Knight Watch
By Eoraptor
AN: Kim Possible and related characters ©2002-2007 Walt Disney Company, Batman and related characters ©™ DC Comics Group. Rated T for situations. Not for profit fan-created work of which I own only the concept.
The redhead heard the soft tap-tap of boots hitting the asphalt behind her. She had to admit, she was impressed; very few people could land that quietly in her experience. If she hadn't been expecting him to show up sooner rather than later, she'd even have been surprised. He really did live up to his reputation it seemed; she understood now why he snuck up on so many paranoid people seemingly directly out of the shadows.
But she wasn't one of those people, and without looking she let the wraith know that she knew she wasn't alone on the ninety-third story any longer. "I wondered how long until you'd show yourself in person."
For a moment there was no response. Finally she sighed, and turned to look at him. Man, he was big. Normally black was slimming, but with this guy…
"You've changed your uniform…" they said in unison.
She smirked wryly.
His expression softened, momentarily.
She considered herself for a moment. Her body was gloved in skin-tight black material. At first it was nigh-invisible, but when she raised her arm to consider it, fine glowing purple lines appeared and shimmered over the moving parts of her body. Still her signature colors after all these years.
His suit had no such displays. When she looked at him in the red and white lights of the navigational beacon, his costume was almost entirely matte black. However, it was clearly muscled… Too perfectly muscled, even for a man supposedly at the peak of human conditioning. And the only color anywhere on it aside from the ghostly white eyes was a blood-red winged shape across the chest.
"Well," she shook her head after a moment's consideration, "I'm sure you know who I am… fortunately, you don't have me at much of a disadvantage."
An inclination of his cowled head bade her continue, so she did.
"Honestly, that new suit of yours is what gave you away." She supplied after a moment ordering her thoughts, "In case you forgot, I was the first person to wear one of these… so I keep track of who has access to the technology. When a shell company of a shell company of a shell company of your company licensed the tech from Loaded Porter, it put me on your scent. I always figured you had to have some serious money to do what you did with the things you have anyway."
This time there was no change in the expression beneath the skin-tight cowling over his face. The redhead was suitably impressed. "So when I found out someone was running around in a modified mark five in this town, where your company is headquartered, it didn't take too much to figure out who was who. Just how much armor did you put in there anyway?"
"I'm told I have a problem with ducking."
It was a quip, obviously, but even she, used to rapier-like snark, was hard pressed for a moment by the perfectly stoic delivery. Shaking her head, smirking, she turned again to look out at the spooky sky line of the old-city district. "Well go ahead and ask…"
"I don't have to, I already know what your mark six is capable of."
She rolled her green eyes and snorted, "Misdirect much? I'm not a psychologically unbalanced neophyte."
"Fine. Why are you in my city?"
She'd never met him before, but she thought she detected just a hint of irritation in the otherwise carefully indifferent delivery. She smiled, flipping a hand through her brush-cut red hair, "Research. I'm told you're a fan of studying things, hoped you'd understand."
After a moment the big man appeared next to her on the ledge, looking out over the dystopian metropolis, "Just what is it you hope to learn here?"
"I don't get a chance to deal with the truly unbalanced mind very often." She supplied after a moment. "Everyone I have to deal with has pretty clear motives and issues. Narcissism, inferiority complex, stolen research or accolades… Stuff most cops could figure out, even if they are ill equipped to handle the realities. I need more practice dealing with the truly unstable."
"You're here to study him?"
"Oh, not just him, but he is pretty much the case study isn't he?"
There was a long moment before the laconic man in black nodded reluctantly, "I can safely say that even I am not so sick as to truly understand how his mind works."
"Oh, I wouldn't say you're sick… just obsessed. And that is something I know a bit too well." She sighed, green eyes watching the city.
"So why here? Did you think finding the high ground would lure me out?" He indicated the view from atop the Powers Tower, one of the newest and tallest buildings in the old city.
"Oh, no, this wasn't for you," she chuckled a bit, watching her breath fade away into the night air, it was fairly cool at this altitude. "In my youth I had a thing for throwing myself off of really tall buildings. I suppose I never really outgrew it."
"In your youth?"
"Very funny old man… I'm thirty two and you know it. And I've lived more life than most people three times my age."
"…old?"
"I told you I know who you are." She chuckled a bit, "But maybe old is a bit harsh. Perhaps… Experienced."
Again silence descended over them. After a moment, she shook her head, sighing again into the night air, "So, how much of that three foot wide chest is you, and how much is the body armor and the three thousand dollar business suits?"
"Just like you, the suit is only there to help, not do the work for me." He offered, as stoically as always. "Though, I will admit that the rocket boots compliment the grappling lines nicely. A bat must be seen to truly fly."
"I'm impressed. You really are unstoppable, aren't you?"
"Just like your man in blue…"
"Close but you got the name wrong," she chuckled, moving her arms, trying to stay limber in the chill air. "He hates that. And speaking of men in blue… yours really has a weakness for redheads, doesn't he?"
"You met him, eh?"
"Yeah, I suppose he likes high places just as much as I do. Must come from the whole trapeze thing."
"And I suppose the redhead issues can be blamed on me. I allowed him to pal around with a six foot tall redheaded alien in a purple bikini when he was fifteen. He never really outgrew that either."
She gave a little bark of laughter at that. Again the glib humor, but delivered with absolute control. The juxtaposition hit her just right. "She would have liked you."
"She?"
"She… She's why I'm really here." The redhead in the black and purple let go a weary breath. "She was just the other side of that unpredictable line of psychosis. Ten years together and I still never completely figured her out.
"Ah. That one." The man in black gave a simple nod.
She smiled a bit. It was perhaps the most polite way to refer to the dead amongst crime fighters.
"So she is why you disappeared for two years." He confirmed to himself. "My condolences."
"Thanks. You've got the same sense of humor she did. Very observational. But she liked hers with a twist of snark."
"I always suspected the two of you were more than casual acquaintances." He conferred after a moment.
"Just like you and a few that I am aware of."
"Didn't buy into the millionaire playboy act? It has served me quite well."
"Oh you're very convincing with the manchild act. Best I've ever seen… Puts her brother to shame even, and he has it down to a master-work. But nope; you're too handsome and too powerful to stay single, willingly or otherwise. That told me that there was someone, maybe more than one, who had already laid claim." She offered after a moment, "And unlike me, you're clearly not gay, no matter what the pop psyche buffs may say about you and him. You use arm candy for airs, but I studied up on you. You only really associate with an entirely different class of woman."
"I never knew you were such a detective." He offered with a slightly wry hint in his voice despite the unchanging mask of his face.
"It's not a skill I like to publicize. I had to fight long and heard to earn it."
"Yes. I was under the impression that you were more the tip of the spear, and others were the ones directing you."
"They were" she confirmed, "for a long time that's exactly what I was."
"I take it she changed that?" The large man turned to face his more lithe companion.
"She did." The redhead blew a breath into the night air, "When she finally decided she wanted more than a sparring partner, she made me work for it. And not just me. But that's another story entirely."
"You know… knowing this changes a lot of things. Your lack of independence is the one reason you were never invited to the club."
She turned and looked at the night guardian, and then rolled her green eyes, "Save it. You've already got the green guy with the Van Dyke acting as your moral compass. You don't need me too."
"It's really more of a Dartanian."
"Eh, what do I know… I shave." She smirked.
"More information than even I needed to know."
Once more silence engulfed the two black-clad defenders.
"So what brought you back?"
"Always a detective I see."
"It's something I've never outgrown."
"That one is getting a little old," she chuckled morosely.
"Says the girl who can do anything to the old man."
This made her wince. "Not any more I'm not."
He let the unspoken question hang in the air.
After a moment she pulled it down and answered, "I used to be. Gods I used to be that. Then I lost her. I've saved the world more times than half the people in your club put together, but I couldn't save her from cancer. It broke me in ways that I think only you might understand. What that big latin guy did to you, her cancer did to me."
"And ever modest I see." Was all he said into the night above the tower. After a moment, he clarified his meaning to the redhead, "So what healed you?"
"Guiding questions. You really are a master interrogator once you leave behind the kiddy games. It took me years to know when my hacker friend was doing that to me." She shook her head again and looked down at the faint purple tracers shooting along her fingers as she drummed them on the railing. "You high functioning sociopaths really have that going over us moral types."
When the dark one didn't disabuse her of the notion, she continued, "I realized… I might not be the girl who can do anything anymore… but I'd turned into the woman who wasn't doing anything. You and I are more alike than either of us will ever really admit I bet. We both do things no one else can do. My friends were starting to run into problems that they just couldn't solve. Lorwardian infiltrators, hives of Bebes and Ceces… they were trying to do my job for me in my absence."
"So you came back to take up the mantle."
"Well, that's one way of putting it," She shook her head softly, "More like I came back to do the things no one else could do, just like I always did."
"and when you say we're alike?"
"Oh please… I'm not the sweet innocent girl people believe I am. I spent ten years in the arms of a felon. And you're not the fearsome vengeance and night that the world thinks you are. Doy much?"
This time she actually saw him smirk a little, the flashing lights of the roof beacon catching the outlines in his mask. It made her chuckle. "For instance, I picked up her speech patterns. See?"
He didn't elaborate on her theory, but simply nodded. "Well. Enjoy your stay in my city. Just one word of warning; the other man? He's not something to be trifled or studied. Even if you might still be the girl who can do anything; do something else, leave the cackling hyenas to their gnawing bones and choose a less dangerous… thesis to work on."
He turned to walk away to the opposite ledge and she shook her head at him, "You know, you could learn something from your blue winged friend… he knows better than to issue a challenge like that to a redhead."
"You're not my first redhead, Miss." He remarked cooly as he planted a foot on the railing. "You're already here, and I'm old… experienced enough to know that nothing I say will dissuade you."
He flipped his arms outward, revealing blood red membranes running from fingertip to knee, and plummeted off the building; vanishing into the night even as the redhead darted to the opposing railing. She thought she could just make out the bat shaped silhouette briefly obscuring a window in the distance, but that could just as easily have been bad electrics.
"Huh… now why did I think to put that in my battlesuit?"
AN: So a fusion of Bruce Wayne as he appeared in the DCAU (DC Animated Universe, spanning Batman the Animated Series through Justice League Unlimited) with the Beyond suit era before he went into self-imposed retirement, and young adult Kim Possible. I've had some interesting commentary about my use of phrasing and characterization, and am curious for more. It's all a bit rough since it's a bit of an experiment, hope you like it
Reviews = Love