Notey: Heh… ROAD TRIP STORY! This is a “inspired” story, by the way!
Dedicated to: Babsie-poo! *waves* BABS!
Legalities: Yeah, you know it all ready.
Continuum: Cartoonie-bunch la di da di fun! (Veryyyyyy cartoonie!)
Summary: Babs… *snickers* experiences… heehee… some changes… hahaha! Well, shortly after a… HAHA… CRIPPLING accident! Based on the real life Babsie!
Rating: PG for mild cussing and violence
Down but Not Out
By: Carmen Wayne
“WHEE!”
“Oh, dear LORD!”
“Watch out, he’s coming your way!”
Robin, the Boy Wonder, ducked just before his head could be whacked off by the Clown Prince of Crime. The Joker was speeding around on rocket propelled roller skates and was clutching a rubber chicken in his hand, which had been horribly defiled by the nails he rammed into it. Nightwing grabbed Robin by the hand and pulled him away quickly, going into a fast sprint.
“Where’s Batman and Batgirl?!” Robin asked, being dragged along.
His answer (at least for Batman) came on cue, as the black clad man leapt out of no where and socked the Joker to the ground of the toy store they had found the maniac in. Nightwing just continued to run, not replying about Batgirl…
**
Harley Quinn strutted around, wearing loads of Mardi Gras beads. Most of which she was using as weapons against Batgirl.
“You’re psycho, Harley!” Batgirl said, on guard.
“Why THANK you! Heehee!”
With a graceful twirl, Harley lashed out a yo-yo in Batgirl’s direction. Batgirl tried to evade it, but felt it strike the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. Harley giggled, but eeped as she saw Nightwing and Robin sprinting in. She took off running.
“SorryBatgirlhopeyerokay!” Robin hollered as he charged past.
“ThisisnotimetosleepDarkDamsel!” Nightwing said, following.
Batgirl rubbed her head and slowly stood up, groaning. ‘MUST they be… SO alike?!’ she thought, irritated. She turned to go the way she remembered Batman going, when the cackles started. Batgirl didn’t NEED to turn around to know it was the loony duo’s hyenas. And she wasn’t about to turn—she just took off down the toy store, hearing eight clawed feet behind her. A quick 90 degree turn and she was headed down a sports isle… but the hyenas feet stopped. She slowly turned to see what was going on, walking backwards. ‘How strange! I thought that they would follow me until—‘
“AAH!” Batgirl cried out as her foot touched a skateboard and caused it fly out from underneath her.
Before she knew it, she slammed into the tile floor and hit her head into it, causing all to go black…
****
Tim Drake had to snicker. It wasn’t every day he got a chance to fire out at someone over something so… hilarious. He stood within the apartment of Barbara Gordon, several hours after the apprehension of the Joker.
“So, Babs… How’re you gonna explain this one?”
Barbara whimpered and glared at him. Grabbing a nearby crutch, she slammed it into his stomach.
“OW!”
Dick Grayson was nearby, hysterical. He TRIED not to laugh at first, but found it so damn absurd, he had no choice but to succumb to his inner need to laugh.
“Now, now,” he said to Tim. “Don’t give the cripple a hard time!” he laughed, pointing to the cast now around her left foot.
“She broke her ANKLE, man!” Tim said, snickering, though painfully. “By slipping on a skateboard! She had a chance to lose an arm by Bud and Lou, but no! She tripped on a skateboard and gave herself a slight concussion and a broken ankle!”
The two busted into mutual, hysterical laughter. Barbara scowled at them, and pointed to the door.
“Get out!” she yelled.
“What? Are you gonna kick us with your cast if we don’t?!” Dick snickered.
“OUT!!!”
Laughing their hearts out, the two males retreated to the door. Dick shoved Tim out and looked at Barbara.
“I’ll come back tomorrow to check on ya!”
“Don’t bother! God knows I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself amidst your laughing mockery of me!”
“Love you!”
“Shut up!”
Dick snickered and shut the door. Barbara crossed her arms and pouted a little. For as angry they were making her, she knew they had a point. Out of all the horrible things that could have happened, breaking her ankle by slipping over a skateboard seemed pretty much ridiculous.
A figure passed her peripheral vision and she turned in her chair the best she could, considering her leg was boosted up on a chair. Standing towards the corner of the main room was Batman.
“I was hoping the two would get you home from Leslie’s clinic safely.”
“They got me home, yeah… Safely is debatable. Can I help you with something?”
Batman didn’t reply. He began to walk around the room, looking along the many pictures she had there. Several of them had people he recognized. Two in particular—Clark and Kara Kent, from Metropolis.
“How often do you meet with them?” he asked.
Barbara watched him take a picture of her and Kara from it’s place.
“Not too often… Not as often as I’d LIKE to, anyway. Keeping my day AND night jobs pretty much prevent that, but Kara’s at Clark’s a lot, so we talk on the computer quite a bit.”
“Hmm.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because there’s no answer.” He replaced the picture exactly the way it was and looked to her. “You’re out of the game until I know you won’t repeat such a incident.”
Barbara growled a little and grabbed her crutches, getting to her… er… foot. She made her way over to him and scowled.
“It was an honest mistake!”
“An honest mistake is mistaking a lunatic for a common man, NOT slipping on a skateboard and breaking your ankle. I should have taught you the tricks to not having that happen, but I thought you’d be better than that. Apparently I was wrong.”
Barbara scowled and watched as he headed for the main room’s window. But she knew he was right…
“Goodnight, Bruce,” she said.
“Goodnight, Barbara.”
****
The next day, Barbara figured it would be hard when she entered work. After all, she was like her father’s secretary. She was planning to get into the academy next enrollment, but now… she wasn’t so sure if they’d let her! ‘I’ll tell them I fell off a motorcy—ooooh… They’d freak! Tripped during a date? No… they’d ask who I was dating. Oh… GOD… Okay! I’ll tell themmm… partially the truth!’
“Sweetie?!” Commissioner Jim Gordon exclaimed, rushing from his office. “What happened to you?!”
“I… uh… broke my ankle…”
“And how’d ya pull DAT one off?” the rough voice of Harvey Bullock asked from a ways off.
“Well, uh… see, there was this KID, right? And he left his skateboard in the hallway… I was rounding around to get the mail and slipped on it—I wasn’t LOOKING…”
She smiled a little. Gordon touched her cheek.
“Why didn’t you call me, princess?”
“Well, it was LATE, and I really didn’t want to bother you!” she insisted. “Now, can I PLEASE get to work, daddy?”
“Are you SURE you’re up to it, Babs?” he asked.
“Positive!”
Gordon sighed and moved out of her way. Barbara smiled and moved past, heading to her desk and sitting down. Gordon waved to her and explained he had a meeting with the mayor and DA. Barbara gave him a thumb up and watched him go. Once he was out of sight, she turned to get to work on some files.
‘I hate doing that to him…’
The phone next to her began to ring. Without looking, she reached over and pulled it to her ear.
“GCPD, how may I help you?”
“BABS! I need HELP!” screamed a familiar voice.
“Wha--? D—“
“Shh! Speaketh no nameth! Need you to look up a name for me!”
“What name? Dick “Asshole” Grayson?” she grumbled.
“I SAID NOT TO SAY A NAME!”
“And I quote, ‘Speaketh no nameth’,” she replied simply.
“Funnyyyyyy… Lenny O’Conner…”
“Yes, my master,” Barbara droned sarcastically.
“Hurryyyyy!”
“Hang on, hang on…”
Clearly, the caller, Nightwing, was seriously getting bored and impatient.
“I want my baby back, baby back, baby back—riiiibsss…”
“Got it!”
“Thank you!”
“O’Conner, Lenny: No profile can be found.”
“GRR! I wasted a quarter on this?!”
“Where ARE you?”
“Bludhaven!”
“You’ve been spending more and more time there, dude… how come?”
“Simple, baby, simple! I’m thinkin’ of chillin’ here as a homestead!”
“Good God…” There was an explosion in Nightwing’s background. Unable to cry out the question, Barbara resorted to hissing out, “What the hell was that?!”
“O’Conner! Gotta go, Babs, thanks anyway, bye!”
The phone clicked off. Barbara growled and slammed the phone down. She pointed at her cast, angered.
“#$%* you!” she yelled.
“Is it taking an attitude?” Renee Montoya asked with a chuckle, standing in front of Barbara’s desk.
“Don’t mock me, Montoya. What do you need?”
Montoya, grinning ear to ear, handed her some files.
“Make sure your father gets these.”
Barbara saluted sarcastically and set them to the side. Montoya left, chuckling, just as Barbara’s phone rang again. She picked it up, irritated.
“GCPD…” she mumbled.
“Babs, I need some computer help!”
“Tim, I’m busy…”
“This’ll only take a second! It’s for a case Bruce gave me! Connect to frequency nine-two-four!”
“Uh… okay.” Typing in the code where it belonged, Barbara linked to Tim’s computer in his room. “And now…?”
“Uploading the file!”
A picture came up and Barbara raised an eyebrow. It was a black and white of a blonde stripper, naked and on a pole.
“I SO don’t have time for this!”
“But--“
“Perv!”
“Babs! She’s missing!”
“Name?”
“Dunno…”
“Hang on.”
Barbara isolated the reading to strictly the stripper’s face and scanned it into the search of the GCPD databases. After a moment, one file came up of a Betty Karl.
“Betty Karl. Age, twenty six. Dear lord… Uploading the file to you…”
“Babs, you are SO the BEST!”
“Yeah, yeah… WHAT ever…”
****
**RINGRING**
“Hello, this is Barbara, the all knowing and all seeing computer extremist! How may I help you?”
“It’s me,” the dark voice said. “Two Face’s loose in your area. We’re on our way over there. But you need to be careful.”
“No I don’t. I’m out of the game, remember?”
“Don’t joke, Barbara.”
“Am I laughing?”
Barbara set the phone down and went to reading her magazine casually, still angered at her cast. In fact--earlier that day she had clearly stated that she was not talking to it anymore because she disliked it. The cast was HUGE, she couldn’t even bend her leg right. Leslie wanted her to come in later that week for another X-Ray to see if she could downgrade from cast to brace, but that was still two days away. For now, she was stuck as she was. And that was fine by her at this point. For the last three days, she’d been getting call after call from the three males, needing some sort of information or something. Dick--Nightwing--had even gotten set to calling her “Oracle”. She was disgusted at first, until he explained that the Oracle was a all knowing and all seeing, omnipotent being that the Greeks relied on for information. By this time, she had sort of taking a liking to that name, but couldn’t wait to be Batgirl once more.
Barbara’s thoughts were interrupted as gunfire suddenly pelted through her floor from the apartment below hers. Grabbing her crutches, she dove to the floor in response and began to commando crawl for her bedroom.
“And I have to be in a skirt too!” she grumbled incredulously.
She yelped as a bullet went through the floor right by her, and was followed by a rough voice.
“Where’s my money, Banks?!”
“I-I-I don’t HAVE it!!”
Barbara crawled over to the hole and peered through with one eye. Standing in the apartment below was a elder man, cowering in front of Two Face and four of his men.
“Now don’t tell me THAT, Banks, because that might provoke me to do something… rather drastic.”
He flashed the double headed coin at Banks. Banks freaked and backed away.
“Don’t-don’t do it, Harv--“
Barbara cringed as Two Face slammed the butt of his gun that he was clutching in the other hand into Banks’s face.
“Don’t CALL me that!” Two Face screamed as Banks fell on his rear. “And don’t act so big. I wouldn’t bother KILLING you.”
Banks clearly looked surprised.
“Y-you wouldn’t?”
“Nope. Give him a gun, boys.” Two Face cocked the gun and grinned on the handsome side of his face. “It’s time to clear out the neighborhood. AND decrease the population.”
Barbara gasped a little and crawled from the hole, for her bedroom once more, still clutching her crutches. Once inside, she knocked the phone to the floor and lunged into it.
‘Gotta call Batman! This is big stuff! I’ll call ‘wing though, he’s easier to reach…’
****
Dick was standing in a handstand on a trapeze bar that he had suspended in the middle of his loft when the phone rang. He swung and flipped off, to his feet and strode over to the phone. After picking up a towel to wipe his face and chest, he answered.
“’ello?” he asked in a English accent.
“Dick!” Barbara hissed, panicked.
“Yes, my lovely Greek goddess of knowledge?” Dick asked, grinning wide.
“Dick, Two Face is here!”
Dick froze at those words.
“Wuh-what?!”
“He--Oh God,” she breathed as bullets began ripping around in the distance. “He’s exterminating the building--making a guy name Banks do most of it because he doesn’t have money for him!”
“I’m calling Bruce, I’m on my way--stay in your apartment and stay low!!”
**
Barbara heard the phone click off. She grred and slammed the phone down.
“Over my dead body! I’ll stay in here, but I won’t stay low!” she announced as she pulled herself to her right foot by use of the bed.
She pulled the crutches under her arms and hurried back out to her computer. Sitting there, she connected onto the internet and began to hack into the building systems, not happy.
‘No one messes with MY apartment building! Aw Gawd, cramps!’
**
After planting a bullet in between the eyes of a random man, Banks looked at Two Face, shaking.
“Am… Am I… done… Two… Two Face?” he asked.
“Let me think…”
Two Face flipped his two headed coin into the air. He heard Banks whispering out:
“Please god, please god, please god, please god…”
The coin landed on Harvey’s palm and his fingers clenched over it. Slowly, he moved his fingers and looked at the coin. Then his eyes moved to Banks.
“You’re not normally a God-loving man, are you, Bob?” he asked as he showed the bad heads side.
Banks shuddered and turned to go back to what he was doing. He couldn’t disobey Two Face, because that damn coin would give him a punishment, no matter what side it landed on. The difference being that good-heads, he’d be given a fighting chance, and bad-heads, he’d be killed instantly. Banks thought about shooting Two Face, but his henchmen were loyal. VERY loyal. He’d be dead right after, maybe even right before the bullet landed in the psychopathic ex-DA.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger on a sobbing woman, the room went black. Several people shifted in the apartment.
“What the Hell?!” Two Face bellowed.
A door opened and one of his men entered, holding a flashlight.
“Two Face, sir! The entire block’s gone out!”
“How?!”
“I don’t--“
He wasn’t able to finish as a black object slammed into the back of his neck, knocking him to the ground. Henchmen, hostages and all, Two Face ran out into the hall since he all ready knew who it was. He grabbed the flashlight on the way and flashed it down the hall. Kneeling down by the window, cape over his normally exposed jaw, was Batman. Standing behind him, twirling a batarang in his hand, was Robin.
“I call Two Face!” Robin sang, sprinting past his mentor.
“Robin!” Batman scolded.
But it was too late, bullets and scurrying people and screams filled the black hall, only visible through the moving beams of flashlights. Two Face was not in the beams, and neither was Robin. Batman figured the commotion caused by Robin was enough to keep them occupied and made his way down another hall to try to find both. But as he rounded a corner, he spotted Nightwing.
His ex-protégé was desperately trying to convince a man to release a young girl, no younger than seven, from his grasp. Two people, probably her parents, were all ready dead on the floor. Nightwing’s mask was glowing bright green in the eyes, for night vision, but the man was also holding a flash light in the hand that was wrapped around the sobbing girl.
“Let the girl go, man… She hasn’t done anything!” he insisted.
“Just stay BACK, man! I’m warning you!!”
He cocked the gun in warning, and Batman felt himself flinch at the sight. But he somehow managed to keep back, letting Nightwing handle it.
“Me,” Nightwing said.
“What?!”
“Me… for her…”
The offer was made through Nightwing’s teeth, and was one Batman was ready to oppose. The man, however, did start to consider it. But then he shook his head.
“Naw, man, I know you Bat types! Always got somethin’ up yer sleeve!”
“LET HER GO, man!!”
“No!!”
There was a soft sound coming from the floor, like rolling marbles. Nightwing spotted Batman out of the corner of his eye and knew what the sound was. He charged for the man, seemingly, as tear gas exploded around them. But in reality, Nightwing grabbed the girl and pressed a rebreather on her face. He picked her up and took off running--but not before slamming a knee into the coughing psycho’s solar plexus and swinging a quick knife-hand into his neck.
**
Barbara slid on a pair of night vision goggles and swung on her crutches to get to the front door. It was, in fact, she who cause the entire block to go out on the lights. Through the confusion of pitch black, it’d give the guys with the right technology to get to work on stopping the one’s without it. Just as she began to open the door, a bright green blur shot past the door, followed by another. It didn’t take much to figure that one out. Two Face and Robin, headed upstairs for the roof, no doubt. After all, it was a high rise building.
‘Robin, WHAT are you getting yourself into?!’ she thought, desperately following.
**
“Mommy an’ daddy… they… they’re dead, aren’t they?” the girl asked, not sure how to react.
Now she stood outside the building, in the darkened street. Nightwing was kneeling down in front of her, tending to a gash across her leg and one on her head.
“Uh…” he sounded, not sure what to say. “Do you have a name?”
“Mmmhmm… Kelley Alison…”
“That’s a pretty name, you know that, Kelley?”
“Thank you… what’s your name?”
“Uh, Nightwing.”
“What kind’a name is that?”
“The superhero kind.”
“Do you know Batman?”
“Yep.”
Kelley looked back at the building, drawing silent as she listened to screams and guns that emitted from the darkness.
“They’re dead,” she stated, more clearly this time. “Are they going to heaven, Nightwing?”
This was getting to be too much. He never asked that question, and doubted if Bruce did either.
“I’m sure they are, honey… you--“
He cringed as his earpiece flashed on and Batman’s voice boomed out.
“Nightwing! Fifteenth floor! NOW!”
Nightwing sighed and looked at Kelley as he stood.
“Kelley, I need you to get as far away from here as possible, okay? Find some cops!” He turned to leave, but felt her hands grab one of his. He looked down at the blonde. “What?”
“Are you gunna come back?” she asked.
Nightwing felt himself smiling at that one and ruffled her hair.
“You bet, Kelley Alison. Now go on!”
Kelley took off running down the street. Nightwing smiled after her, but then got yelled at by Batman to “STOP PLAYING AROUND” and “Get the hell up” there, so he obeyed.
**
Two Face ran to the edge of the roof and found himself staring down 60 floors between him and the street. This was too much for him at this point. Gun in one hand, coin in the other, he flipped the coin and came to a decision. The Boy Wonder had to die, or he got arrested and sent to that god-forsaken asylum again. He could hear and feel Wonder Boy trying to sneak up behind him. Obviously the boy hadn’t been briefed on exactly how good of a hand-to-hand combatant he was.
‘Leave it to the Bat to underestimate someone,’ he sneered in his mind.
And then he whirled around and slammed the gun, full force, into Robin’s head. Robin had only enough time to brace himself before he was clubbed and hit the ground. His head was searing with pain now. Pulling his hand away from where it reflexively covered the point of impact, he groaned to see red covering his glove.
“Rushed it…”
“Stupid punk!”
Two Face kicked up, into Robin’s face, knocking him back from the edge. Robin hit the ground on his back went slightly limp due to the head trauma, but was still conscious. Two Face cocked the gun and aimed it at his head.
“It wouldn’t be so damn bad if you were eighteen or so, you know that? Damn no good punk. We’re tired of second stringers! What, aren’t we good enough for the Bat anymore?!”
“Considering… what? That… you suck? Yeah, guess so…” Robin groaned out.
His vision was blurred, but he could see that just totally irritated Two Face to no end and heard the gun click again, causing him to tense. Then he realized Two Face was going to play with him a little.
“That’s not smart for a kid who’s about to DIE.”
He went to Robin’s side and kicked his flank, hard. With a cry of pain, Robin rolled to the other side and could have sworn he felt several of his ribs go. That was a third strike, number one in Two Face’s mind, of a new set. He aimed the gun on Robin’s head and grinned on his right side of his face. That’s when two things happened… Two ropes snapped up to the side of the roof and two dark shadows swung up for the action to Two Face’s right. But towards his left, the door swung open. He didn’t want to wait to find out who it was, so he pulled the trigger. At that exact instant, something slammed into his hand and the bullet went past Robin’s head by inches, leaving him frozen.
Two Face thought that it was a batarang. But upon looking at the thing as it fell at his feet, he realized it was a crutch.
“What the hell?”
“It came from me, Pukey!”
He spun to the voice, but all he saw was a fist coming into his face. He hit the ground and Barbara Gordon took her other crutch and slammed it into his head JUST to make sure he wasn’t conscious. She looked up to see Batman and Nightwing watching her, surprised. Calmly, she placed the one crutch under her arm.
“I’m down, but I’m not out,” she stated. “I hate my cast.”
Managing to pick up her other crutch she backed away so they could apprehend Two Face and make sure Robin was okay…
****
After making sure that Two Face was safely in custody, Nightwing separated from Batman and headed to find Kelley Alison. He found her sitting alone on the back of an ambulance, swinging her feet slowly while cops tried to get contact information on her uncle/godfather. Nightwing walked over, forcing a smile.
“Hey, there,” he said.
She quickly wiped her eyes and looked up at him, smiling weakly.
“Nightwing!”
Nightwing sat next to her and ruffled her hair a little.
“How’re you holding up, sweetie?”
“I dunno… Mommy and daddy are dead…” She looked at him with big green eyes. “Do you have a mommy and daddy?”
He sighed and looked at the ground.
“I did, a long time ago.”
“Where are they now?”
“Wherever yours are, sweetie.”
“Oh…”
Nightwing sighed a little and looked away. This was ridiculous. He should have been off making sure Robin was okay, not talking to some strange girl. Then again, no one else was talking to her, and she had just lost her parents. He heard her sniffle and looked over to see her beginning to cry again. ‘I’m no good with KIDS!’ he screamed in his mind. Trying to figure out what to do, he warily picked her up and hugged her gently.
“C’mon, don’t cry… Your mommy and daddy are safe now, you know that, right?”
“Mmmhmm…”
“I know it hurts, I know it does. But they’re safe and they’ll be watching you, you know? It’s as simple as that…”
Kelley buried her face into his chest, crying.
“Th-They’re making me… me go to Uncle Tommy now… are you gonna vi-visit me?”
‘We just met, kid! …Can’t blame her, I was the same way…’ he thought.
“I can only try, Kelley… I’ll *try*.”
**
Robin, a bandage on his head and chest wrapped, finished signing his name on Barbara’s cast--but without her knowing. Barbara was busy replacing power to the systems. As the lights all flashed on, Batman gave an approving nod.
“You’ve done good, Barbara. Especially in the condition you’re in,” he said.
“I want this cast off,” she said dryly.
“All in good time, Barbara. Leslie said you have to check in with her in a few days. If you play this right, we’ll have you out there again within the month--“
“A month is wayyyy too long!”
“Granted, but that’s what it is.” He walked over to Robin and helped him along to the window. “However, if you keep trying to save the DAY, it might be longer!”
Barbara saw a faint smile flashed briefly on his face and she had to smirk.
“Well, I’ll try to make it a point NOT to, hmm?”
“That’d be VERY nice.” He turned from the window to look at her. “I’ve been hearing Nightwing call you something… Oracle. What’s that about?”
“Well, you know how you guys had me hacking things and getting info for you since I broke my ankle?”
“Yes?”
“He says I remind him of the Greek Oracle.”
Batman sighed in despair.
“And to think, the boy failed that class.”
“It’s a NAME *I* want to fail. I want to be back to being Batgirl--this is driving me crazy!”
“All in due time. Lets go Robin.”
“G’night, Babs!” Robin waved before firing a line and shakily diving out.
Barbara waved after him. Batman fired out a line and was about to just dive out, when Barbara said:
“Good NIGHT, Batman.”
“Good night… Oracle.”
And then he was gone. Barbara had to let out a smile. No matter what she verbalized, that name was pretty cool. No “man”, “boy”, “girl” or “woman” to the end of it. Just a genderless title to work behind…
Barbara went to stand up, but stopped. On the very cast she told everyone she knew NOT to write anything on, was a message in black marker…
>Babs, thanks for saving my life tonight. Guess we both need a little more training, hunh? Thanks again! You’re a REAL hero, you know that? You may be down, but ya ain’t out! ~~R<
The End.