Steven Universe vs Crazy Steve: Part 1
Disclaimer: I own nothing in this and this story is a pure non-profit venture.
Parts of this are an extended fuck you to Frank Miller, who while I'm sure is a good person; can't write comics at all. And can't draw.
This is something I wrote when writing a novel was giving me fatigue and I needed to reset.
15 hours ago
The scene opens up with a familiar podcast. The title and the music intro are well known to use despite or perhaps because of being so bargain brand and amateurish.
Keep Beach City Weird!
All done up in fonts that many of us abused as children in early nineties computer class, it strangely suits the pretentious and immature personality of one Ronaldo Fryman; fat bastard and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire.
And that is where our story begins.
"Citizens of Beach City and those who wish to take the red pill everywhere," Ronaldo begins, as an advertisement for male sexual enhancement appears near the bottom of the screen. "As many of you know I've dedicated my life to the truth that The Deep State and the Rothschild's don't want you to know about."
The rotund young man leans forward in his rolling chair and begins to speak like some old timey priest high on opium fumes and god knows what else. "While I've dedicated much recent news to the strange baby eating rock people which terrorize us, some attention must also be paid to the so called Bat Man."
"While some hail this flying rodent as a hero, I and my loyal followers know better. This Bat Man is in fact an agent of The Deep State; distracting the sheeple with his dog and pony show—fighting colorful freaks and lunatics but never once going near the true owners of this country: the Sneeple!"
Ronaldo takes a deep breath before resuming, now ads for Pick Up artistry books running across the bottom of the screen. (One Weird Phrase that takes away women's free will! Only $9.99!)
"Some of my enlightened cohorts believe that Rothschild's descendant and International Jewish Banking Cartel member Bruce Wayne is the batman since only he has the wealth or the means to achieve such a goal for the ruling hidden powers. But the truth my viewers, is much stranger."
Ronaldo leans in to break the news to the true believers. "You see my friends, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the true identity of this flying rodent is not Bruce Wayne or the hated Statist George Soros. The Bat Man is in fact a crazed homeless man who won the lottery and now pursues his dreams of eliminating criminality from the face of the earth while dressed as a chiropteran!"
Crash!
Something breaks off of camera and Ronaldo shits his pants. "Oh Christ!" he screams right before everything goes black.
Now
Batman finished replaying the podcast footage in the HUD of his cowl. The Dark Knight scowled at the ID stamp that had come with the data packet.
Walter Kovacs
One of the Question's newer aliases.
There wasn't a note or a description with the video the Question had sent him; this wasn't out of character for the madly paranoid vigilante whose detective skills possibly surpassed Batman's own. That wasn't the part that got to Batman and made him expect the worst more than he already did.
"Oracle," he spoke into the suit's hidden microphone. "Get me the latest twenty-four hour news reports regarding Beach City, Delmarva."
"Just a minute, Bruce," came the voice of Barbara Gordon, aka Oracle; arguably the world's greatest hacker. "Woah."
The silence on the line was deafening and it only deepened Batman's scowl. He waited for Barbara to finish.
"Well, Bruce," Oracle started, composing herself, "Right now at least six people are dead in Beach City with over forty seven critically injured. Half of the town is on fire and so far nobody has come forward to take credit for it. People are blaming a terrorist attack or the Joker."
"Is there any evidence to suggest one over the other?" Bruce deadpanned.
Barbara paused on the line. "Well I'll let you see for yourself."
More footage played across Batman's HUD, timestamped from the last two hours. As the detective's mind began to work on ways to connect the Ronaldo Fryman video and this new chain of events, he couldn't help but be horrified by what he was seeing.
From a grid work of different news screens from various TV stations, blogs and websites Batman could see a giant, flaming smiley face burned into a field with gasoline. He also saw a giant flaming DD, a flaming crow and his own Batman symbol burned in gasoline in various parts of beach city. These enormous pyromaniac works of art were spreading rapidly and threatening to burn down Beach City and the neighboring towns and counties.
People bloodied, bruised and traumatized; looking like refugees in a warzone paraded across a dozen cameras. The Fish-Stew Pizza restaurant and the Fry shop demolished as if by some high speed, indestructible vehicle. One of the sketchier news stations managed to capture footage of paramedics prying the severed head of the Mayor from the hands of his traumatized son.
"Why wasn't I told about this earlier?" Batman struggled to keep the pain out of his voice; he felt sick. The faces of the traumatized citizens of Beach City burned into his flawless memory.
"Bruce, honestly you've got a lot of surveillance on the go. You've got a lot of enemies; deal with a lot of disasters and on top of it you were helping to handle the resurgence of Godzilla recently. There's only so much you can do."
Bruce said nothing, for all his skill and resources he was still just one man. He cut off the feed of news stories and disaster porn in his HUD, leaving him once more alone atop one of Gotham's many roofs.
"Do we have any idea on the whereabouts of the Crystal Gems?" Batman asked his number one support crew.
"The Gems were last spotted by our drones just sixteen hours ago, right before that video you got was taken."
Under the cowl, the Batman frowned. A pattern was emerging and he really didn't like the way his projections were shaping up. "The Gems need to be informed. This is earlier than I had planned, but we need to reach out to them. Oracle, link me to the Watchtower, or better yet the Teen Titans."
The rest of the conversation didn't go as planned because an energy beam destroyed the gargoyle that Batman was crouched on. The concussive blast threw Batman horizontally and slammed him into a reinforced window.
Skull rattled from the impact and disoriented, gravity took hold and Batman went into freefall. Going for his grapnel gun, the caped crusader fired a shot at the nearest sturdy ledge. The hyper-motors on the gun kicked into gear and Batman flew towards solid ground—until something spinning purple like sonic the hedgehog flew through the air and severed the line.
Falling once more, Batman's cape opened up as non-Newtonian fluid grew rigid and transformed into a glider. Batman steered his descent towards the monorail, hoping to snag a ride on the approaching train and flee his attackers. That was not to be as a red and black humanoid struck him in mid-air and launched the Bat like a soccer ball.
The wind was knocked from Batman's lungs and he rolled across the gravel roof of an abandoned warehouse. He shakily got to his feet, the Batsuit protecting him from the worst of the impact, though his head had begun ringing. He was just beginning to suck in the air back into his lungs when he finally saw his attackers.
"This is your only chance, Batman!" shouted the normally cool and reserved Garnet. "Return Steven safely and you will not be harmed!"
Normally the most collected and poised of the Crystal Gems, Pearl stepped in front of Garnet armed with a stop sigh she'd ripped from the ground. "Give us Steven now!" she shrieked, on the verge of tears.
Per usual, Amethyst was the least diplomatic of the group. "We're gonna cut your dick off, Batman!" To emphasize the point she waved a second hand sushi knife in the air like a sword. The short purple gem's face was streaked with tears and snot dribbled down to her chin.
Batman weighed his options. He'd long ago drawn up plans to defeat the Crystal Gems if it ever came to that, but honestly he'd hoped to recruit them as allies to the Justice League or at least establish diplomatic ties with them. Maybe he could still get through this without having to resort to combat.
Ribs aching and muscles bruised, Batman tried to explain himself. "I don't know where this person is. If they're missing or kidnapped I can help you find them."
"Liar!" shrieked pearl, on the verge of hysterics. "Liar! You took him; you took our little Steven Universe!" Her breathing grew ragged as she produced a deadly looking spear from her gemstone and brandished the stop sign in her hand. "Steven is out there in a cave, forced to eat rats and it's all because of you, you psychopath!"
Batman was a master of expecting the unexpected, but even he was hard pressed to think of a reason why Steven Universe would be in a cave, eating rabies infested cave rodents. "I don't know Steven's location, I can help you."
"Bullshit, FUCK YOU!" Amethyst cried out, her shapeshifting going haywire with grief and rage. "We saw you, we all saw you take away Steven and now we're going to take him back. So talk, NOW!"
Bruce's mind was working overtime. So evidently there was a batman imposter at play here. That in itself was nothing new; the real question was why would a Batman impersonator go out of Batman's usual territory to kidnap a human gem hybrid?
Batman was given no further chances to testify as Pearl of all people charged at him screaming, driven insane by maternal instinct and loss. Pearl leapt at the Dark Knight with the grace of a gazelle, swinging the fifty pound lump of concrete at the bottom of the stop sign. She swung her makeshift mace, hoping to shatter Batman's kneecaps into powder.
The Dark Knight waited until the last possible second, throwing down a chain of smoke bombs. Pearl was shocked as the smoke blocked off not only the human spectrum of light but her ability to see in infrared and ultraviolet as well.
The former gem servant charged through the smoke cloud only to comically run right off the roof of the building. That still left Batman with two PTSD afflicted, super powered space moms to deal with.
Amethyst charged at him in her purple sonic mode, with the added danger of a several thousand RPM sushi knife to one side. Springs in his boots activated and lent speed to Batman's leap while he simultaneously reached into his utility belt and threw a burrito at Amethyst.
Like time was moving in slow motion, Amethyst leapt out of her spinning circular position and lunged at Batman's crotch with her knife; hoping to either geld the Dark Knight or hit his codpiece with enough force to pulp whatever was inside. She could not resist her true nature however, as her jaws clamped down on the bat burrito as mindlessly as a shark chomping on a piece of chum.
The specially designed high energy explosive went off in the pudgy, purple gem's mouth with enough force to turn an M1-Abrams tank into a molten pile. Strong as it was, the exploding burrito was designed to poof Amethyst without physically cracking her.
To Batman's frustration, the explosion knocked her back and melted her knife but failed to poof her hardlight form.
Then there was Garnet, arguably the deadliest and most tactical of the crystal gems. Her future sight alone made her an unpredictable and dangerously tactical opponent, but this wasn't the first time that Batman had faced a future seer.
The Batman began to move on pure instinct, using grapnel line and spring boots to keep ahead of Garnet's powerhouse gauntlets. He didn't plan or think too much as that would crystalize one potential future over another and tip off his hand to the large, Afro-British gem.
The Dark Knight struck a blow at Garnet. Given her intense durability, it should have done nothing. Instead, lines of crackling energy ran up Garnet's form and the outlines of circuits bisected her body.
The experimental gem destabilizer was working as planned until Garnet lashes out and struck the power source at the elbow of Batman's gauntlet.
Searing agony ran up Batman's arm as the microfusion cell detonated, destroying the gem destabilizer and adding to the dark knight's damage meter.
The destabiliser had worked but not well enough, it was time for a tactical retreat. Without another word, Batman threw himself over the roof and plunged to the Gotham streets below. Twisting and turning in midair, the cowl's sophisticated computer system alerted him the direction of Pearl's incoming energy beams and in split second simulations showed him the best way to evade.
"Oracle!" Batman called into his cowl. No reply. A sub vocal command brought up a system diagnostic of the suit as well as delivered a dose of intravenous combat drugs into his system. Temporarily relieved of pain by the drugs and altered, Batman saw the damage to the suit while still dodging.
Red warning symbols alerted Batman to the fact that the suits communications systems were down. Grudgingly, he had to give it to Garnet when she struck him that first time; she knew what she was doing.
Batman and his advanced computer guidance system could evade Pearl on the ground but a freefalling Amethyst used her whip to slice through his cape. Like a one winged bat, Batman went into a freefall tailspin.
Activating his gauntlet, he alerted the autopilot on the Batmobile while with his free hand he drew a spare grapnel. Hopped up on combat drugs, Batman's reflexes kicked into metahuman levels as he fired the grapnel and caught threw himself into a swing Tarzan style.
Shredded cape flying behind him, Batman hit a hard roll that he surely would feel when the stimulants and painkillers wore off. He just narrowly missed Amethyst, who landed where he was with enough force to shatter the pavement.
Specialized rocket thrusters used just for occasions like this went off in Batman's boots and took him out of the way of the Batmobile which had been speeding down the road.
The purple gem cracked her whip, just missing Batman's carotid artery by a margin of millimetres. Meanwhile a frontal panel in the Batmobile opened up and fired an armor piercing missile at Amethyst.
The fiery explosion rattled Batman's bones and showered his armored suit in shrapnel. Amethyst's hardlight form gave up the ghost; turning into a gaseous compound which rapidly dissipated into the atmosphere.
The victory came at a price as a stricken Pearl stared down the charging, heavily armed, multi-ton superhero car. With a single sweep of her spear, she sliced the Batmobile in half; bisecting it and causing the two halves to crash on separate sides of the road. Battered hounded and beaten, Batman was just glad that there were no innocent bystanders around.
The white calcium carbonate gem charged at Batman, ready to cut his legs off when a panel opened up in batman's gauntlet and fired a stream of pressurized ketchup at her. Pearl screamed as the ketchup hit her eyes and blinded her. Panicking, she used her spear arm to try and wipe the viscous, sugary liquid away. In her frenzied spinning, Pearl let go of the stop sign; which flew into one half of the Batmobile and bent it nearly in half with the impact.
A blow struck Batman from behind as a newly reformed Amethyst struck him from behind. Her form flickering from forcing herself to reform too quickly, Amethyst used all her willpower to keep her form; raising her arms over the downed Batman for what very well could have been a killing blow.
Suddenly Garnet stepped between Amethyst and Batman, taking the blow for the Dark Knight. Even weakened as she was, the impact rocked Garnet's adamantine frame and would have done much worse to Batman, who was just as surprised by Garnet's actions as anyone else.
"Stop," said the stoic Gem with a renewed sense of urgency. "He isn't the one who kidnapped Steven."
Squawking and blinded from ketchup, Pearl shouted at a fire hydrant that she thought was Garnet. "This is preposterous! You saw it in your future vision! We all saw it on Ronaldo's "secret" spy cameras!"
"That wasn't him," Garnet challenged, "For starters this man hasn't called Amethyst 'retarded' like the true kidnapper would have."
"What!" Amethyst cried out, her form flickering with exertion, "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"What!" Batman yelled, losing his composure for the first time; shock writ across his normally stern features.
Garnet explained, "It was another man, dressed like this man here. Had we been fighting him, he would have called Amethyst 'a retard' and would have called Pearl a 'lesbo."
"You know of this man?" Batman ground out; all of the worst possibilities and worst case scenarios playing through his mind. Whatever he'd expected or thought might have happened was nowhere near as bad as the truth; especially if Steven Universe had been kidnapped by just a specific individual.
"What aren't you telling us? Tell us who has Steven! Tell us, Batman and we won't harm you," Pearl said to a mailbox, still struggling to get the ketchup out of her eyes.
Batman felt bad for the gems. They were not going to like what he had to say. "I believe Steven has been kidnapped by someone I've been trying to find for the last year; he is a mentally unstable homeless man who believes that he is me and uses lethal methods to fight crime. This individual has a habit of kidnapping gifted young boys to be his Robin figure, only to murder them when they don't live up to his standards or else sexually abuse and molest them."
Pearl gasped in horror as she finished getting the ketchup out of one of her eyes, Amethyst screamed in torment and punched the mailbox that Pearl had been talking to "STE-MAN!" she wailed, worried to death for her little brother figure.
Garnet looked at the Dark Knight through her shades, taking in the role of this man in the future that could be and the terrible futures that must never come to pass. "Will you help us find this man, Batman?"
Bruce grunted, the combat meds wearing off but his resolve stronger than ever. "My associates call this man Crazy Steve and you have my word that I will help you bring back Steven Universe safe and unharmed."
Meanwhile
"I'm Batman!" said the large man in an animal costume.
"No, you're not," said Steven Universe.
"What are you, dense? Are you retarded?" snarled the man in a bat costume while doing a shitty Clint Eastwood impersonation. "I'M THE GODDAMN BATMAN!"
Steven looked at the man with a mix of pity and disgust, "No, you're not," he repeated.
Author's note:
So that's part one of this story, the second and final part will come in a bit. For the longest time I was working on my novel and everything I put on the page was grim and dark. Then I hammered out this chapter. And maybe this isn't light and sweet by other people's standards but boy was it fun.
And a lot of Batman fans in particular forget that, Batman should be fun. Steven Universe should be fun. Writing should be fun at least some of the time. And I had a ton of fun with this.
Let me know what you thought of it.
Ta
Master of the Boot