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Chapter: 29
"Is that really all you got from the fire?" Tori asked Bruce, looking at the table filled with burnt pieces of paper, maps of Gotham and photos. It had been a week since she had to burn down part of an apartment building for the Court of Owls. Batman and the others have since then gathered as much information and leftover scraps from the burnt remains of the apartment room. Thankfully the fire department got to the location in time to save the building as a whole, but not the apartment building. The police of course, did suspect arson was involved seeing as two fires were started in the basement and in one specific room. Too bad there won't be any way to find who did it,
"Tim is bringing the rest of it from the police station. Apparently they did manage to take some stuff ahead of us," Bruce stated, "As important as it is for the cops to do their job, we need these in order to stop the Court," Tori nodded in agreement as she pulled the flash drive out of her back pocket,
"Here's a bit more information. I don't know if I got everything from Cornelius's computer, but there's a lot on here," she gave Bruce the flash drive who placed it among the other pieces of evidence,
"This is getting more complex," Bruce stated, "Not only is there a potential location for an armory of weapons that can be used against the Talons, but a list of potential Owl members. This is more information we've gotten on the Court of Owls than ever before," Tori raised an eyebrow,
"What are you saying?"
"Are you sure you want to continue doing this?"
"I'm fine," Tori insisted, "I need to do this. We need this information and we need to stop the Court for good. Not only that but I need to do this for my son," Bruce held her gaze,
"I know," Bruce said evenly, "but I don't want you to think you have to spy on them for us. You aren't one of them even if you have to work for them. We don't see you as a traitor and you don't have to investigate these things for us because of that,"
"I know I'm not a traitor," Tori stated, "This needs to get done," Bruce sighed but didn't say anything more as Tim came in on his motorcycle with police evidence boxes stacked on top of each other,
"Good to see you here," Tim said, "How are things?"
"Pretty good. I get to go back to work on Monday,"
"Who's taking care of Jake?"
"Daycare, the school has one across the street for parents who are teachers,"
"That's lucky,"
"It sure is," Tori stated smiling. She hoped it wouldn't be to hard to leave him there…it wasn't like she didn't trust a preschool that was a block away, but more like she didn't trust William to uphold his end of the deal. Even so, she had to try,
"I believe this is yours?" Tim asked pulling out her kukri knife from the apartment attack and handing it to her. It was blackened but hadn't been destroyed in the fire,
"I thought it would have been destroyed," she stated, still examining it, "I wouldn't have left it behind had I known,"
"The fire department got there well before any of the building structure was completely destroyed, you did good," Tori shot a glare at her half-brother,
"Okay…maybe not good good, but you could've done worse,"
"As entertaining as this is, I think it's time we got to work on deciphering the information we have here and going through the files and documents on the flash drive. We have a lot of work to do, we need to get going," Bruce stated, giving them the 'stop this impending argument now' look, effectively silencing them. Tim and Tori nodded and set to work. They needed to resolve this Owl issue as soon as possible.
Tori didn't know how she got corralled into this. She wasn't qualified for this…okay, she was, but not really…she could have been—once upon a dream or something. She was back at work and she was happy about that but she had not been expected to have to teach fifth grade history because a teacher called in sick late. If this were in the high school building and a teacher called in sick late they could just cancel the class, but in middle school apparently that was frowned upon. So now Tori was substituting for fifth graders. The unit was the American Revolution and that was pretty simple enough, Tori just couldn't believe they made her do it instead of getting a substitute. It was a private school, they could afford it! Even so, she had to teach them. She'd dropped off Jacob easy-peasy…okay not so easy-peasy. She kept him for the first half of the day before deciding that was just annoying and disruptive to her students, even if the majority of them were male and did not care that much about babies…except if they'd accidentally created one. So after her last class of the day she hurried over to the daycare and left him there for the evening. And she swore that if there were paparazzi waiting there when Jason picked him up when he was done with work she would castrate all of them. Midterms were coming up so Tori was staying after-school a lot to help her students, and keeping her son out of the spotlight was hard enough thanks to her family status as a Crowne and an extended family member of the Waynes. She wondered how Jacob was doing. Hopefully he was being a good five-almost six-month old,
"I don't get it," a kid said, startling her out of her thoughts,
"Don't get what?" Tori asked,
"I don't get why the colonies were so pissed about the taxes on tea…I mean, it's tea blech!" Tori resisted rolling her eyes and thought of a way to explain the situation in a way they would relate to. Looking over the class she spotted two boys on their phones, with a smirk, Tori meandered over to where they sat,
"Well, why don't I try and explain it in a more modern setting," Tori started, tapping the first boy on the shoulder and holding out her hand for the device. He sullenly placed it in her waiting hand, "Let's say that every time you logged on to wifi, you had to pay a tax to use it. How would you feel?" a beat of silence before eighteen outraged voices chorused through the room,
"And," Tori said, when the noise dialed down. Reaching out for the other kids phone. He sighed and held it out for her. She took it from his grasp, "if you don't pay that tax, certain rights—," she wiggled the phone for everyone to see, "—were revoked. Like a blockade to prevent trading and traveling or something,"
"But they can't do that! We paid for those phones!" A girl with bright blonde pigtails exclaimed,
"That's exactly how the colonists felt. They traded stuff for that tea, they had a right to obtain it without getting taxed for it without their say so. Of course, now everything in this country is pretty much taxed, but the big thing back then was that they didn't get a say in how much they were taxed,"
"No taxation without representation!" another kid called out,
"Exactly. That is why everyone was so upset,"
"But did they really need to start a war?" a girl asked,
"That's the big question huh? We'll never know what would have happened without the American Revolution, maybe things would have been different all around the world if there hadn't been one. But that's the sad thing about the world: there will always be another war,"
"That sounds horrible,"
"It is," Tori agreed, "And the most ironic thing is the biggest threat to democracy, is war itself. In a perfect world Democracy makes sure that economic development happens more efficiently and faster, so therefore there would be no fighting between democratic countries. But since not every country is a democracy there is war over many things. Land, economic differences, religion, race, and other stupid things like that. War, which is expensive and hinders economic development, is therefore a threat to all democracies," she got confused and blank stares, "Yeah, I better save that for comparative politics if I ever sub for it," she stated. A couple kids laughed, "Let's get back to the Boston Tea Party and the eventual blockade in the Boston Harbor." It was an interesting day, and seeing as she didn't usually teach such a class, it was actually kind of fun. Maybe she could take on fifth grade history as well as computer science one day?
A/N: Okay, so I got the whole second half thing about the cell phones and wifi from a tumblr post, which was great! It's been a while since I really actually thought about the American Revolution and it just popped up in my comparative politics class so that was where the whole war and democracy thing came up. To be fair, I could still be somewhat off about that so please be somewhat nice about it. It's been a while and we only talked about the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, democracy and war in the class so it wasn't about the actual events. I just thought it would be a nice touch because Tori is technically going to 'war' with the Court of Owls and I thought it was a nice parallel.
The quote "There will always be another war" is from the Series Raven's Shadow which I highly recommend for everyone to read! It's really good!
Thanks for reading! Please please please REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW!
Next chapter on Monday and Nobody's Weapon on Friday!
