Disclaimer: The Characters from "The Batman" are owned by DC Comics, Warner Bros., Bob Kane and God knows how many other people by now. This is a story done purely for fun and not to make profit whatsoever. Any original characters that may appear belong to the writer and can be used with permission.
Batgirl Takes Flight
Across the moonlit skyline of small Gotham neighborhood, a slender figure bounded over the rooftops. It was dressed mostly in a black suit to help blend into the shadows. The suit also had the added benefit of showing off the figure's feminine form. That combined with the bat-like cowl, wing-like cape and bright red hair billowing in the wind would lead any casual onlooker to one conclusion: Batgirl was back!
At least that's what girl behind the light blue cowl wanted the people to believe. In truth she was just a girl who felt the city needed a Batgirl again after the original had disappeared. While Batman was good at scaring the living daylights out of criminals, Batgirl was meant to inspire a sense of hope and ease.
That was her plan anyway. But truth be told, behind the "inspiration" bat-mask she was just Toni Jackson, a girl who was quickly developing the feeling that she was getting in over her head. While she had to admit she loved the feeling of freedom that jumping across rooftops gave her. The feel of the cool, night wind in her face made her feel truly alive. She would have closed her eyes to enjoy it more but she needed the open so she could see where to land. One wrong slip up and it would be all over.
Which brought back the fear a bit. She stopped when she landed on the next roof and took a moment to sit back and think of everything.
So what exactly is your plan here anyway girl? She asked herself mentally as she slowly walked to the side of the roof. You've made yourself a costume, built some homemade Batarangs, a grapple line that thankfully works, and you have some mild kick boxing and fighting experience. Do you really think you're ready to take on super villains now? I mean you don't even had a cool car or any other mode of transportation! Maybe it's time to quit while you're ahead, go back home, go to bed and wake up tomorrow to another boring but safe life.
She had to admit, the reasonable part of her brain wasn't wrong. There was no way that this whole thing wasn't completely crazy. The best thing for her to do right now was to go home before she ran into real trouble.
And yet...she just couldn't bring herself to do it. It wasn't just her hero worship of Batgirl that brought her to put on this costume, she genuinely wanted to help people. Though Batman was defending Gotham as long as she could remember there were still plenty of criminals and villains in the city that needed to be brought down and from what she could see on the news Batman wasn't getting any younger. Sure there were other, younger heroes to help him out but one more could never hurt, right?
"Still..." she mused silently as she made her way to the edge of the roof.
She put her right foot on the raised ledge and was about to fire her grapple line to continue her patrol of the blocks around her neighbor and perhaps do more soul searching when something in the alleyway below caught her masked eye. She quickly crouched down when she realized it was a group of about five people. But not just any people they were...
"Jokerz," she muttered bitterly.
Jokerz were a motorcycle gang that had popped up after the original Joker disappeared years ago. At first they were just an annoyance but recently they were becoming a genuine threat in some neighborhoods. Like hers. She didn't recognize anyone in particular in this group but they all looked like stupid clowns to her. She pulled out a pair of binoculars from one of the pouches on her utility belt to get to a closer look at them.
There were five of them in all, three guys and two girls. From what she could tell the leader was the one who was dressed more like the original Joker in a purple suit jacket, black pants and of course the clown face paint. The main differences were that his green hair was much shorter and not in dreadlocks but rather kind of ended in points on either side of his head. Then there was the fact that this guy actually wore shoes. There was a pigtailed blonde standing next to him who she assumed was this own "Harley Quinn". She was dressed in a pair of red overalls with a white baby T-shirt underneath with red and black diamond patterns on the sleeves. Despite her lilith build she had a rather large wooden mallet slung over her right shoulder. That was definitely something she would have to watch out for.
The other girl in the group also carried a weapon; a rubber chicken with razor blades sticking out of it. She thought it was completely ridiculous and yet somehow a fitting weapon for a deranged clown. Despite Batgirl's earlier compassion to Overalls being Not Joker's "Harley" the girl holding the bladed chick obviously drew much more inspiration from Harley then her blonde friend. The main difference was that this girl seemed to only be wearing the black parts of Harley's costume. This left her right leg, the right half of her stomach and her left breast and arm complete exposed. Well maybe not completely exposed, she did have the decency to wear a red club shaped pasty over her most of her left breast as well as a red glove on her left hand and black boot on her right leg. She also lacked the jester hat and instead had right red hair frame her painted and masked face.
Not Harley wasn't alone in exposing more then the should as the mountain of the boy standing next to her only wore a pair of yellow polka dotted pants held up by rainbow suspenders over his ripped, shirtless body. His bald head was completely painted in the white clown make up of the others with a black, sinister grin painted over his mouth. He didn't carry any weapons but the red stains on his white gloves seemed to indicate that he preferred to do his dirty work with this own hands.
The last member to round out this Carnival of Horrors appeared to be the least threatening. He was on the smaller size and actually appeared a bit lankly. He was also the most dressed down in only a black tuxedo shirt and pants with a grinning clown mask over his face. His black hair was slicked back and he seemed to stick next to Suspenders, probably for protection. She might have to target him first just to get him out of the way.
Wait. "Target him"? She repeated internally. Did I actually just think that? Am I actually thinking of going down there and fighting them?
She blinked and thought it over for a few seconds.
"Yep," she said aloud as she put her binoculars away and stood up. "You wanted to be a hero girl well now here's your chance. Let's see what you got."
With her mind made up she pulled out her grapple gun and quietly released the hook from it to latch it onto the edge of the build then lower herself down into the alleyway in the cover of the shadows. Thankfully luck was on her side and she made it down behind the group without any of them seeing her. She stayed in the shadows and behind the trash cans to creep ever closer to the gang of Jokerz. Remembering some of the stories she had heard about Batman's approach, she snuck around until she was within arms reach of Mask and move to wrap her arms around his mouth and waist and drag him unexpectedly into the shadows where she would quickly knock him out then pick off the others in all the confusion.
Unfortunately, that's not at all what happened. In fact the moment she reached out for him, Mask spun around in the blink of an eye, grabbed her wrist then tossed her over his shoulder into the middle of the circle of Jokerz. She groaned at the pain that flashed through her body and laid there in a daze as she tried to process what just happened.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Not Joker asked menacingly as he leaned over her.
Reacting quickly the faux redhead jumped up to her feet and struck a battle ready pose.
"What do it look like?" she asked back then flashed a small smirk, "I'm Batgirl!"
The gang of clown all blinked and looked at each other before they all burst out into demented, and unsettling, laughter.
"You? Batgirl? I don't think so sweety," Not Joker remarked with a final chuckle and a shake of his head.
"Hey I'm more Batgirl than you freaks are the Joker!" she spat back.
The green haired boy's amused smile quickly turned into an irritated frown.
"That's not funny. Take her down!" he ordered.
"Oooh crud," Batgirl groaned as the others began to advance on her.
The first thing that happened was she was immediately scooped up into Suspenders massive arms which pinned her own arms to the side of her body and started to quickly constrict.
"I'm gonna break you in two girlie," he whispered into her cowl covered ear.
"Don't...think...so..." Batgirl choked out.
She then swung her right leg backwards to bury the heel of her boot right between his legs. Suspenders let out a pained scream and let her go. She dropped to the ground then quickly spun around, pulled out her stun gun and jabbed it into his expose chest. He screamed again as the electricity raced through his body and stumbled backwards. Batgirl followed that up with a quick pump kick to his chin that sent him flying into the brick wall behind him and knocked him out.
"There!" she wheezed at him bittered. "How's that for breaking someone? And put on a shirt!"
She spun around just in time to see Not Harley rushing at her with her razorblade chicken raised above her head. Batgirl barely side stepped the first slash but the returning backhanded slash managed to catch her right arm a bit. She let out a small yelp at the thankfully light cut but was more concerned about the rip in her costume.
"Oh come on!" she groaned. "I just bought this thing!"
"Maybe ya shudda bought a betta wig instead!" Not Harley retorted.
"Like you're one to talk!" Batgirl snapped back. "There's no way that color is natural!"
"Hey I'll have you know this comes out of a very expensive bottle!" the clown girl retorted, pointing to her bright red hair.
"Less talking more cutting," Not Joker ordered.
"Oh right. Sorry boss!" she called out then ran forward again.
This time Batgirl was ready for her and quickly tossed one of her homemade Batarangs at the girl which knocked the rubber chicken out of her hands and impaled itself into the wall behind the girl to leave it hanging like something out of a Chinese restaurant. Not Harley stared at it for a moment then looked back at Batgirl.
"Wow that was pretty impressive," she complimented.
"Actually...I was aiming at your head," Batgirl confessed.
"Hey! That coulda really hurt me!"
"Says the girl who was trying to cut me with a rubber chicken filled with razor blades!"
"You trying to talk her to death or what?" Overalls shouted before she swung her mallet at the heroine's head.
Batgirl ducked and rolled out of the way just in time to avoid having her head knocked from her shoulders but before she could get up, the blonde swung the mallet at her again. She rolled along the rough alleyway floor before she could finally get into a position to kick Overalls in the gut to cause her to drop the weapon. Batgirl then jumped back up to her feet and readied herself to take on both girls at once.
A few feet away, Not Joker smirked and pulled out his cell phone to record the sight before him.
"Oh yeah, this should get a few thousand hits," he mused with quiet chuckle.
The two clown girls jumped Batgirl at the same time and tackled her to the ground. She struggled against them as Not Harley held down her arms and Overalls held down her legs. After a few seconds of holding they looked at each other in confusion.
"So whatta we do with her?" Not Harley asked.
"Take her mask off so we can see who she is," Overalls suggested.
"Yeah good idea."
Unfortunately, the ended up not being a good idea as the second Not Harley let go of Batgirl's wrist to lift up her mask, the heroine's free hand moved faster and yanked off the clown's club shaped pasty.
"Hey!" Not Harley screamed as she covered her now completely bare breast with her hand.
Batgirl used the distraction to free the her other hand and shove the girl away then sat up and slammed the pasty right between Overall's eyes which caused her to let go and stumble backwards from confusion. Right as she pulled the annoying piece of fabric off she accidently stepped on the end of her forgotten mallet which caused the handle to swing upwards and crack her on the back of the head. She screamed and held her now throbbing head then stumbled in the other direction to into a waiting Batgirl. The catsuited crime fighter lashed out with a vicious uppercut that finally put the clown girl down.
"That was cheating!" Not Harley screamed, still holding her left breast.
"Oh you knew that could happen when you went around dressed like that," Batgirl retorted. "I'll tell you the same thing I told you big friend over there, put on a shirt."
She then roundhouse kicked the girl in the face to take her down as well.
"Alright three down, two to go," she mused to herself then immediately caught a punch to the jaw that knocked her down again.
She shook her head to recover from the unexpected attack then looked up to see Mask standing in front of her. Before she could really react to the hit, he started to go through elaborate hand motions, kicks and flips in a demonstration of rather impressive skills that belied his small appearance.
"Oh of course he knows kung-fu!" she growled in annoyance.
His posturing over with, Mask ran forward and tried to bury the heel of his shoe into her face. Thankfully, Batgirl rolled out of the way to avoid it but when she tried to stand up she received several quick kicks to the stomach. She screamed in pain but forced herself to ignore it and grabbed his ankle when he went for the next kick and gave it a sharp twist. This time it was Mask who let out a pained scream just before Batgirl pushed him back to gain enough distance to get back up to her feet. She readied herself for his next attack but despite his injured ankle he was still able to deliver some lighting fast blows with his fists. She managed to block a few of them but there were far many more that made contact. She knew she couldn't keep this pace up forever and had to find some way to catch him off guard again. After unleashing his flurry of punches he steadied himself on his good foot then gave her a roundhouse kick that sent her tumbling backwards and over one of the Jokerz's motorcycles.
She let out a tired and pained groan as she used the bike to pull herself back up. When she did she noticed the keys were still in it and that it was lined up perfectly with Mask who was slowly stalking towards her. She smirked then turned the key, revved the engine then hit the throttle to send it running right towards the kung-fu clown. Unfortunately, he was ready for it and in an impressive display of skill, jumped up, ran the course of the bike as it moved under him, then landed perfectly and didn't even flinch as the bike crashed into the wall.
"Okay, that was impressive," she noted.
"I know, right?" Not Joker commented. "Now you see why I keep him around?"
"Definitely. Still..." she took out two more Batarangs and threw them at him as hard as she could.
He easily dodged to the two objects then bolted forward to grab her right shoulder and slam her against the side of the building. She brought her foot up to kick him between the legs just as she had done Suspenders but he caught it right before it could connect. She tossed him a quick smirk before she took advantage of the fact that both his hands were preoccupied and punched him as hard as she could in the side of the head with her left hand. The punch was enough to daze him and cause him to let go of her. She then grabbed the collar of his tuxedo shirt and pushed him as hard as she could into the brick wall. This finally caused knocked him out and sent his sprawling to the ground in a heap.
Batgirl breathed heavily as she stepped back from her fallen foe a bit, fatigue starting to get the best of her. So much so that she had completely forgotten about their ring leader until she heard a click next to her. She looked over to see Not Joker holding a gun level with her head.
"I gotta admit that was a pretty good show Bat Babe," he said in an even, sinister tone. "Hell you might have made a good addition to our Jokerz group. But instead I gotta plug ya. Nothing personal of course."
Batgirl stood completely frozen. For whatever reason, she never planned on what to do when going up against a simple gun. If she had a little more room and wasn't so wiped out, she might have been able to dodged before he fired but as it was now she was simply too hurt and tired too move.
Mom, Dad, I'm sorry, she thought in dismay.
She closed her eyes in acceptance of her mistake and even heard the trigger being pulled but she didn't feel any blinding pain or white clouds and heavenly choir. She opened her eyes to see the gun still pointed at her but with a small pole extending from the barrel with a small flag reading "BANG" on it hanging down. Both combatants stood motionless for several seconds as they took in the situation.
"Well crap, I brought the wrong gun," Not Joker sighed.
Batgirl sighed as well but it was one of relief. She then moved forward, snatched the gun from his hand then hit him on the forehead with the handle of it with enough force to knock him out. She then tossed it away and sat down on one of the near by bikes before her legs completely gave out on her. She breathed heavily as she waited for her heart to slow down and looked over the scene of her first victory.
Admittedly, that could have gone a lot better, she confessed. But I still won so that's gotta count for something. I just need to learn how to deal with guns if I keep this up. And I'm really gonna have to think of on that now. But I suppose I should deal with these guys first.
She continued to stare at the unconscious clowns all around her.
I guess I'll just restrain them and call the cops. Course I probably shouldn't be here when they're around so I don't have to explain the new Bat in town and I have to keep my whole superhero mystic. But I'm waaaaay too tired to run all the way back home, so how am I gonna get out of here?
She then remembered what exactly she was sitting on and checked out the ignition switch and sure enough, just like the last bike, the keys were still in it. Slowly, a rather devious smile began to creep over her face...
( - ) ( - ) ( - ) ( - ) ( - ) ( - )
Oracle took a slow, deliberate sip from her mug to savor the flavor of Alfred's home brewed coffee. She was still amazed that even after all these years he never lost a bit of his impressive culinary skills. The combination of his own blend of coffee and hot buttered scones helped her through many of the long nights and early mornings of staring at the monitors in the cave. Of course late night/early morning monster movie marathons helped her as well. Just because she was the Bat-Clan's omnipresent computer jockey didn't mean she couldn't take some time out for herself. Especially considering how slow a night it had been. She had kept her eyes on all local news stations and police bands in between watching men in foam rubber monster suits tearing apart scale models of Tokyo. A pretty standard night for her actually. She set the mug down and stretched her arms a bit and was considering calling it a night or day or whatever when one of the news stations suddenly flashed a quick text about a gang of Jokerz being apprehended. Curious she pulled the station up on the main screen and turned the volume up a bit.
The screen showed a well kept Hispanic woman in a blue blazer and matching skirt and a long, black bang hanging between her brown eyes standing in front of an alley where there was indeed a group of flex cuffed Jokerz being led into a police van.
"Thank you, Tom. This is Theresa Jimenez reporting live this early morning in front of one of Gotham's lower districts where a group of the infamous Jokerz gang has been taken down by apparently a new vigilante on the block."
"'New Vigilante'?" Oracle repeated with a quirked eyebrow.
She quickly pulled up the a map of Gotham with several red dots blinking on it in different locations throughout. She studied it for a second before she locked onto where the incident supposedly took place.
"I guess it'd have to be someone new then," she mused, looking over the map again. "Batman's obviously not anywhere around there and Canary and Huntress are on the other side of town, Ivy's dealing with that issue in the park and Rob-Nightwing is still over in Bludhaven."
She hummed a bit as she leaned back in her chair and picked up the mug of coffee again.
"So new player in town, huh?" she said with a small smirk. "Well, we could always use the help whether Bruce wants to admit it or not. Still it'd probably be best to get this new guy or gal into the fold as quickly as we can. Wonder who it is though?" she asked herself then took another sip from her mug.
"...and she stole my bike man!" the gang leader finished screaming into the microphone the reporter held up to him. "I'm telling you she said she was Batgirl!"
A jet of hot coffee suddenly flew out of Oracle's mouth as her eyes widened in shock.
"WHAT?"
The End.
Author's Notes: Alright I know this fic seems a bit random and well..it totally is! It seems that some people actually liked that quick origin fic I put up of my own OC Batgirl Toni Jackson and wanted to see more of her. So always being one to pimp my own ideas and characters, I then began to think of what else to do with her and well this idea came up. I know it's not the longest fic or the most character driven but I just wanted to do something short and fun to show off what Toni's fighting skills are like. It was actually kind of hard trying to find a good balance of someone who's been practicing fighting and actually having to fight someone. Let alone five someones who are dressed up as killer clowns.
Which, BTW, that came to me as I was trying to think of a gang for her to fight and realized that the Batman mythos already has one built in, so I just went ahead and used a The Batman version of the Jokerz! Course I have no idea if this particular gang will show up again as I didn't even give them proper names, just what Toni referred to them as. Which was pretty fun to come up with in itself. Heh.
Hopefully I made the fight rather entertaining and it showed that I can get back into the groove and write one rather quickly. Which will help me when I finally get back to my Teen Titans fic which will be next up I promise. I know it's been about two months since I wrote anything on it and I'm sorry about that but with some luck something will be up soon.
I hope you guys enjoyed this little glimpse into the future and some of the mild spoilers that are involved therein. Though if you know anything about my writing style it's not quite that big a spoiler. There's also a bit of a cameo from one of my other fics in there that I wonder if any of you guys caught on to. If not I'll be sure to let you know. Oh and I know this is a bit late in the fic to be saying this but the "VA" I have in mind for Toni is Caitlin Glass of Fullmetal Alchemist fame! As well as many other shows I can't remember right now.
See ya guys on the next one!