A/N: On the "Ask the Squishykins" tumblr, Twinings and I have been offering ourselves up for a few weeks of filling fic prompts for our readers, varying in length from a hundred to seven thousand plus words. The project has been dubbed the Free For All Fic For All—or FFAFFA for short. This is one of those stories—and this is the boilerplate author's note you'll see on all of 'em. The last round of FFAFFA was put on hold for a few months due to IRL circumstances, but after that lengthy forced hiatus, we're back! There are two more days in the Free for All: it ends on February 1st. So, if you want a custom fic written to any particular specifications, drop by and ask for it!
Prompt: Stephanie Brown vs. Mad Hatter
Trigger Warnings: Bullying, non-explicit victim blaming
Notes: The original plan for this was simple enough, but this thing just ballooned totally out of control and ate me, like some stories do, and changed direction a dozen times before it decided to end. This is a between-the-panels adventure from Steph's time as Spoiler. It could be set just about anytime during Robin before she took up the mantle herself, pre or post No Man's Land.
Stephanie picked at the mozzarella cheese on the very edge of her slice of pizza. She stretched it between her fingers and wondered idly if it was real cheese or processed cheez-food. It snapped back like real cheese but didn't taste much like it, and it was mall pizza, so it could really have gone either way. Tim might have been able to tell, if he'd bothered to show up.
After checking her watch, she let out a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and an irritable huff. Stephanie looked around the food court. There was no sign of Tim (of course) but she did see at least two other girls in the same boat, both dispassionately moving their mall Chinese around their plates with plastic sporks. How long had they been there? Ten minutes? An hour? Three? And here they were, still waiting for whoever had stood them up.
Pushing her chair back with a scrape of metal legs on tile, Stephanie got up, wiped her hands and dumped her pizza in the nearest trash can.
That wasn't going to be her. Sweeping her coat off the back of her chair, Steph slipped it on, forcefully shoved her hands in her pockets and resolved to go find some action. Somewhere. Anywhere. She tried not to stomp away from the food court but failed at so lofty a goal.
He was probably with Batman, if he wasn't going solo. She didn't even care that he stood her up—at least, not the way other girls would have—but she was infuriated that he was undoubtedly in the middle of a case and couldn't even bother to let her know so she could help. Wasn't this the sort of thing Batman did to him all the time? Wasn't this the sort of thing that drove him crazy? So now he was picking up his mentor's bad habits. Great. Just fantastic.
Out of nowhere, a hand closed around her arm, stopping her in her tracks.
Stephanie was so surprised that she spun on her heel and nearly punched a mall cop in the face. It was a miracle that she didn't take a swing at him before she saw his uniform. She took a second to compose herself and was about to speak when he shoved a burgundy backpack at her.
"This yours?" he asked. "It was under your table."
"It's…" Stephanie was going to say no, but when she actually looked at the backpack, she noticed something…odd and changed her mind. "Uh…yeah. It's mine."
"Be more careful, kid," the security guard said. "Don't leave stuff lyin' around. Someone might'a called in a bomb threat or somethin'."
"Sure." She smiled disarmingly and took the bag from him. "Thanks."
Stephanie slung the backpack over her shoulder like it belonged there and started back toward the exit she'd been heading to before she'd been accosted. She walked as casually as she possibly could, even as her mind started to race, but instead of going outside as she'd initially planned, Stephanie veered off course at the last minute and turned towards the ladies' restroom that was alongside the automatic glass doors.
She crossed the bathroom and locked herself in the second to last stall, which was perpetually out of order, sat down and fumbled with the backpack. Turning it over in her hands, she opened the flap closure and ran her fingers over the part of the bag hidden beneath it that had caught her attention in the first place. When she touched the stiffened fabric and a dark, flaky substance came off in her hands, her worst suspicions were confirmed.
Blood. Enough of it to be alarming. It could have been from a nosebleed, she supposed, or a cut finger or something, and the bag's owner had just forgotten it, but she had the gut feeling that wasn't the case. Opening the backpack fully, Stephanie peered inside. Paper, pens, a student planner, an address book, an essay about the Civil War and another about The Scarlet Letter…
A wallet.
Stephanie retrieved it and flipped it open. The ID inside read Alice Callahan, William Nodell High and a blonde girl in glasses smiled shyly up at her from the photo. She set the wallet aside on the toilet paper dispenser and fished out the student planner. Each page was meticulously filled out with assignments, some of them months in advance. Furthermore all previous assignments had a check mark and grade written next to them. The address book was empty, save for the first page where Alice had filled in her own information in case the book got lost, which was unusual. The Civil War essay, she noted, was due a week from today. The other, yesterday.
From the evidence, Stephanie could gather a few important details that someone else might not have noticed, and none of them added up to anything good. Alice Callahan was a girl who kept track of her every assignment with efficiency and finished her homework a week in advance. Yet, one of her essays hadn't been turned in, something that never happened if the student planner was to be believed. Something about this was fishy.
Stephanie looked at the ID card again, brow furrowed. Alice still smiled, but upon closer inspection, her lips seemed…strangely tight.
"Braces," she whispered when she realized that the facial expression she'd originally interpreted as shyness may have been discomfort. Glasses, braces, good grades…and an empty address book that suggested either the girl was newly transferred to Gotham and didn't know anybody yet, or she just didn't have any friends. Alice was a nerd, and an efficient one at that. There was no way a girl like that would leave her backpack behind willingly. Add the mysterious dried blood to the mix and this was starting to look like foul play. What sort of foul play exactly, she didn't know, but she was going to find out.
Before she even knew what she was doing, Stephanie tossed all of Alice's belongings back into the backpack, with the exception of the address book. She threw the bag over her shoulder again and popped open the door to the bathroom stall.
According to the address book, Alice's home was about four miles away. She could make that on foot inside of an hour if she really hoofed it.
Alice Callahan lived on the third floor of a tenement on Dixon Street. It was a little rundown, but not so much in comparison to some of the places that Stephanie had seen during her time prowling Gotham's streets. She stomped up the front steps and hit at least a dozen doorbells before someone buzzed her in.
Inside the building, Stephanie made short work of the three flights of stairs standing between her and her destination, and came to a stop in front of the apartment that Alice lived in. She straightened her shirt and smoothed her hair a little before knocking. After a minute or so, the door creaked open and a woman, blotchy faced and puffy, asked through a few sniffles, "Yes?"
"Hi," Stephanie said cheerfully. "Is Alice at home?"
The woman went ashen. Her mouth twisted into a snarl. "Is this some kind of sick joke?"
"No," Stephanie said, perplexed. "I just—"
"You think it's funny? You and all your little friends, coming around to ask after her all the time?" The woman took a step back into the apartment, picked up a wadded up ball of paper and threw it in Stephanie's face. "She isn't at home! You know that! It's your fault she's gone! Get out of here!"
The door slammed.
That was brief, Stephanie thought, hitching the bag up higher on her shoulders. She bent down and scooped up the piece of paper, uncrumpling it and smoothing it down as she started for the stairs.
Reward! For any information pertaining to the disappearance of Alice Callahan, age 17. Last seen leaving Robinson Park, North Entrance, October 14—
The flier continued on like that, with information like what Alice had been wearing when she disappeared and things of that nature. She'd been missing for nearly three weeks and the flier branded her as a probable runaway. It wasn't impossible that she'd run away from home, but given what little Stephanie had been able to surmise from the girl's belongings, that didn't seem likely.
Stephanie left the tenement, deep in thought, and started wandering toward home. After a block or two, she found a payphone and decided to stop and make a call. She fed it a couple of quarters, punched in Tim's number and waited.
The phone rang a few times before he picked it up.
"Hello?"
"Tim?"
"Oh." He sounded like he thought he was in trouble but couldn't be bothered to care about it very much at the moment. "Steph. Hi. I'm sorry I stood you up…"
"I don't care about that," she breathed hastily, "This is about something else—"
"Look, I…now's not really a good time. I'm in the middle of something."
"But this is important. It's a life or death situation."
"So is this, Steph."
Stephanie blew out a breath and clutched the phone a little tighter. "You're with him, right? Or you're on your way out the door to do something for him?"
There was only silence on the other end of the line.
"It's fine."
"Steph, wait—"
"I said it's fine." Without realizing it, Stephanie shook her head. "You know what? Ditch me. Keep me out of the loop. Whatever. I don't even care."
"Steph…"
"I've got to go. I've got a case. Sorry I bothered you."
Click.
Stephanie walked away from the payphone, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge any hurt feelings she may have had. There were more important things to worry about. A girl was missing, her backpack left bloodied, and her mother blamed random high school kids for her daughter's disappearance. This case had just fallen into her lap; she had no choice but to take it, with or without Tim's help. She moved faster when she was alone, anyway.
Further investigation was in order; investigation of the shadowy vigilante sort.
William Nodell High barely had any security to speak of. The locks on the windows were easily picked and the single alarm—which was only attached to the front doors of the school—didn't even work, as far as Spoiler could tell. Sometime after nine, she slipped inside with relative ease and made her way to the principal's office without any hiccups.
The file cabinets that housed student records were a little tougher to crack, partly because their locks were so old they'd nearly rusted shut, but with some determination and a little elbow grease, she managed to pry them open. The files inside were a mess—not even in alphabetical order—but she found Alice's permanent record pretty quickly. Spoiler opened the plain manilla folder and skimmed its contents under the yellow glow of her pocket flashlight.
Well…her grades were stellar, if nothing else. Four-point-oh grade average, lots of extra credit work and notations from her teachers about what a studious young lady she was. The record noted that she'd shown interest in in the AV Club, the Chess Club and the school newspaper at different times during her academic career but wasn't actually involved in any of them, which certainly meshed with the shy nerd with no friends theory.
Beneath the pages reserved for her grades and extra-curricular activities were a number of papers signed by the school guidance counselor; summaries of several sporadic meetings with Alice over the past four years as well as numerous visits to the nurse's office for bumps and bruises from "falls" in Phys. Ed.
From what was in the file, it was clear that Alice was the victim of some pretty severe bullying that was being swept under the rug by just about everyone who came in contact with her. The guidance counselor's notes all but outright blamed Alice for her own abuse, stating that she was "standoffish" and "belligerent" with her fellow students, "inviting ridicule", "quick to complain", "claims to be bullied" and "a troublemaker", which was in complete conflict with all her teachers notes about her behavior in class and during extra credit assignments. The school nurse seemed to have suspicions about her injuries, but those files had been scribbled over by the principal, it seemed, noting that other students—presumably those who bullied her—had attested that Alice was just "clumsy." Probably as a means of covering up anything untoward that was going on.
The reaction Alice's mother had to seeing a high school girl on her doorstep was starting to make sense. Alice didn't have any friends—both her address book and her school file were evidence enough of that—so presumably the only people her age who had any contact with her that her mother would have known about were those who'd been picking on her. If Alice was believed to be a runaway, it was logical that her mother may have thought her bullies to be at fault for her sudden disappearance, and it wasn't impossible that she just naturally assumed that Stephanie was one of them.
There were no other clues to be found in the file. Nothing about places where Alice liked to go or anything useful like that, so Spoiler straightened the papers and smoothed them out. She stared at Alice's photo.
"I'm going to find you if it kills me," she muttered in the dark.
Her next immediate stop was Robinson Park, the last known location of Alice Callahan. It had been three weeks, so there probably wasn't much in the way of physical evidence to be found, but she had to try anyway. The park at night was an unfriendly place, but Spoiler figured she could hold her own if any of the street gangs who fought over this turf decided to get rowdy.
And if she couldn't…
Well, best not to think about that.
Starting from the north gate, she combed the area, keeping her eyes sharp for anything that the police may have missed on what were sure to be numerous sweeps. There was no shortage of used syringes and condom wrappers, but nothing that looked terribly useful to her mission. A homeless man on a park bench yielded little information, though he remembered the blonde girl with glasses who did her homework under one of the trees in the park and shared her lunch with him whenever she was there, but he didn't know anything about the day of her disappearance.
Spoiler pressed a twenty dollar bill and the address of the nearest homeless shelter into his hand before leaving him to continue her search.
It was around Robinson Park Bridge that she finally hit pay dirt, though not the kind she expected. A handful of punks with switchblades had cornered a woman beneath the bridge to snatch her purse. Spoiler threw herself into the fray without even thinking about it, beating one down so fast that even Batman might have been impressed. After knocking him out, she stood, ready to take out one of the others, but found that in the time she'd taken to drop one guy, the woman who'd been under attack had kicked the stuffing out of three.
Stephanie tried not to let it get to her, but it was hard not to feel a little bitter. At least, it was right up until the woman removed her hat and a cascade of red hair tumbled from beneath it. Green eyes flashed in the dark as lengths of creeping jennies wove themselves around the unconscious thugs at their feet.
Spoiler's eyes widened for a second but she recovered from her surprise pretty fast. She dropped into a fighting stance immediately, fists at the ready, and steeled herself to go up against Poison Ivy. It didn't matter if she didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell against a meta like her; Stephanie was going to fight her anyway.
The supervillainess didn't bother to change positions or even respond to the implied threat. She looked placidly at the dark place where Spoiler's face was hidden beneath her hood and said, "Don't be stupid."
Spoiler didn't relax, but she didn't attack, either. Instead, she waited for Ivy to tip her hand. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm not going to fight you." Ivy seemed bored with the whole affair. "Go home, little girl."
If the look on her face was any indication, Ivy was completely unprepared for the fist that came barreling toward her jaw. The blow connected in a most satisfying way, but it was the only one Spoiler managed to strike. Vines lashed around her limbs and stopped her from doing more than that, squeezing her firmly.
"I should snap your neck for that."
"If you do, Batman—"
"Won't care much, I imagine," Ivy said, cutting her off. She moved to cup Spoiler's concealed cheek in her hand. "You're spirited, I'll give you that, but don't insult me with empty threats."
She struggled against the vines confining her to no avail, but still managed to twist her head away from Ivy's touch.
"I realize you capes think you own this town," Ivy continued dully, withdrawing her hand, "but Robinson Park is my turf now. Do you understand?"
Under other circumstances, Spoiler would have told Ivy just where to stick her territorial attitude, but something inside her clicked. Galling as it was, there was a good chance Ivy was in the position to help her with her investigation. She swallowed her pride and asked, "How long have you been here?"
Ivy didn't respond beyond a narrowing of her eyes.
Well, she hadn't threatened or insulted her for asking, so Spoiler pressed ahead. "Do you know anything about the girl who disappeared here three weeks ago?"
Still no reaction. A vine crept over her arm and coiled around her wrist like a pet snake.
"Her name is Alice. Blonde. Glasses. Sits under the oak tree on the north side of the park to do her homework?"
Ivy stroked one of the vine's leaves as though she was scratching an animal behind the ear. "She doesn't pick the flowers."
"You know her?"
"I am aware of her." Ivy looked back up at Spoiler, eyes intent.
"I'm trying to find her."
"I gathered." The vine's leaves rustled in a sound that was a close approximation of a cat's purr. "I suppose you think I'll help you."
Spoiler didn't say anything but her silence spoke volumes.
"You're not in much of a position to ask me for a favor, are you?" Ivy leaned toward her captive slightly and huskily whispered, "And you aren't offering anything I want in return for my assistance."
Stephanie took the hint. "If you let me go, I won't tell Batman about this, or about you being here. That solves a pretty big problem for you, right?"
"If I twist your head off I won't have that problem either. Try again."
"Okay, I give, what do you want?"
Ivy silently considered, though it was clearly unnecessary. Spoiler figured she must have been biding her time for the sake of being dramatic. After a moment, she said slowly, "The girl…"
Suddenly suspicious, Spoiler's eyes narrowed. "What about her?"
"Last I saw her, she had a black eye." For a split second Ivy seemed very far away, then her eyes snapped back to the other woman's face. "Make sure it doesn't happen again."
Though she'd already been planning to do just that, this confused Stephanie. "Why do you care?"
"Why do you?" Ivy asked pointedly.
The question made her a little uncomfortable—Stephanie didn't want to have anything in common with Poison Ivy—but she didn't let on. "You've got a deal."
Ivy seemed satisfied with this. With a wave of her hand, the vines that were constricting around Spoiler's arms and legs let go, wriggling away across the ground toward their mistress. They drew themselves up around her, weaving a cloak made of living green in an elegant ballet of choreographed movement.
"Thanks," Spoiler said, rubbing one of her wrists. "Soo…uh…"
Ivy turned her back on Stephanie, the vines sweeping behind her. "She's with the Mad Hatter."
An hour later, Stephanie was busy throwing one of the Mad Hatter's former hired guns through the front window of Archie's bar down by the docks when Killer Moth was unfortunate enough to stumble into her path of interrogation related destruction. He tried to run, but she caught him, beat him up a bit and threw a pair of cuffs on him.
"But I didn't do anything!"
"Not today, maybe," she said, checking that the cuffs were as secure as she could make them.
"C'mon, kid, give a guy a break."
"Not going to happen."
"But I just got out of Blackgate," he pleaded.
"Nope."
Killer Moth hung his head and sighed in defeat.
With him taken care of, Spoiler went right back to wailing on the thug she'd been "talking" with a few minutes earlier. She hauled him off the ground, ignored where he was bleeding all over the arm of costume and shook him. "I know you know where he is. Tell me."
The henchman's tip led her to the East End, which should have been called a dead end instead. Nobody was willing to talk to her and she couldn't very well muscle anyone into doing it, not here. After all, she was a solo hero surrounded by an entire district of criminals and malcontents who would have loved for her to start something just to have the excuse to put her in the hospital, and while she was pretty good in a fight, more than three or four thugs at a time would throw more punches than they would take.
It was starting to look like the investigation couldn't continue until whenever Tim could make time to listen to her. When she realized this, she sulked for a few minutes on the roof of St. Christopher's Mission, sourly considering the prospect of trying to track him down tonight and get him to help her. She didn't want to do that—especially not after the way he'd shut her out yet again—but it looked like she didn't have much choice in the matter.
As it turned out, her moment of self pity became a stroke of good luck. Just as she was preparing to leave, in the alleyway below, the door to the Mission opened and a nun with a large bag of cat chow came out, making clicking noises with her tongue. Streaks of orange, black and gray flocked to the doorway, meowing hungrily and rubbing up against her ankles.
Spoiler brightened instantly. Maybe there was hope after all. Sure, the drug dealers and gun runners wouldn't talk to her without busting her head in, but the nuns might. Silently, she slunk down a drainpipe and crouched behind a dumpster in the alley, watching the nun as she fed the strays. She was thirty, maybe, and pretty, and Spoiler really, really hoped she was the observant type.
"Hey…"
The nun started, clutching her chest in shock when Spoiler sprang out of the shadows. She looked her up and down from the top of her hood to the tips of her boots and seemed relieved, but wary, of what she saw.
"I'm looking for—"
The nun cut her off, "Don't bother. I don't know where she is, I don't know what she's done, and I won't help you find her."
"But you don't even know who I'm looking for," Spoiler said, perplexed. Had someone else been here already, poking around for answers about Alice? Or maybe about someone else entirely?
"I think I have a pretty good idea."
"I'm not sure you do." Spoiler pulled Alice's ID card from a pouch on her belt and offered it to the other woman. "Look, I'm trying to find this girl. She went missing a few weeks ago."
The nun seemed surprised by this and took a look at the ID card.
"My sources say she's with the Mad Hatter," Stephanie continued, "and they led me here, but…"
The nun handed the ID card back. "I can't help you, but I may know someone who can."
"Really?"
The nun looked around the alleyway, as though she worried about being eavesdroppers, and said in a hushed whisper. "Come inside."
"I…uh…I don't really have time for confession, Sister…"
"There is a man here," the nun said hastily, "who has been trying to pick up the pieces of his life and make right his mistakes."
"O…kay…"
"And he just happens to have worked for the Mad Hatter. Perhaps he would be willing to help you."
Spoiler was elated by this development. "Great. Thank you, Sister…"
"Magdalene." The nun beckoned Spoiler inside the Mission. "Please, come in."
Before she knew what was happening, Spoiler was up against a wall with a hand at her throat that was crushing her windpipe. Her feet left the ground with the force of the attack and she hung there, ragged bricks pressing into her back. Maybe following the repentant ex-hench's tip to uptown was a bad idea…
"Why are you following me?"
"I'm not!"
"Sure you're not. "
Stephanie took a swing at Catwoman's head, but the thief back flipped out of range, dropping her in the process. She coughed a few times, trying to catch her breath, and cursed colorfully. When her throat recovered enough for her to speak louder than a broken rasp, she said, "You're crazy, Catwoman."
She seemed amused by this and smirked, but that didn't make her drop her guard. It took Spoiler a second to realize what she'd said that was funny. Calling Catwoman crazy wasn't too far off from calling her a crazy cat lady, which was humorous in a dark sort of way given that they were probably going to throw down.
"If you're not following me," Catwoman's whip uncoiled and she flicked it threateningly, "why have you been shadowing me since the East End? Why are you here?"
"I don't know, why are you here?" Spoiler jumped out of the way of the whip's cracker that snapped alarmingly close to her head. "Maybe you're following me."
"You're not really my type," Catwoman said, fending off a roundhouse kick as casually as she might have waved away a particularly annoying fly. "Though I appreciate your choice of color scheme."
"Ditto." Stephanie surprised Catwoman with a body slam that knocked her flat. The fact she succeeded surprised her just as much as it surprised the villain. Having the upper hand was not destined to last, though. Catwoman swung a leg up and managed to hook her around her neck with the limb. With a hiss and some mighty effort, she sent Spoiler sprawling.
The boot at her throat wasn't unexpected, but the amount of force that Catwoman came down with certainly was.
"I'm going to ask you again," Catwoman said, kneeling down without removing her foot from Stephanie's larynx. "Why are you here?"
"I'm—glk—looking for somebody," Spoiler ground out from between clenched teeth. "Somebody whose name is not Catwoman."
"He didn't send you?" There was no need at all to specify which 'he' Catwoman referred to.
"No."
"You're sure about that?" Catwoman pressed. "You wouldn't be the first of his little teenage groupies he sent to cut their teeth on me…"
"I am not…one of his…groupies…"
Catwoman studied Spoiler's mask and, though she couldn't see any part of her face, seemed convinced. "Not good enough for him, hmm?"
Spoiler pointedly stayed quiet.
Catwoman smiled knowingly. "Me either."
"I'm trying to find a girl," Spoiler said as smoothly as she could with a boot on her throat. "A kidnap victim. Or maybe a runaway. I'm not sure which yet."
Catwoman's eyes narrowed. "My heart's bleeding. Tell me why I should care."
"The Mad Hatter's got her."
Shockingly, the pressure disappeared from Stephanie's throat. Catwoman grabbed her hand and dragged her to her feet."Not for long, he hasn't."
If you'd told Stephanie Brown that her first solo kidnapping case would have led her into and out of Poison Ivy's clutches, she might have believed you. If you'd told her that she'd have a knockdown drag out fight with Catwoman and live to tell the tale, she might have even believed that.
But if you'd told her that she'd wind up making a deal with Poison Ivy and teaming up with Catwoman while on the hunt for the Mad Hatter, she would have said you'd suffered a complete break from reality.
And yet, here she was, following Catwoman across the rooftops of the industrial district, searching for the warehouse where the Hatter was reportedly holed up. She managed to keep up, just barely, but she felt clumsy next to the cat burglar. She seemed to move on tiptoe even at great speed, whereas Spoiler's footfalls were anything but light and delicate. Still, Catwoman didn't admonish or even tease her for not having the stealth of a living shadow—unlike some people who would remain nameless—so she didn't feel too bad about it.
Staying as close to her new partner as she could, Stephanie studied the other woman as much as their pace allowed. What puzzled her most about this impromptu team-up was Catwoman's change of heart that seemed to come out of the blue. Did she have a soft spot for wayward girls for some reason? Did she have a grudge against the Mad Hatter?
After leaping across another gulf between rooftops, Catwoman slowed down, motioning for Spoiler to do the same. She did so, trying very hard not to loudly huff and puff when she came to a stop next to the thief.
"This is the place," Catwoman whispered, eyes flicking to a skylight in the roof. "That's our best bet for getting in."
"How did you know where to find him?" Spoiler asked as she tried to catch her breath.
"I have my reasons for keeping tabs on him," Catwoman said cryptically. "Not knowing where potential enemies are can be a liability in our business."
"We're not in the same business," Stephanie said.
"Not strictly speaking," Catwoman coyly winked. "Stay close."
Catwoman's claws were good for more than just fighting, Spoiler discovered a few moments later. They were sharp enough to cut through glass without the slightest sound, and sliced evenly through the skylight. Catwoman slipped her hand through the hole she'd made, picked the lock expertly and carefully, silently opened it. Then, she wrapped her whip around one of the support beams beneath the skylight and dropped down onto it, crouching like a panther readying herself to spring.
Stephanie's descent was somewhat less graceful, but was quiet enough. She followed Catwoman's lead and hooked her grapple around the beam.
Catwoman brought a finger to her lips and then pointed downward. Directly beneath them were two large, thuggish men dressed as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, both wielding machine guns. Catwoman pointed at the one on the right, then at Spoiler, and the one on the left, then at herself. Stephanie nodded once as Catwoman began a countdown on her fingers—three…two…one…
Both women slid down their respective ropes and literally got the drop on Tweedles Dee and Dum. Being smaller and more agile, they had a distinct advantage over the henchmen, even though they were carrying firearms. They also fought well together—better than Stephanie could have hoped—and managed to take them out without a single shot being fired. This was advantageous; if they were lucky, no one had heard any indication of their tussle, which meant the element of surprise was still intact.
Slowly, silently, they crossed the warehouse. The interior had been separated by walls, turning what should have been a glorified storage unit into a luxurious multi-roomed hideout. It was Wonderland themed, naturally, and a little disorienting, given the checkerboard and spiral patterns all over the walls and floors and the maze-like paths that had been built into it, but they managed to take out every henchman they came across without rousing the whole place.
"We're going to get lost," Stephanie muttered darkly, stepping over an unconscious hench.
Catwoman shook her head and took Spoiler's left hand, placing it against the wall next to them. "Left hand rule. You can't get lost in a maze if you're always touching the left hand wall." Catwoman seemed to know that Stephanie was surprised by this revelation, and thus explained, "You pick up all sorts of things when you rob the Riddler."
In a few minutes, they reached the end of the maze. The room beyond it was mostly dark and decorated with all manner of whimsical brick-a-brac—a large Queen of Hearts playing card here, a diamond encrusted Cheshire Cat there—but most notably, in the center, under a spotlight, a large and ornately decorated dining table sat covered with teacups and merrily whistling kettles. The Mad Hatter sat at the head of the table, a woman dressed as the March Hare on one side, another dressed as the Dormouse on the other, and sharing his place at the head of the table was Alice Callahan, wearing a crisp white pinafore over a sunshine yellow dress.
Stephanie's heart skipped a beat. After a full day of searching, she'd finally found her, alive and unharmed. Better than that, she realized. The girl was…smiling. Happy. Undoubtedly brainwashed into oblivion.
Okay, so maybe that part wasn't so great…
Their entrance did not go unnoticed by the Hatter's henchwomen, though it seemed to go completely unnoticed by their boss. They were on their feet a moment after Spoiler and Catwoman came into the room and a moment after that, were fighting with every ounce of effort they had. Spoiler slammed into the Dormouse and both crashed into the table as Catwoman took on the March Hare with a great deal more aplomb.
The ensuing altercation was fast and furious but didn't last nearly as long as Spoiler originally anticipated. The Dormouse went down after a couple of blows to the head with a copper kettle and the March Hare was expertly gagged and hogtied by Catwoman seconds later.
"Good help hard to find these days, Jervis?" Catwoman asked conversationally.
Unlike Catwoman, Spoiler didn't bother with smalltalk. Instead, she grabbed the Hatter and started beating the ever-loving crap out of him. He seemed surprised more than anything else, which in turn surprised Stephanie, but not nearly as much as when Alice threw herself at her would-be savior and started beating on her with her fists. "Get away from him!"
"Hey!" Stephanie dropped the Hatter, leaving him knocked out and bleeding on the ground and tried to fend off the blows without hurting the girl, who clearly had no control over her own actions. She looked her over, trying to figure out where the mind control tech must have been concealed and zeroed in on the black headband in Alice's hair. Spoiler snatched it and threw it across the room, but it didn't stop the assault. From everything she knew, this was impossible; the Hatter's tech only worked as long as it was connected to its victim. Unless…he'd figured out a new way to brainwash people… "Catwoman? A little help?"
But Catwoman was nowhere to be found. Both she and the diamond encrusted Cheshire Cat were mysteriously absent. In the moment she discovered this, comprehension dawned on Spoiler: Catwoman knew where the Hatter was because she'd been planning to steal from him. She probably only took Spoiler along to make the heist that much easier. Once she got what she wanted, she melted into the night and left Stephanie to fend for herself.
Why that dirty, double crossing…
"Alice, I'm here to help you. I'm here to take you home," Stephanie pleaded, still deflecting Alice's fists. "You've got to fight him! Fight the mind control!"
"I'm not being controlled!" Alice shouted as she belabored the vigilante. "And I don't want to go home!"
"What?" Stephanie stumbled backward, nearly tripping over her own feet with the force of her shock combined with the force of Alice's blows. "But you've been kidnapped!"
"I ran away!" Stephanie grabbed Alice by the wrists, firmly, and managed to stop the onslaught at last.
"To live with the Mad Hatter?" Nothing made sense anymore. "Don't most kids try to join the circus first?!"
Tears were streaming down Alice's face as she struggled in Stephanie's grip, but the fight seemed to go out of her all at once. She crumpled. "You don't understand. You don't understand what it's like out there. I'm safe here. With him."
"He's a supervillain, he's the very definition of unsafe!" Stephanie insisted.
"He'd never hurt me!"
"Look, I'm not sure if you've got Stockholm Syndrome or what, but—" Spoiler looked at the girl, and faltered despite herself. The school records, the nurse's reports of bumps and bruises caused by clumsiness, the black eye Poison Ivy had told her about…
There was no sign of a single injury anywhere on Alice's person, as far as Stephanie could tell. She had a few scars, but they were silvery and faded.
The realization that Alice's weeks with the Hatter were likely the least violent of the past few years of her life was sobering. It was really hard to hang onto the idea that the situation was all black and white and cut and dried in the face of it.
"You've got to go home," Stephanie said firmly.
"I can't," the girl sobbed. "I can't go back to school. The other girls—"
Without thinking about it, Spoiler enfolded Alice in her arms where she collapsed and cried into her cape.
"I'm sorry," Stephanie said genuinely.
"Please, please don't make me go back."
"I have to. It's my job."
"Can't you just…call in sick today?" Alice asked desperately. "Pretend you never found me?"
"Your mother misses you."
A fresh wave of sobbing overtook Alice and her shoulders shook under Spoiler's hands. This continued for a full minute before she fought down her emotions long enough to choke out, "But they'll kill me."
Stephanie grabbed Alice by the shoulders and drew back from her, looking at her face. This was really one of those times when she wished she had a mask that made her eyes visible. "Not on my watch they won't."
"You can't protect me."
"I can. Just you watch me."
It was just before five when Spoiler returned Alice Callahan to her home and left the Mad Hatter gift wrapped on the front steps of the GCPD, but her night still wasn't over. Racing against the impending dawn, she made her way back to the middle of the city and entered Robinson Park for the second time in one night.
She quickly made her way across the park towards the bridge in the middle of it and, after a few minutes of intense searching, Stephanie found the entrance to Poison Ivy's hideout and slipped inside. Ivy knew she was there the second her feet touched grass, she knew, so she didn't even bother trying to sneak up on her. She found the villainess reclining on a throne of moss and vines, casually stroking one of her pet plants.
"Poison Ivy."
Ivy didn't say anything, just studied the intruder with mild interest.
"That…ah…deal we made…" Stephanie cleared her throat. "I…could use some help making sure it actually works out."
"What kind of help?"
"The…" Spoiler didn't want to have to be honest, but there was no sense fighting it. "The kind Batman wouldn't give me in about a million years."
"The villainous kind."
Hearing it put so bluntly, Spoiler felt more than a little ill at ease. "Yeah. That."
"I was under the impression that you'd hold up your end of the bargain," Ivy said dispassionately. "It's less of a bargain and more of a favor on my part if I help you, isn't it?"
"Look, I don't like the idea of owing you, and trust me, I really don't like the idea of working with you at all, but…I don't think I have a choice."
Ivy's upper lip twisted into a mildly condescending and self satisfied smirk. "I'm listening…"
Stephanie produced a piece of paper from inside her cape. "This is a list of names and addresses. All the kids who've ever done anything to Alice Callahan are in here. She helped me complete the the list herself."
A thick vine slithered across the floor and moved to take the paper from her hands, but she refused to relinquish it.
"I don't want you to hurt any of them—well, okay, I do kind of want you to hurt some of them, but you're not allowed to."
"I find your honesty refreshing."
"You are not allowed to hurt any of them," Spoiler repeated, "but I absolutely encourage you to scare the daylights out of them. I want your word that's all you'll do."
Ivy chuckled. "Once again, you seem to be under the mistaken impression that you're in a position to make demands or that you can trust me to keep my word."
"Ivy…"
"You'll owe me," Ivy warned.
"I know."
"You'll owe me twice over…"
"I know."
Ivy waved her hand the way a bored monarch might have. "Fine."
Stephanie fell into bed the second she got home and stayed there for fourteen hours. She counted herself very lucky that it was Saturday.
That night, after she woke up and made herself an obscenely late breakfast, Tim called. She didn't tell him about Alice—partly out of concern that he wouldn't understand the situation because he hadn't been there and partly out of petty spite—and didn't answer any of his questions about how, exactly, she'd managed to catch the Mad Hatter all by herself. It was her turn to keep him out of the loop for a change.
When he asked her if she wanted to meet for pizza later to talk about it before they hit the streets for patrol, she said yes.
Spoiler stood him up.
She had a diamond encrusted Cheshire Cat to recover, after all.