Disclaimer: I don't own Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, JLA, Static Shock, Teen Titans or any other affiliated idea- those are owned by DC Comics

I don't own Ranma ½ or any other anime/manga I may mention.

Thanks to my prereader J.St.C . Partick for, well, prereading for me.


"So, doctor, could you explain just how this works?" I asked.

The doctor, chief of R&D for Wayne-Technologies, nodded. He was sitting in a chair, to look me in the eye. "The project was started when we were going over materials salvaged from the Thangarian occupation. There was what appeared to be a metallic rope. We thought nothing of it, and lumped it in with the rest of the unessential scrap. Several months later, we found something odd." He paused dramatically.

I humoured him "Which was?"

"It contracted when a small current passed through it. Radically contracted. The rope was ten metres long- it contracted to one metre, and whipped with enough force that it cut through one of the walls." He looked sad for a moment. "It cut off one of the workers arms."

I pretended confusion. "Why wasn't I told about this!?"

He smiled condescendingly. "It was a month before Mr Wayne was killed in his skiing accident. You weren't here at the time."

"Ahhh," I nodded. "So, what did you do with this miracle rope?"

"We refined it, down to thread size. We call it myomer-fibre. It lost some strength with the shielding we had to create, but it still allows for a significant movement."

I smiled gratefully at him. "Thank you, doctor. Your work is most interesting. I can see some use for it already." I beckoned to Nickel, and she approached, taking hold of my wheelchair.

The doctor didn't become chief of R&D by failing to realize when his superiors were bored. "Good day, Miss Gordon."

"Good day, doctor."

Nickel shook the doctors' hand, and wheeled me out of the labs.

"What did you think of it, Miss Gordon?" Nickel asked, once we were a suitable distance away.

I frowned. "Useless ass. Has no idea what he's made. It's just a toy to him."

She pushed me out of the building, and over to the Limo. Penny was there waiting for us. She opened the back door of the Limo, and lowered the ramp. Nickel wheeled me onto the ramp, and into the car. Shutting the door behind us, Penny got into the driver's seat. Nickel stayed in the back with me. I groaned, and hopped out of the chair. "I despise that thing."

"It was your choice to hide your recovery, Babs," Penny pointed out cheerfully.

I glowered at the wheel chair. I had spent far too much time in it over the years. "True."

Nickel fastened the chair to the floor, and Penny dove away from the building. "So- did ya get what you wanted?"

I poured myself a drink from the mini bar. "Yes. It's ready. He's even solved the shielding problem. Now just remains the problem of actually getting it."

Nickel blinked in surprise. "You own the company. Can't you just take it?"

"No. I can't let it be traced back to me personally. I'm just a pleasant billionaire who can't walk and doesn't like crowds," I pointed out bitterly. It was my cover now, like the way Bruce pretended to be an idiot, but it had been all too true not too long ago. "I'll have to steal it."


Penny drove us back to the mansion. I stalked off to the cave, to think. To get away from them.

Not that I didn't like Penny and Nickel- on the contrary, I wasn't sure how I got by without them. They were fun to talk with, kept the mansion clean and in repair, kept me fed, and knew about my history as Batgirl.

Not that I had told them about that. Their full names were Penny Pennyworth and Nickel Pennyworth- Alfred's twin granddaughters. Alfred had returned to England after Bruce died, and I got by with just myself and the occasional hired cleaner. But the day after WildHorse made his stunning debut, Alfred appeared on my doorstop. He knew me too well. He knew about my alcohol problem; he knew that WildHorse would shock me into doing something.

He tried to offer his services to me- I refused. He deserved to enjoy his final years, not spend them looking after me. He agreed, too easily I thought. I was right- a week later, the twins turned up. They humored me as I rudely sent them away- the next morning, I woke up to a spotless house, the smell of a hearty breakfast cooking, a pair of overly cheerful twins asking what my plans for the day were, and that was that.

I had been making trips to the Labs over the last week, and I had catalogued what I needed. Now, I was almost ready. All I needed to do was make a phone call.

"Yes... Ms Kyle? I have a job for you..."


That evening found me sitting in the park, feeding some the pigeons. I smiled to myself as I felt the air move slightly. "You're late."

There was a light padding of feet, as Catwoman came into view. "I truuuussst you have my fee?" She asked lightly, with an underlying threat.

I wasn't too worried. As Batman had noted over the years, she was a thief, not a murderer. While she loved a good cat-fight, she was by no means a fan of violence. That made her the perfect person to steal what I needed. "In the car. You have what I wanted?"

She hissed, and passed me a bag. I opened it, and gave it a look. "Let's go to my car." I wheeled myself over to the limo, where Nickel was waiting. Of the twins, she was the more polite. I nodded at her, and she opened the back door, retrieving a bag. She passed it to Catwoman, in exchange for her bag. "Pleasure doing business with you, Catwoman."

She opened the bag, and I could hear her purr with pleasure at the contents- with good reason. A hundred thousand in gold, another hundred thousand in cash, and a pair of matching emerald and ruby cat statues was nothing to sneeze at.

I gestured at Nickel, and she helped me into the car. As she was about to close the door, Catwoman's insistent voice snapped at me. "Wait." I nodded at Nickel, and she opened the door again.

"Yes?" I asked testily. "You have the fee we agreed upon. Was there something else?"

"Yesssss," she purred again. That girl took her cat theme too seriously. "I want to know why."

I smirked coldly. "Why would I pay you so much money to steal these little things?"

"Exactly."

"Most of these are owned indirectly by LexCorp, and the rest are owned by more of Gotham's elite, bidding for government contracts. With these, I can have my engineers reverse engineer them, and undercut the others. Later tonight, Firefly will torch all of the buildings, leaving no one the wiser that anything was missing."

Her eyes glinted in the moonlight. "And why did I target one of your labs?"

I glowered. "The head of that lab was very insulting about my chair." Suddenly, I smirked. "Still, Wayne Enterprises makes sure all its buildings are well insured. I come out on top anyway. Good evening, Selina Kyle."

With that, Nickel closed the door, and drove away. I went through the bag again. The thermoptic-camo was there, as was the computer chip, the directionless mike, and the nano-grippers. They were the big things- everything else was secondary. I poured myself a celebratory drink. Everything was coming together.


"And so," I used a laser pointer to gesture at the graph, "By pulling our assets from the fishery and putting them into the hydro-electric dam, we will not only see a forty percent rise in profits from them over the next quarter, but we also position ourselves to take the railway contract next year."

I stared down the board of directors. Some of them had been handpicked by Bruce, others had simply gravitated there by virtue of the sheer number of shares in Wayne-tech that they had, but they all had one thing in common- I needed to impress them if I wanted to start making changes in my city.

One of them, Edward Kane, coughed. "These figures are all well and good, Ms Gordon, but what basis do you have for them? Forty percent sounds too good to be true."

There was a general murmur of agreement from the room, but I wasn't intimidated. "The reason is simple, gentlemen: oil. With the war in Iraq not looking like it's going to finish any time soon, oil will skyrocket in price. With the dam, we not only avoid the ongoing costs associated with a petrol or nuclear power plant, but we set ourselves up for favourable press. Going 'green' will be the new trend, and at the front will be Wayne-corp."

Kane nodded approvingly. "The greater cost will be a setback, but by taking the money out of the fishing industry it won't hurt us. A lean year, perhaps, but once that dam goes online it will be worth it."

The Kane family was the second richest in Gotham, next to the Wayne family. Edward was one of the cousins, with a good helping of business sense. I knew the moment I had his approval, the board would fall into place.

I had an ulterior motive for the reshuffle, of course. Aside from the environmental side effects, it was safer than any other form of power, and far less likely to draw the attention of Poison Ivy than any other option. It was also the perfect cover for the money I had to move around, and for hiring engineers. I had a line on over a dozen foreign engineers who were having trouble finding American employment at something other than driving taxis or flipping burgers. It was amazing how many foreigners there were in America with good education and ideas, working as taxi drivers because even with a menial job like that, it was still better than the money they'd make in their own countries.

I had uses for those engineers. The Batmobile was out of date, and I wanted a new one.


"Thank you, Mr Foley," I said solemnly. "Although Richard never survived long enough to take his place at Wayne-corp, I feel I owe it to him to fulfil the agreement we made."

The imposing fellow looked sad. "I... we never even found his body, you know? His head... but the rest of him was nowhere to be found."

"It was a hard time for all of us," I agreed. "I haven't been able to walk in years. The Joker."

He sighed. "Well, you might as well come in." He opened the door, and Penny wheeled me inside. I could tell at a glance that he lived alone- my research indicated that Richard was the only child he'd ever had, and he had divorced not long after he had lost his son.

"So, why now?" He asked, obviously trying to get his mind off the subject of his son's death. "It's been, god, ten years."

"I take great interest in nurturing talented individuals, Mr Foley." I said honestly. "Richard had accepted a scholarship to Wayne-corp for his revolutionary shoe design."

"He always was a smart boy," the father allowed, holding a picture of a young, blond boy. "I knew he was going to go far. You wanted to see the designs?"

"If it's not too painful."

"No, it's fine. It would be nice for something of my son's to live on. Uh, his room's up stairs..." He said delicately, pointing at my chair.

I chuckled. 'That won't be a problem."

It wasn't. Penny, I was sure, was taking steroids. She carried me up those stairs like a sack of wheat, while a bemused Mr Foley carried my chair. I outwardly smiled, while seething on the inside. I hated not using my own two legs.

I understood the necessity- hell, it was my idea. No one confused Bruce Wayne with the Batman because they were so different. Bruce was an incompetent, friendly fop. Batman was scary, antisocial, and brilliant. I was already known as being smart, so I had to use my reputation as a cripple. But it still burned me, inside.

Penny put me back in my chair, and pushed me into Richard's room. Everything was covered in dust, but otherwise was exactly the same as it had been ten years ago.

Something caught my eye, and I pointed it out to Mr Foley. "Those shoes... may I have a look at them?"

He passed them to me quickly, and I took a good, long look at them. "Yup, these are the ones. Would you mind if I..."

"Oh, no, go right ahead. Like I said, it'll be good to see something of him live on. Take what you need."

Sometime later, Penny and I exited the building. Penny carried a pair of metal boots, a green visor, and a hard drive. I sighed sadly. So many people had been killed over the years, and Richard Foley was one of the greatest losses. The boy had been brilliant. He had invented a pair of rocket-boots at the age of fifteen, of all things. It was a pity the world would never know the brilliance of Richie Foley.

Or as some knew him, Static's sidekick, Gear.


My fingers burned as I typed as fast as I could. I have an eidetic memory- I can never forget anything, no matter how much I want to.

Well, alcohol stops me remembering- probably the best reason to drink it. But apart from that, I remember everything since I was about three years old. Believe me, when you're coding in C, trying to get an OS running on hardware more advanced than most people realize exists, having that memory helps big time. I was interfacing a dozen different pieces of hardware, most of which should have been totally incompatible with each other.

Behind me, I could hear sparks as Penny welded, and the sound of rustling fabric as Nickel sewed.


"Every buddy on the floor! This is a heist, see?!" Cried the puppet, cradling a machinegun, held by a timid ventriloquist. "No heroics, and you might all make it. Moe! How's it coming?"

"Almost there, boss." Called one of the numerous henchmen, as he cranked the handle of the bank's main vault. "Ugh!"

He slumped to the floor, unconscious. The rest of the gang panicked, and started pointing their guns at the shadows. "Who's there?" One of them shouted.

There was an explosion of movement, and a dark figure flew into the crowd of henchmen. Men went flying everywhere, until the only two people standing were the ventriloquist, and... something.

This something was human shaped. Covered completely by a black bodysuit, the only things the ventriloquist could see were the burning red eyes, a mane of dark red hair, the tall pointy ears, and a blood red Bat emblazoned over a pair of breasts. "B.B.B... BATMAN!!" He shrieked.

"No," the dark figure growled, "Batwoman."


Yep, it's short. Think of it as a second prologue, more than anything else. Later chapters will be longer.

If Barbara seems out of character, remember- she's a bitter alcoholic, who's spent a decade paralyzed, watching her friends die and the world get worse. That would change anyone. I'm basing her personality off Renee Montoya, the new comic-verse Question.