AN:- When you get a plot bunny, you get a plot bunny, and there's nothing you can do about it. So I've been reading Batgirl and drawing superheroes lately, and this just seemed like the next logical step. I'm mostly going by canon up to the Return of Bruce Wayne. I have read the New 52, and I have to say I was almost entirely unimpressed. Removing Stephanie Brown felt like a kick in the teeth after all the development she had gone through, the first issue of Batman and Robin just didn't have the spark I was looking for, and the less said about Catwoman the better. All in all I wasn't impressed, and will be waiting a while before reading any of that nonsense.
Also, I tend to imagine Damian being slightly older, or Stephanie being slightly younger than they are in canon. I imagine Damin to be about 12/13, while Stephanie is maybe 17/18. I assume War Games took place when she was 16, she spent a year away in Africa, and came back for college. Also, I always prefer to think that when people say Damian is ten, it's more of a derogatory 'you're too young to actually understand' instead of 'this is your actual physical age.' Just for future reference.
Chapter One
There are lots of skills that need to be mastered before one can even think of donning a cowl and going out to fight crime as an ordinary human being. Not that Damian Wayne was an ordinary anything, but there is a difference between solar powered bulletproof skin and his own, all too vulnerable, flesh.
Strength is a must, also speed, agility, reflexes. The sort of pure athleticism that most Olympians could only dream of is commonplace for members of the extended Bat-Family. Martial arts training of course. The most inept of them could take on a Kung Fu grandmaster and walk away smiling, and the best of them could take on a god and do well enough. Father always had reached for the stars, and Damian intended to outdo him.
Most important to his current situation was the ability to pick out tiny details from a crowd and put them together to work out when something was wrong with the overall picture. And right now Damian was looking into a crowd that was very, very wrong.
It had started like any other night, sneaking out because his father had grounded him again and swinging the rooftops trying to avoid the more obvious signs of trouble. His father would take on the big criminals, Nightwing the gang crimes in the dock area, and Bat-Woman could be anywhere. Tim Drake hadn't been seen in a while and the only other members of their team had quit. He scowled at that memory and swung a little harder.
He had ended up at the Gotham Carnival, which was making its usual spirited effort to drive away the nightmare that was living in Gotham from day to day. Its cheerful colours were at best a blight on the austere landscape of the skyline, but tonight they were offensive to his eyes as he perched on a rooftop and watched the children mill around and pretend to enjoy themselves. He vividly remembered the last time he had been in amongst a crowd of them, snot nosed brats who thought that leaving school for a day was the best their lives could get.
Good structure, he flipped open his log and spoke into it, "I'm watching the snot nosed brats who think leaving school for a day is the best their lives ever get. Something's wrong at the carnival but I don't know what it is."
He decided to go in for a closer look, swinging his way over behind the toilets and pulling himself up onto the roof. He kept low to the corrugated iron and stared over towards the Ferris Wheel, where there seemed to be colourfully dressed performers handing out balloons to the children. Nothing out of the ordinary, so why the uncomfortable tension in his gut like there was about to be a fight? That feeling had served him well in the past; there was no reason to think it was wrong now.
He dropped to the floor and snuck quietly past the attractions, trying to block out the incessantly cheerful music. He needed to be absolutely focused on his task, and right now his task was making it over to the Ferris Wheel before whatever was planned happened, and hearing Scott Joplin for the fifth time wasn't helping. He was almost praying for 'Merry Go Round Broke Down' by the time he reached the coconut shy, but instead it started up again. Dee deed ah dee. dee de. Dee deed ah see, dee de.
He realised that it wasn't just the tinkling piano he was hearing, someone was actually singing along. With The Entertainer. What sort of godless world did he live in where that was possible? He 'Tt'ed and hurried on, the Ferris wheel finally in sight behind the trash cans.
Closer in he could see the performers handing out the balloons, their faces painted into the hideous greasepaint white and red of a circus clown. He didn't see how it was ever supposed to entertain children, and the thought that someone in this city could have thought it a good idea was even more baffling to him. People would go to any lengths to forget that their lives were always in danger due to the assortment of freaks and villains who just loved to destroy bright and happy occasions.
The clowns were handing out gaudy balloons in purple, green and yellow, making sure that every little kiddie had one to scamper back to mommy and daddy with. He sneered at their happy little faces and looked back the way he had come. Nothing out of the ordinary there, nothing out of the ordinary at the Ferris Wheel, so why as he got closer did he feel more and more uneasy?
He looked at the clowns again, because out of all of the abominations against nature at the fair that night those were the ones that were annoying him the most. Other people might have called the sensation fear, with the hair on the back of his neck rising and his cheek itching with half remembered scratches, but he knew better. For him, fear was anticipation.
The tingling in his cheek finally made him realise what was wrong, jolting his memories and bringing into play the detective skills he would always claim he had inherited. The clowns were dressed to a man in purple, green and gold, and their faces were all smiley, instead of some of them carrying the 'sad-faced clown' to complement them. The balloons also were in the distinctive three colours.
Damian Wayne didn't swear very often, but he couldn't help himself. "Crap," he muttered as he flung himself over the bins and rushed towards the clowns. He had no idea what Joker might have been planning, or even if it was Joker, but whatever was going on it couldn't be good, and he had to save the children.
He knocked the first clown over and ripped open the oversized jacket the man had on, revealing a bandolier of grenades on a cheap timer. He snarled and clocked the man in the face hard enough to knock him completely unconscious, giving him time to figure out where the other thugs were.
I thought the Joker was gone. Damian thought, leaping at the next man and taking him out with a scissor kick to the legs, so here are these losers?
Heavy footfalls behind him betrayed his attacker's position and he snap kicked the man to the floor, ripping open his jacket to reveal a similar arrangement of grenades and explosives. There were six clowns that he had seen, and if all of them were wearing similar jackets then he had a real situation on his hands. He scanned for victim number three and sprang into action.
Twenty seconds later he had six unconscious henchmen handcuffed together and a whole lot of explosive equipment to deal with. The jackets hadn't been rigged to explode when he took them off, which was small comfort because upon further inspection the timers on all of them had been set, and he didn't recognise the wiring on any of them. It didn't follow any of the hundreds of patterns he had learned, and in one case he was almost certain that the detonator, explosives and timer weren't actually connected to each other.
Is the Joker good enough at demolitions to rig something completely new? He knew the Joker had once managed to dismantle and reassemble a nuclear warhead with little more than a conventional toolbox, but the most advanced warheads were built on very exacting systems, this was entirely random. No complicated solution, what's the simple option?
He gathered all six vests into his arms, slung them over his shoulders and sprinted for the river that ran next to the fairground. Fortunately he was on the right side of the carnival, so it was only a few hundred metres away, unfortunately for him the timers were now right next to his ears, and the ticking seemed to be getting more insistent by the second. The rational part of his brain reminded him that that was impossible, but he increased his pace anyway.
Reaching the bank, he heaved the first armful of vests into the river, followed swiftly by the other, and raced back for cover. Vaulting an old fashioned cast-iron dumpster he checked that his sonic dampers were in place and hunkered down for the explosion. Over a minute later he poked his head over the top of the bin, wondering where the explosion had gotten to. The vests were a little way down-river, floating on the top and decidedly un-exploded.
He cautiously stood and walked over to where one had gotten caught on a rotted piece of an old pier. There was white powder streaming out of it, and on closer inspection what he had thought was a block of plastic explosive instead looked like some sort of clay, that was now dissolving on contact with the water.
So if that wasn't the plan… realisation hit him like a bullet to the spine and he spun on his heel, uncharacteristically graceless as he hurried to get back to the carnival before the situation got out of hand. How could I be so stupid, right in front of me the whole time, leapt before I looked Miyagi, whoah, where did that come from?
Deciding to review anything which could have had a negative effect on his subconscious monologue, he rushed back to where he had left the goons. They were still in a pile much as he had left them, only the few balloons they had had left had vanished. Too late, now what?
He scanned the crowd desperately, and caught a glimpse of a handful of balloons bobbing some distance away. Gotcha. Abandoning subtlety entirely, he drew his grapple gun and fired a line to the closest stand he could see next to the balloons, reeling it in at maximum speed. He went whistling over the heads of the crowd, scraping one or two of them with his boots as he went by. Given his usual definition of acceptable casualties, he didn't even think about it.
The balloons had stopped moving, and there seemed to be a scuffle already going on at their base. He released his hold on the grapple gun when he was nearly fifteen feet from the fight, and somersaulted in mid-air to let his boots arrive first. There was a satisfying thwack and a muffled "oof!" and he and one of the bad guys went rolling into a candy floss stall.
The thug went to attack him, but the punch fell short at the last second. He took full advantage, flipping himself over their head and landing a solid kick to the mid-back. They went down hard, grunting again as they hit the floor. Definitely female, young as well. He turned back to see a figure disappearing through the crowds, and the balloons were gone as well, floating above the heads of the civilians. Damian gave chase, muscling his way through what he couldn't avoid.
Damian had long been trained to recognise distinct sounds in a crowd, and to pull them out of even the most cacophonous din. So when he heard the sound of the female he had attacked just behind him and to his left, he sprang into action so fast it was reflex, catching her a stunning kick across the jaw.
"Ow! That hurt you little psycho!"
He froze, eyes wide and staring. Only one person in the entire world called him psycho in quite that tone. Normally people said it and meant it, but there was always someone who hadn't believed it fully. He stared as the figure got up, wearing head to toe purple and a black full face mask.
"You!" He said incredulously, "what are you wearing?"
"My uniform," she was massaging the side of her jaw, and even with the reflective lenses of the mask and the complete concealment of her face he knew she was glaring at him. He had an eidetic memory after all, and he had seen that particular glare more times than most of her other facial expressions. "What are you wearing?"
He frowned, wondering what she meant, then remembered what the last modification to his costume had been, "it's a long story," he muttered. His conscious caught up with his subconscious at last and he dropped into a fighting stance, "where are the balloons, and why are you working with the Joker?"
"I was trying to stop his thug when you slammed into me, and it wasn't Joker, it was one of the false faces, Black Mask is back in town." She peered over Damian's head, and before he could register his annoyance that she was still taller than him she was pointing at something in the distance, "they're almost to the Big Top!" She all but shrieked, "we have to stop them!"
He turned and started running, surprised to note that she was by his side a second later, "later, we are going to have a talk about where you've been," he said, hoping he sounded ominous.
"You sound like you're going a bad Batman impression," she said, making a valiant stab at puncturing his ego.
They skidded round a group of tourists and vaulted a low fence, nearly on the guy holding the balloons. When he saw that the thug's was wearing a mask Damian frowned, wondering if he might have been wrong and it was Black Mask's plan, not Joker's. But admitting he was wrong meant admitting that Stephanie had been right, and he just wasn't prepared to do that.
"There must be Joker toxin in the balloons," he said as he ran, "he's going to release it in the Big Top and poison everyone."
"Why would Black Mask be using Joker venom?" Damian was pleased to note that she already sounded out of breath, while he could have kept running for hours.
"Because it's not Black Mask planning this," he told her, "I beat up some of Joker's goons by the pier, they had fake bombs strapped to their chests and they were handing out those balloons."
"I saw this guy running around stealing balloons off children, and when I saw his mask I knew I had to step in."
"That doesn't make any sense," Damian said, using a pedestrian as a makeshift vault to gain a few feet on Stephanie.
"We can debate it later," she went in for the slide tackle as he went for the guy's neck, clamping his twisting the arm holding the balloons into an arm lock even as they fell to the floor. He grabbed the balloons and stepped back as Stephanie rabbit punched the guy in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.
"See," Damian held the balloons towards her, "Joker colours. Thus, Joker plan."
"Whatever," she was looking around, "any idea what the plan was?"
"I'm assuming to get the balloons into the Big Top, release the gas and poison everyone."
"So why were the guys you took down wearing fake bombs?"
"To throw us off the trail."
She shook her head, looking increasingly concerned, "none of this makes sense. Even Joker's plans have some sort of twisted logic to them, and Black Mask has always been methodical in his crime, something's not right."
"Look, we can debate the psychology of the criminally insane when we're not in possession of incredibly dangerous balloons filled with Joker toxin." He jerked his head to indicate one of the possible exits he had spotted earlier, "follow me."
Her body language told him she was still uncertain, but she followed anyway, and the two of them headed out into the alleys behind the fair. Damian felt himself growing more at ease as the darkness enveloped them, and soon enough his brain got back into gear and started giving him different ways to dispose of the Joker balloons.
Stephanie sat on a low wall and stared at the balloons in his hand. He perched next to her and gave her an equally searching look. All the things they could have said gathered in the silence between them until Damian felt the words leaving his mouth before he even realised it was open, "why did you leave?"
She jerked back to attention and shifted her look to him, "what?"
"Why did you leave?"
"He asked me to." And there should have been no need for any more information. "You said they had fake bombs?"
The topic change caught him momentarily off guard, but he recovered quickly, "Yes. It looked like plastic explosive, but when I got them into the river it turned out to be some sort of clay mixture."
"Fake bombs, a false face and thugs dressed as Joker goons..." Faster than he could react she threw something sharp at one of the balloons. Damian went for his gas-mask and let go of the ropes, leaving the balloons free to float away into the sky.
"You stupid woman!" He yelled, "now the balloons are out in the open and we're..." he trailed off as he realised that she wasn't wearing a gas mask, as far as he could see, and yet seemed to be completely fine. "Do you have breathing apparatus under the hood?"
She shook her head, "there was never any Joker toxin in those balloons, just like your explosives weren't explosives." She looked like she was trying hard to put the pieces together, but nothing made sense. "The only reason to go to those sorts of lengths is to distract from something really big, but what?"
She looked at him again, and even with the lenses in place he swore he saw her eyes widen, "there's still someone in the fair!"
He didn't wait for her to say anymore, springing from the wall and pelting back down the alley with her following him as fast as she could. He had no time to slow down like he normally did for her though, and soon heard her footsteps falling behind. He burst out into the carnival again, looking around wildly for any sign of something out of the ordinary, but there was nothing. A second later Stephanie collided with his back and went spiralling off into the crowd, cursing wildly.
"What are we looking for?" He yelled at her.
"I don't know!" She yelled back.
At that moment there was an explosion from the Ferris Wheel, and they looked over to see flames erupting from the very highest car. People were screaming and running as burning wood and debris rained down on them and the entire thing was shaking on its struts.
There are lots of skills that need to be mastered before one can even think of donning a cowl and going out to fight crime as an ordinary human being, but the most important thing can never be taught. The will to act is the only thing that matters. More than training, more than strength and speed and intelligence. The one thing that marks out any member of the Bat-Family is that when someone is in trouble they will spring into action without hesitation.
Stephanie and Damian don't exchange a look, they don't debate the best course of action, they don't even ask if they're going to risk it. They turn as one and run towards the fire.
AN:- I don't really have much planned for this, to the point where it might turn into a one shot. I'll be writing it as and when around about ten other projects I have going, both fanfiction and original work. I'm hoping to start publishing a book series within the next few months, so my fanfiction writing will be necessarily limited, but hopefully this won't be completely abandoned.
I hope the characterisation feels right to everyone. It's about trying to get the banter right without overdoing it. I see a lot of authors who take the one time Damian used the term 'Fatgirl' and then never have him refer to Steph as anything else. By that logic the only sentence that would ever come out of his mouth is 'I'm going to stab you fatgirl.' Also, Steph referring to Damian as 'Boy Blunder.' Once or twice, fine, when she's doing it with every other sentence you're into annoying territory. In general trying to write Damian is really hard, because on the one hand he's an arrogant toerag, but on the other he is hyper competent, so he kind of has basis for his arrogance. It's trying to bring across that dual nature which I found really hard.
Ah well c'est la vie, read and review please! My first DCU fanfic, wow.