not to lead with his not-so-invulnerable chin. They went down
pretty easily, all told. I stood guard while Mom cut Luthor's communications and, then, when the
tepes were in Snoozeland, we watched the low earth orbit satellite display. The look on Aunt Babs'
face when the stealth shield went inoperative was priceless. I grinned like a cream fed tom cat. She
didn't waste any time, I'll give her that. The JLA were there within five minutes, kicking major butt.
But, true to form, Luthor still had a few tricks up his slimy sleeves.
If it hadn't been for the timely arrival of Superman ...
And even then it was a close thing. Much too close.
When I saw Alexander Maxima sucker-punch poor Kara, I nearly lost it. Rao! Kara was always
nice to me. She never made fun of "the weakling" nor patronized me the way so many others did.
Kara takes after her Mom like that. She's smart and almost too brave. It hurt to see her abused like
that. AM sort of threw her on the growing pile of bodies, making some crude and nasty comment
about needing scullery maids when this was all over.
I tapped him politely on the shoulder.
When he spun around, I wasn't there.
Not that he could *see* anyway.
With a scissors sweep, I cut his legs out from underneath him and watched him fall hard to the
ground. From the belt pouch around my waist, I surreptitiously withdrew a small gas capsule and
broke it under his nose.
"Nighty-night, creepazoid ... " I rasped and watched his eyes roll back into his head. "Hope the
bed-bugs bite."
Hey. I was really getting into this witty repartee thing.
I looked up to find Adam staring at me. Oh crap. But that was all he did; stare at me. I looked
around and spied Mom fighting back to back with Diana. No help there. Too busy. Catwoman
had her own probs. If I called out for her help I'd only distract her; might get her hurt or even killed
I stared back at Adam for whet semed like forever..
I guess we may never know what might have happened because Luthor chose that moment to pull
his trump card: the kryptonite. I guess he thought it was the only way to deal with Superman. At
just about the same time Kal-El's containment suit was breached and Luthor screamed in rage when
he saw that. Me? I figured we were all dead. The cacophony of painful howls and confusion grew
louder and louder in my ears as, one by one, then in little groups, the Children began to collapse in
agony from exposure to the deadly shards of their heritage. I watched with huge eyes as Adam fell
to the ground writhing and suffering. I was so stunned that it took me almost a full minute, in fact, to
realize that I didn't feel a damned thing. Not even a twitch.
Superman was down. Strangely, he didn't appear to be in quite as bad a shape as I would have
thought, given that he's fully Kryptonian. He was pale and sweating and obviously in a lot of pain,
but not totally out of it. Weird. But I didn't have time to wonder too hard about it. Moving silently,
I slipped behind Luthor and rabbit punched him in the back of the head. I'll bet he felt that even
through the suit.
"Hey, Cue Ball!" I snarled, "you forgot about *me*. Bad move."
He went down like a sack of grain, flat on his face, and didn't move. Superman struggled to his feet,
smiled like a supernova, and patted me on the back.
"Good job, son," he congratulated me.
I looked away.
"Yeah, thanks ... *Dad*." I replied.
He regarded me rather oddly at the ironic pronunciation I gave that word "Dad". But he didn't say
anything else as he moved off. I was glad of that, let me tell you.
There were a few other hairy moments, but, in the end, Good Triumphed Over Evil ... yadda, yadda,
yadda. And all was right with the world, right?
Well, not quite.
Standing very still, I watched Adam face his father for the very first time. I'm really good at reading
body language. Especially with people I know. Adam was very frightened, I could see that; my
eyes told me that. What could he say? What could he do? My heart was a dull ache for him in my
chest until Superman reached out and touched his sharp chin with tender hands.
"You've got your Mother's eyes," Kal-El said and, suddenly, Adam was smiling. I bite my lip and
turned away from the intimate scene. This was for family, I knew; and that didn't mean *me*.
Not anymore.
My jaw set, I turned to my mother.
"Selina ... we need to talk ... " I'd never called her anything but "Mom" before and the name damned
sure got her attention. Slowly she turned to face me.
I like to think my voice was firm and authoritative, but I'm not taking any bets on it. To my utter
humiliation it sounded high and squeaky in my own ears and, just that suddenly, I was ten years old
again, asking stupid juvenile questions about cuckoo's eggs.. Damn, damn, damn.
She turned her green cat's eyes on me and sighed. "Yes, we do, BeeTee," she admitted. "You're
right. It's time. And you've earned it."
That last was nice to know. Catwoman's not much for giving praise. I forced myself to brush it
aside, though. I had more important fish to fry, you betcha. Oh, yeah.
"Who am I, Selina?"
Involuntarily, I turned to see the many Children cluster around Kal-El, reaching out to touch him, to
feel the reality of their father. "I'm not one of the Children of the Spring, am I? That's why the
kryptonite didn't affect me. I'm not Kryptonian. And that's why I've never developed any powers,
isn't it? I'm not just a late bloomer ... I don't *have* any powers."
She reached out and brushed a stray strand of ebony hair off my moist forehead. "No, you don't,"
she whispered. "Not one single superpower. You're perfectly human." I closed my eyes and
waited.
It seemed like a small eternity before she spoke again, but I'm sure it was only a few moments in
actuality.
"I told you once that when the time was right, I'd tell you your name. That I'd tell you what the B.T.
stood for. It's time."
I swallowed hard, then met her eyes.
"What's my name, Selina?" I asked, not at all sure I wanted to know this. No, not at all sure.
She reached up and kissed me chastely on the cheek. It seemed to surprise her that she had to do
that. Reach up to kiss me, I mean. I'm pretty tall for my age. Just over six feet. The memory of it
seemed to haunt her eyes as if her body remembered reaching up to kiss someone many times. Her
embrace was clinging, as though she never wanted to let me go.
"Your name," my mother, Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, whispered in my ear, "is Bruce. Bruce
Thomas. B. T. If we were still using patronymics in this Brave New World of ours, your full name
would be Bruce Thomas Wayne, II."
Dazed, I could only hold onto her as tightly as I could. My God. The son of The Batman. I gulped.
That was a lot to live up to. Selina stroked my cheek.
"I couldn't let him die," she mourned. "I - I just couldn't."
I gathered her in my arms, hugging for all I was worth.
"He won't," I whispered back. "I *promise* you. As long as I'm around he'll never die. I won't let
him. *We* won't let him."
Her eyes sparkled like emeralds when she nodded.
The End