DC Comics Presents: Killing Roy Harper
Chapter 11: Batwoman and the Flying Fox
By: Christopher W. Blaine
e-mail: darth_yoshi@yahoo.com
DISCLAIMER: Batwoman™, Flying Fox™ and all other related characters and situations found in this story are ©2002 by DC Comics Inc. and are used herein without permission for fan-related, non-profit entertainment purposes only. This original work of fiction is ©2002 by Christopher W. Blaine and may not be reproduced in part or as a whole without the express permission of the author.
"Are you sure about this, Spectre?" Batwoman asked as she peered at the doorway that he had created from thin air. It was a black rectangle against the grey-white mists that surrounded them. Deadman, now in his spirit body and clad in the red daredevil costume that he had worn in his own life, put a hand on her shoulder.
"Look, Kathy," Deadman started, "its no big deal going in there. It's Limbo, the real thing, the place where…how do I put it, Jordan?"
The Spectre looked over and his normally deathly pale gained some color. "Imagine a place where God puts ideas that just didn't pan out, but He didn't want to get rid of yet."
Batwoman shook her head. "I don't like that idea. That means when God thought of me and my world, it wasn't worthy…it wasn't good enough…"
"No, because you did exist, but your world, your life, reached their natural conclusion. Don't make the mistake that the Time-Guardian has and think that some higher power has it in for you." Deadman removed his hand and stood back. "There is no guarantee that you will live for any amount of time. Look at me; I was cut down in the prime of life…you don't see me rallying against the Almighty!"
Batwoman tried to say something but she was cut off by the Spectre. "What of my mortal life? I saw Coast City, my home, destroyed, turned to rubble. What of all of those people?"
Turning back towards the doorway, Batwoman attempted to draw some courage from the fact that what she was doing was right and moral. Roy Harper had been murdered before his time and that had allowed a duplicate of him, the Time-Guardian, to take his place. All sorts of chaos had ensued, including the sudden reappearance of the Batwoman and several other heroes that had been wiped from the continuity by the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
The decision had been made that Roy Harper had to be pulled from Limbo and returned to the Prime Universe. Returning him would cut the Time-Guardian off from being able to physically act there. It was the only chance to take him on and defeat him on the world created by the Time-Trapper.
That world had come about when Aquagirl had released the Dark Flash from a special prison that the Time-Guardian ordered constructed. The prison was actually a giant battery, powered by the Dark Flash's connection to the Speed Force and was being used to keep the Crisis wave back. The Crisis wave existed in some form or fashion in every moment of time and had to complete its journey through the centuries in order for the new universe to be born. Any tampering with that had unforeseen consequences.
The Time-Guardian had not cared; all he wanted was to create his perfect world where he was the ultimate super-hero. Only through the efforts of Batwoman and her friends was that plan halted. Now, however, the Time-Guardian was slowly regaining his powers. While he probably would not try the same thing again, there was nothing to stop him from going into the Prime Universe and conquering it once and for all.
That was why Batwoman was now here. The only way to prevent this was to put Roy Harper back where he belonged. Deadman could not go, as he was needed back on the Time-Trapper's world to prepare for the final battle. The Spectre simply refused, which was kind of strange since such things were more up his alley than that of a wanna-be Batgirl. All of the other members of her team of friends were busy working with the Time-Trapper coming up with a plan for assaulting the Legion of Doom, the Time-Guardian's personal force of super-villains.
That left only her, the least experienced member of the team with the most important task: finding the real Roy Harper. After his death at the hands of the Composite-Superman, Roy had been regaled to Limbo, awaiting some final judgment that most likely would never come.
Go to any reality, as any person, read any religious tome and you would most likely find several different definitions of Limbo. The truth was that Batwoman feared that once she entered it, she would never return.
"When I was forced to leave him," the Spectre began as he recollected a time past, "he was more concerned about his daughter than about himself. On the outside he is callous and arrogant, a womanizer and even seemingly irresponsible. His soul, however, burns with compassion and pain born of someone who remembers their mistakes every minute of every day. He considers his existence to be only to protect his young daughter."
There was an awkward silence that Batwoman finally broke. "Where is his daughter?"
"We don't know, at least not yet. She is a special focal point in the time stream. Lian Harper will one day become something more than…"
Deadman raised his eyebrows to the Spectre and the spirit nodded that he understood that he was giving far too much background. The Spectre subverted most of its human host, instead becoming the cold angel he was commonly known to be. "The current whereabouts of Lian Harper are not your concern, woman."
"Woman?" she asked, suddenly ready to throw down. All fear and apprehension dissolved at the condescending tone of the angel. "I have a name, mister!"
Deadman stepped between them. "Kathy," he said, wanting to get her going as soon as possible, "it's time."
Batwoman threw one more glance back at the Spectre, then put her chin up before turning and stomping through the doorway into the beyond.
"Hello? Any Roy Harpers out there?" Batwoman yelled into the white mass that swirled around her. No echo returned and she thought of how, when she was a little girl, she had imagined that this was exactly what Heaven would be like. That, in turn, launched her brain into an entire series of questions. If she was to have supposedly never existed, then could she ever die? If she didn't die, could she ever be granted eternal life?
She looked back at the doorway, a construct of ectoplasm and angelic thought. The Spectre had assured her that no matter how far she traveled in Limbo, she would always be able to see it. She didn't understand how that was possible, but then Kathy Kane had never been known for her brains.
At best, she was a fair super-hero, able to keep from getting killed; at worst, she was a middle-aged thrill seeker desperate to hold on to a past that never existed. Becoming a super-hero had never been something she had planned, it was only something that looked like fun.
Whenever she looked at the Huntress from her team, Helena Wayne, she was reminded that the Batman had chosen another over her. How many times had she dropped hints, made veiled comments and sometimes came right out said it? What had the Catwoman had that she hadn't? They looked almost like sisters, were the same age and both were willing to do just about anything to please the Caped Crusader.
But she still had lost out and she couldn't figure out why.
Batwoman understood the nature of the pre-Crisis universe, understood that she had come from a world called Earth-2, the same world that birthed the Time-Guardian. On that world, Batman had married the Catwoman and they in turn had a child. On Earth-1, the Batman never married, never fell in love. She had met the Earth-1 Batman briefly, when he and the Earth-2 Robin were investigating the sudden appearance of the Earth-2 Hugo Strange. That Batman had seemed so different from her own.
Was it possible that as time went on, the Batman became a darker and darker figure? What was the Batman of the Prime Universe like? How far had time gone to create a single, unique being?
It didn't really matter anymore, did it?
As the hours passed and she walked on, never tiring, she would occasionally pass some body or spirit (she wasn't sure what you were in Limbo), who would look to her and then move on. Some wore costumes and some didn't. There was no rhyme or reason to anything. The ground was solid below her feet, but she never saw it; there was light but no sun.
This was Hell she thought.
She remembered her Catholic school days. Hell was a place out of God's sight. Surely this Limbo qualified. No need for fiery pits and demons tormenting damned souls. An Eternity spent in this wasteland of nothingness would be more than fitting punishment for the truly evil.
"I know you, don't I?" someone asked.
Batwoman turned around to see a tall figure in a purple suit and some sort of orange mask standing there. The figure appeared to be male in both form and voice, and held its hands up to show it meant no harm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."
Batwoman slowly approached. "You said you know me?"
The figure nodded. "Not now, as I am, but in the future, when I'm older. It's hard to explain, but spend enough time here and you start to see what your life would have been." He reached up and pulled away the mask.
She suppressed the gasp that wanted to rip from her throat. He was younger than she last remembered, but was still just as handsome as ever. He couldn't have been more than sixteen at this stage and she mentally chastised herself for having even the inkling of a lustful thought. "Bruce?"
He smiled. "You do know me!" He reached out and grabbed her. She offered no resistance as he pulled her close and gave her a hug. "I've been by myself for so long. You don't know what its like to be so alone. It's been as bad, if not worse, than the feelings I first had after my parents were shot."
She let him finish his hug, pleasantly surprised by the strength in his young arms. This was not the Earth-2 Bruce Wayne she had fallen in love with. While her Batman had been an exceptional crime fighter, he had not been physically as intimidating as his Earth-1 counterpart. "You're the Earth-1 Bruce Wayne, aren't you?"
He pulled back. "A portion of him, you might say." He went on to explain that while the Earth-1 Batman had been the clay from which the post-Crisis Batman had been created, certain aspects of his life had been altered. On Earth-1, Bruce Wayne had briefly lived in Smallville, Kansas, the home of the Earth-1 Superboy. There, he had assumed the identity of the Flying Fox for a short time to help Superboy solve some crimes. It was the first costumed identity that Bruce had taken in his long war on crime.
In the new universe, these events never occurred.
There was something mysterious about him as well. Certainly, the isolation of Limbo must have seemed unbearable, but this Bruce represented the man before the Cowl. Though he had seen death and the darkest side of man, he still wasn't jaded. This was someone who could still smile, someone who could still show emotion and not be embarrassed. In that way, he reminded Batwoman of the Batman she had known.
"I want to get out of here," he said. "I know what's going on and I want to help."
She put her hands on her hips. "Sorry, little man, but I'm here to pull out one person who doesn't belong. Chances are that after I rescue him, this is where I'll end up anyway."
Bruce shook his head. "It doesn't work that way. I don't know what causes people to be deposited in here, in this place, but it appears, for the most part, to be random. I've tried to come up with a hypothesis, but…" his voice trailed off and she realized the dilemma he was in. Here was a young man who knew what he could grow up to be, one of the keenest analytical minds in any universe, but he would never get there. It had to be frustrating to know you were at the peak of what you would ever be.
"Could this be a place where realities not destroyed by the Crisis ended up? Technically, your future self was transferred into the Prime Universe, so you weren't destroyed, just unneeded." Batwoman watched as the younger man thought it over.
"It's possible; that would explain a lot of things," he rubbed his hairless chin.
"You said you knew what was going on," Batwoman said, trying to change the subject. Maybe Nightwing and the Dark Flash liked to discuss alternate realities and divergent timelines, but she was much more interested in just finding Roy Harper and then lounging by the pool for a few hours.
Bruce nodded slowly. "There is a war going on here, between Limbo and reality. I've caught bits and pieces floating along in the clouds; live here long enough and you learn how to see with your ears and listen with your eyes." He gave her a wink, but the entire concept was lost on her. She simply had to trust that he knew what he was talking about. "When the Time-Guardian did all of the stuff he did, it weakened the barriers of Limbo. We've been able to peer into not only the Prime Reality, but the other Hypertime universes as well. I saw when Aquagirl released the Dark Flash; the sudden shock to time put a hole between here and there."
Batwoman shrugged. "So?"
"Well, some of the more powerful beings here, guys I try to avoid when possible, want out of here. They see a second chance at life. If what you say is true, if we are all the leftovers from a tune-up of time's engine…" He paused and took a deep breath. He said something to her about not having spoken so much for eternity. "Look, maybe we're all supposed to be dead. Maybe we aren't supposed to get back no matter what and that's why we're here. No alternate timelines, no Hypertime strings, we're put in a jar with a locking lid."
"That's why the Spectre wouldn't come; he's guarding the entrances into Heaven!" Batwoman guessed. She looked around, thinking that possibly she could see the supposed hole that had been formed, but the only thing in her view was the doorway. It looked no farther than ever. "Is anyone trying to plug the hole?"
"I thought I saw the Zatanna of the Prime Universe and some of the other Sentinels of Magic trying to do something, but it was kind of blurry," Bruce offered. He began to fiddle with his mask. "Images of the outside come and go; one minute you're walking through the clouds and the next you're in the middle of the street on some plane of existence. Limbo passes through all realities and none. Normally you can watch life go by."
"Well, as much as I'd like to help fix the leak, I need to find the real Roy Harper," Batwoman said with finality. She still didn't know which way to go. "You haven't seen him, have you?"
Bruce put the mask back on. "Like I said, I've avoided everyone, trying to find a way out of here or a way to end this." There was no tremor to his voice, in fact, he sounded like the sanest person Batwoman had spoken to in years. She could understand what he was saying, that the non-existence he was living was simply too much to bear. "I'd like to help you if I can, though."
She laughed. "What makes you think I want your help?"
"Because," Bruce started, his voice taking on a more mature tone, "I have been here forever, literally. I know my way around, I know where to look and like it or not, I am the Batman." He chuckled. "Or at least I was going to be. Either way, I've got years of training and the experience in this environment."
Batwoman considered her options and realized that while she could spend the rest of eternity searching Limbo, it didn't sound appealing. The idea of working with the Flying Fox, though not quite the same as working with the Caped Crusader, tickled her sense of nostalgia. Who knows, she thought, maybe she could figure out a way to get him out of here. "If I say yes, what would be our first move?"
"There are certain areas of Limbo we need to avoid, areas that border near a sort of intermediate holding pen called the Phantom Zone. That's where General Zod is mustering his forces. The actual hole between the realities is in Limbo proper, guarded by several of Zod's minions. If your friend has been here long enough, he probably sensed the battles and may have gone to see what was up." He looked off into the distance. "Most of the denizens of this place are docile, but the Phantom Zone is mostly full of criminals, placed there from a myriad of realities and worlds. It could be really dangerous, so I should stay in front to listen."
"Well, lead the way," she said and he started running off. She followed him into the swirling mists.
They seemed to be climbing, in fact she could almost feel gravity pulling at her as they moved along. Her breathing was getting raspy, but the Flying Fox seemed to be enjoying their little jaunt. It was hard for her to believe that the teenager before her in the ridiculous costume was the Batman. Certainly he had the stamina and the bravery, but his good humor just seemed so out of place.
She was considering whether or not he might be a little mad when he motioned for her to stop. He cocked his head and Batwoman got the distinct impression that he was listening to something. After a few moments, he slowly turned around and approached her. "We've got company coming."
She shrugged. "And?"
"You don't understand; they know you're here and they think you're a threat to their plans, an inside man you might say." He took a good look at her. "Well, inside woman at least." He turned suddenly and his legs shifted slightly. "You do know how to fight, right?"
She gave him a sour look. "And I'm toilet-trained." He didn't get a chance to respond before a dark shape leapt from the clouds and took the Flying Fox down. Batwoman barely avoided a swinging blow from her own assailant.
The Fox was down, but far from out. Years if weight-lifting and gymnastics had hardened his muscles, making them steel-like cords of powers. He lifted the body off of him and looked into an unfamiliar face. It was one of the multitude of souls that had been trapped in this void. His heart was heavy with pain as he felt nobody, even the vilest of criminals, should be subjected to the punishment of Limbo.
As he pushed the man away from him and scrambled to his feet, he wondered if his course of action was the right one. He had done nothing wrong, had, in fact, turned out reasonably well for someone who watched their parents murdered right before their eyes. Perhaps he should be joining with Zod in trying to establish himself in the Prime Universe?
"No!" he told himself, pushing back the demons of uncertainty. He knew that no matter the personal sacrifice that allowing men like Zod and many of the other criminals, malcontents and evildoers that lived in Limbo to escape was a crime against Creation. The snarling man rushed the Fox, but the young hero easily dodged, keeping his wits about him and whirling around to plant a well-deserved kick to the man's posterior.
Batwoman did not particularly enjoy wrestling with the foul-smelling giant that was her current dancing partner. She was reminded of Solomon Grundy, an old Green Lantern villain, a man composed of magic and rotting wood with pasty white skin. This person was not quite as large as she suspected Grundy to be, but how would she know? This could be the Earth-2 version or some other duplicate.
She leapt high and gave him a kick to the chin, but the man-monster simply growled and rubbed the sore spot. She tried to punch him in the ribs, but was rewarded with a sharp crack as her wrist broke. She was so far out of her league it was unbelievable. She had been a socialite trying to be a super-hero; she had no place trying to perform a mission such as this. It was only now that Kathy Kane realized her folly in ever putting on the Batwoman costume and thinking she could be something more than she was.
The Flying Fox heard Batwoman's cry of pain and knew she was hurt bad. At this point in Bruce Wayne's life, that point represented by the Flying Fox, he was not yet trained in the more deadly martial arts. He had no way of ending this quickly and he was relying more on acrobatics and superior speed to avoid his adversary. He had no utility belt per se, only a few miscellaneous items such as a rope and grappling hook.
Batwoman was down and there was a sickening sound of flesh being pulped and a red fountain of blood coming from the Batwoman's body. The Fox ran over to where the Grundy-like creature was pummeling Batwoman's face and tearing at her costume. The hero was reminded of the stories of piranha devouring other fish and he almost turned his head away. All of the blood reminded him of a fateful night so many years ago when his parents had bled to death in front of him.
Her cry for help spurred him to action and he raced forward, pulling the grappling hook out, meaning to strike the creature in the head. A hand grabbed his orange cape and pulled him back and he landed with a thud on his back. The breath poured out of his lungs and his ears started ringing. It was merciful, however, for it prevented him from hearing the final crunching of Batwoman's skull as it was caved in.
Reflex, primal and raw, made the Flying Fox strike out as his attacker loomed over him. A well-placed foot in the groin brought the villain down and the hero struggled to stand up. It was hard, his stomach barely able to move as he desperately tried to force oxygen back into his lungs.
Clarity suddenly filled his mind as he realized that for the first time in what seemed to be an eternity, he needed air to breathe. He saw the blood and realized that someone just died.
Someone had just died in Limbo.
You could be hurt in Limbo, bound and gagged, even knocked out depending on the circumstances, but death was supposed to be impossible.
He considered himself an expert on this dimension of nothingness, this wasteland of lost thoughts and ideas. He had traveled all around it, he supposed, encountering the borderlands of the Phantom Zone, Olympus and several other so-called mythological places. All were real enough, areas attached to a dimension of nothing, a place where it seemed a higher power put its old toys away before going downstairs for supper. The outlying areas were the buffer between the real world and Limbo, each one with specific doorways and specific rules of passage between.
Nobody died in this place, nobody grew old, and nobody went hungry. There was no time here, no seasons, and no changes. Yet Batwoman had just been killed. That meant the hole formed by the Time-Guardian's mechanisms was allowing the real world to pour in, like water from a dike.
That was it! He finally saw the plan! Zod wasn't trying to escape from Limbo, he was letting the real world in! That's why the Spectre, the one who had sent the Batwoman in here to begin with couldn't come in, he was keeping the door closed to help stave off the flood!
The creature got up and snarled, bellowing it's frustration and rage from blood-soaked lips. The Flying Fox spread his legs out and assumed a limp, defensive stance, waiting for the initial charge. He wasn't the master of battle that the Batman was, but he had some training and he hoped he had enough to stop this monster.
The creature stomped towards the Fox, hands raised to deliver a blow that would surely render him dead and the Fox waited until the last moment to step away. The creature over shot the mark, and the hero grabbed his arm as it came around, spun and used the momentum of the beast to flip him. The creature crashed but started to get up almost immediately.
Twice more the Flying Fox downed the beast, and two more times did it get back up, relentless in its desire to crush the teenager. The young man looked to the bloody corpse of the Batwoman, feeling somewhat responsible for bringing her this way, and then looked to the maddened thing that was trying to end his life. He had to run away, regardless of how empty it made him feel to leave Batwoman's body for the Limbo vultures (if there were any).
He looked into the distance where the doorway was that she had pointed out to him, a dark beacon in a white nightmare calling to him. Maybe he couldn't escape from this place, but he could at least get a warning out. Let the Spectre know that Batwoman had failed so he could send someone in with super-powers. How could they have been so foolish?
Ducking one final blow, he set off at a run, tearing off the mask and cape, throwing them aside as he cut himself off from the existence he had previously known. The monster represented the entirety of his existence and he wanted to be away from it as soon as possible.
It could not keep up and within a short period of time, he had out run it and his perceptions of Limbo told him that it had given up the chase. He could hear it sniffing around the body of the slain Batwoman and tears started to well in his eyes. He had failed her and he wondered how he ever thought he could measure up to the person he should have been. It must have been the reason he was relegated to Limbo because he was the weakness in Batman's character. A silly boy with silly dreams of grandeur.
When he reached the doorway he stopped and looked at it for a second, not sure of how to proceed. It was all so mind-boggling. The Crisis. The Time-Guardian. The Time-Trapper's world. Limbo. The Phantom Zone. All of it related, yet all of it different. The Crisis was the result of the Anti-Monitor's bid for ultimate power and when he lost a new universe had been born.
The old universes had been destroyed, used for the new universe, or simply thrown into the cosmic trash bin. Wasn't he anything more than garbage waiting to be thrown away? Did his actions really matter in the scheme of things? He wasn't a hero…
"Being a hero is more than putting on a costume and jumping from rooftop to rooftop," someone said from behind him. Startled just as Batwoman had been when he had first approached, the Flying Fox whirled around to see someone in a Robin costume.
"You're Jason Todd, aren't you?" he asked. "The Earth-1 version."
The boy nodded. "Like you for Bruce Wayne, I represent the aspects of Jason Todd that were not used in the new universe. We're brothers in that we are the rough drafts, not the finished copies." He stepped forward and extended his hand. The Fox took it and smiled.
When he had started observing the Prime Universe, the Fox had always taken a special interest in the way Batman always seemed to draw young boys to him. Bruce Wayne never had the chance to have a brother and by taking in the lost souls like Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, he had tried to fill that void in his life. "I saw that your Prime Universe counterpart died," the Fox added softly.
"Maybe the universe should have stuck with the original," Robin added with a smile. There was a twinkle to his eye. "Look, I've been here just as long as you have, though you've really made an effort to understand what this place is and how it works. You have information that is vital to everything. Not only do you have to help find Roy Harper, but you know in your bones that General Zod has to be stopped. He is too powerful, he and all of his cronies, for the this new universe. It won't amount to a hill of beans if they stop the Time-Guardian and Zod is there to reign over all existence."
"How do you know all of this?"
Robin sighed. "I've been following you ever since you hooked up with Batwoman. We all sensed her presence, something new that didn't quite belong. She wasn't supposed to be here. I'm only sorry I didn't keep closer or else I could have helped." He looked down at the ground. "You, or at least your older self, taught me that being a hero is not just winning the battles, but surviving the war. You can't save everyone, Bruce, you won't be able to. We couldn't save ourselves for goodness sake."
"I was going to go out and tell…" he started, pointing to the doorway.
"It won't do any good. Look, you've peered through the veil and seen the world the Time-Trapper created. The Time-Guardian is slowly regaining his powers, but he is not the immediate threat. Besides, all of those non-existent heroes are there." Robin smiled at the thought. They were all heroes wiped from the continuity or else killed during the Crisis. He and the Flying Fox represented something more noble. They were simply unused parts of heroes still in existence. "We have to rescue Roy Harper, but first we have to close the hole."
The Fox nodded and his mind set to work on the problem. "If we can't go out and get help, then we need to find some people in here. Is everyone here like us?"
Robin pursed his lips. "I'm not sure."
Deadman slowly walked into the dining room of the mansion his "team" occupied and sat the obese form he inhabited down heavily into a chair. The Huntress was speaking softly to Nightwing, the unofficial leader of the group, until she saw the look on their host's face. She asked what was wrong.
"Batwoman is dead," he said with finality. Even though he was a spirit himself, it was still hard when someone whom he had gotten close to passed on. "She's in a better place, but…"
"I understand, Boston," Nightwing remarked. The Kryptonian super-hero had finally come to grips with the loss of his family. He was, as far as he knew, the only Kryptonian from the Earth-1 universe to have survived the Crisis. That is if you could call the borrowed time they were on as surviving.
"I don't think you do," Deadman said, sighing. He then began to explain about the hole that had formed between Limbo and the Prime Universe. "It's turning into a war; the Justice League and Justice Society are now involved, but that doesn't help us in getting Harper."
"What? I'm right here," Kid Flash said as he entered the room, eating an apple. "What do you need?"
Deadman shook his head. "A miracle, kid, a freakin' real-life, Almighty majestic miracle."