BatFam Week Theme: Time Travel
Starring: The whole gang!
This was it. Though Bruce cut his way through life with the sharp edge of honed pessimism, he also had an unyielding stubbornness that refused to acknowledge his own immortality. Ironic, given his start.
But this? This was it for him. It wasn’t pessimism or fatalism, just mathematics. There were too many of them and only one of him.
Bruce Wayne was going to die tonight.
Bruce pressed his back to the brick wall and sucked in a rattling breath. Definitely a couple broken ribs from that last hard fall. At least the pain distracted him from his twisted knee. And the broken ribs were a dull throb compared to the bullet in his shoulder. But at least the sloshing dizziness in his head from the last punch he took was a distraction from all that.
That was his version of looking on the bright side, he supposed.
And in a minute, those meatheads will come around the corner and put a bullet in your brains, so nothing will hurt ever again. How’s that for optimism?
It stung his pride that his vigilante venture would end this way. He had set out to do right by his parents, by Gotham, not to end up a quirky masked asterisk in the city’s history. More than anything, though, Bruce regretted how rough the aftermath was going to be on Alfred. He knew the old butler saw him as a son, and no father should have to identify their child’s corpse.
Bruce could hear the gang coming. They were cautious, the cracked skulls and broken bones he had given in return making them none too anxious to rush the Bat Man. But soon they would round the corner, and though he would fight to his last breath, it wouldn’t be enough. Bruce closed his eyes and whispered an apology up to his parents, to Alfred, to all the people he failed, then readied his last boomerang.
He almost dropped the boomerang when a body dropped off the fire escape down next to him. Bruce’s head whipped around to stare into the masked face of a green-hooded figure. No, not a figure. A child. A teenager with bright blue eyes who was smiling right at him.
“Hey, B,” the boy whispered casually, as if he were sliding in late to a movie with his bag of popcorn and not an alleyway filled with gun-toting criminals.
The boy grimaced as he eyed Bruce’s face. “Got you pretty good, didn’t they? Geez, B, haven’t you learned to duck yet?”
He pulled a small strapped case from his shoulder and set it on the ground between them. “I’ll get you patched up, don’t worry.”
“You need to leave,” Bruce hissed. “If those men find you here, they’ll—”
“What, kill me? Wrong-o, B. I’m not the one with mortality issues. You had a fifty-fifty shot and you whiffed.” The boy shook his head and pulled out a small pair of scissors from the open case. “The team’s got it. Don’t worry. You can watch, if you want, as long as you let me work.”
Work apparently meant just what he had said at the beginning. The boy cut open the tear in Bruce’s suit, stabbed what felt like a local anesthetic into the meat of Bruce’s shoulder, and began inspecting his bullet wound. It was a surreal sight, but not as surreal as what Bruce saw when he finally dared peek around the corner.
He watched as a lithe, hooded figure with a swimmer’s build dropped next to the gang’s lieutenant, graceful and silent as a cat, and swept the legs out from under the brawler, who dropped like a stone. In quick succession, two more hooded fighters appeared out of the shadows as if they had been born from them, a broad-shouldered mountain of a man and a slender figure with suspiciously feminine hips. Bruce watched, stunned, as they dispatched two more gang members each before the rest of the gang had time to blink.
“Who—” he began again, then choked in surprise.
“Is that a child?” Bruce demanded, turning back to glare at the other child currently probing his shoulder.
The teen’s gaze flicked up for a moment, then down at the numbed body part to continue fishing for the bullet. “Yeah, but don’t let him hear you call him that.”
Bruce blinked at the teen a moment more, then leaned around the corner again, one hand pressed to his throbbing ribs. He had to admit that the boy was capable. They all were. Even as Bruce watched, the small child dropped a man twice his size before launching himself at another. Though their fighting styles varied greatly, the four visible fighters worked cohesively and without much direction.
Not that they didn’t talk. The brawl in front of him lit up the night with what sounded like idle chatter. Trash talk, jokes, complaints, what sounded like recommendations for movies he had never heard of, a literary quote or two, and some truly awful puns. For a while, Bruce thought there was only the four he had seen, but then he noticed the men that disappeared into the darker corners of the alley and never reemerged. Once, he managed to spot the pair of hands that reached out and pulled a man in, as fast and as deadly as a goblin shark’s jaws.
And then, faster than he had thought possible, the fight was over. The unconscious bodies of over a dozen men littered the alleyway, all trussed and awaiting whatever crooked justice Gotham could dole out. The hooded figures were walking towards his section of the alleyway, so Bruce hauled himself back around the corner. He was greeted with a literally blinding pain as the boy shone a penlight into his eye, making Bruce gasp.
“Concussion,” the teen announced to the first person who stepped into view. “Bullet to the shoulder, but I got it out. Probably a hairline fracture to the same shoulder, but I can’t be sure. Two broken ribs, two bruised. Some contusions that’ll heal. We should get him to the doc.”
A pair of boots stopped by Bruce’s leg, then the first fighter from the alley ducked down into view. It was hard to tell with the domino mask and the shadows from the blue hood, but he looked about Bruce’s age. His face was tan, making his white teeth gleam in the moonlight.
“Geez, B,” the man mused as he tucked a finger under Bruce’s chin and eyed Bruce’s face, “forget how to duck? You’re a mess.”
“That’s what I said,” the teen agreed.
Bruce jerked his chin away, then regretted it when the movement made the brick walls swim nauseatingly.
“Definitely a concussion.” The new voice belonged to the third figure, whom Bruce could tell was definitely a girl now that she was up close. She paused to push an errant strand of blonde hair back into her purple hood, then blew a bubble with her gum as she considered Bruce. “And definitely the doc. He’ll need a CT. Can’t do that at home. Not yet, anyways.”
“Your stitches are crooked.” The haughty voice belonged to child, whom Bruce placed somewhere still in prepubescence. That was as close as he could get without eyes that would fully focus. He could see the shock of black hair beneath the yellow hood, though, along with tan cheeks still round with baby fat. The boy stood just behind the crouched cat-like man, a hand loosely gripping the fabric of the man’s hooded shirt.
“He’s not the most cooperative patient,” the teen retorted, voice as dry as a desert wind.
“He’s a friggin’ babyface.”
Bruce’s eyes had slid shut while the younger two bickered, but they shot open as fingers gently slapped his cheeks. The biggest fighter, the one who moved like a tiger in a man’s body and the only one Bruce had seen wielding a knife, was crouched next to the first man and smirking at Bruce. Bruce squinted at him, unable to pinpoint an age. Younger than the first man, he thought, but at least no longer a minor. Probably.
“Seriously, he’s what? Twenty-five? Bet he’s still got all his original teeth, too.”
Bruce opened his mouth to snarl that of course he had all his original teeth, what kind of monster children were they and where were their parents, when a shadow split off from the rest and touched his shoulder. He jolted visibly, then forced himself to still and analyze the new threat.
A black hood stared down at him, the shadows inside it so deep that he could barely make out two glinting eyes. It looked at him, head cocked like a curious bird, then turned to the others and waved its hands. Whatever signals it made seemed to mean something, because every head but Bruce’s turned to look back the direction they’d come.
“Oh. Uh.” The first man turned back to Bruce and smiled. “Looks like we gotta jet. We’ll drop you off at the clinic on our way. Hood?”
“Yeah.” Together, both men leaned forward and crouched under Bruce’s arms. While the teenager fussed the stitches watch the stitches and the kid sneered it’s not like they’re any good Red, the men lifted Bruce to his feet and steadied him. They were an uneven pair, one significantly taller than the other, but they balanced each other—and, by extension, him—well. And though the teen hadn’t catalogued Bruce’s busted knee, they were able to catch Bruce when he took a step and crumpled.
A chorus of knowing groans rose.
“Your knee? C’mon, B, you should’ve said,” the teen—Red? he had a green hood, that didn’t make sense—said.
“He’s Batman-ing,” the blonde said.
“Totally Batman-ing,” the tall man—Hood? or were they all Hood?—agreed. Bruce blinked as the man tucked his chin into his neck and growled, “I’m invincible. I bleed justice. My bones are made of truth and the American way.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hood,” sniffed the boy. “That sounds more like Su—”
“Ah, ah, ah!” the slender man interrupted as the shadow clapped its hands over the boy’s mouth. “Ixnay on the Ooper-say. You know the rules. Wibbly-wobbly, butterfly wings, et cetera, and we’ve screwed up enough.”
“I don’t think he should walk on that knee,” Red-who-wore-green interrupted. “And hopping’s no good, not with those ribs and that head. Hood?”
“Oh, you gotta be kidding me.” Probably-the-only-Hood rolled his head back expressively, fully emoting despite the domino mask and shadowed red hood. But when the others merely stood and looked at him, he sighed, and suddenly Bruce was lifted off his feet into a bridal carry. Bruce sucked in a sharp breath as the move jostled his ribs, then settled. The hold was surprisingly comfortable, and, in his addled state, made him feel fancy.
“Uh…” Bruce began, not with it enough to put together a coherent statement on his current position.
“Not a word,” Hood growled.
So Bruce stayed silent the entire way to the clinic—Leslie’s clinic, he was anxious to note, since he hadn’t mentioned her or given direction to his new bodyguards. But he figured that if they wanted him dead, they would have merely let the gang kill him, so he refrained from trying to battle his way free. In fact, to his own horror, he was lightly dozing when they reached the clinic’s back entrance.
“Naptime’s over,” not-Red Hood announced gruffly, but he gave Bruce a moment to reorient himself before gingerly placing him on the bench.
“It’ll cause too many questions if we take you in,” the blue-hooded man explained as he sat next to Bruce. “We’ve already meddled maybe more than we should have.”
“Definitely more than we should have,” Red retorted.
The slender man ignored the teen and smiled apologetically at Bruce. “Sorry we were late. There was a… thing. You weren’t supposed to…” He laughed, white teeth flashing in the moonlight. “It’s complicated. I’ll tell you later.
He stood and gently patted Bruce’s shoulder. “It was good to see you, B.”
Gesturing to the others, he began to walk away and called back to Bruce, “You know, you should look into getting yourself a partner. Someone to watch your back. Maybe someone with a little more agility, you big galoot.”
Whatever that meant seemed to resonate with the big man, because Hood snorted, then reached out and tapped Bruce’s chest. “Body armor. Getcha some. And maybe a sweet ride?”
Bruce blinked wearily as the rest of his saviors bid him goodbye in their own way. The blonde ruffled his hair (he hated that) and said something about an exercise machine. (Or was that a Stairmaster?) The shadowed hood smiled at him—how he could tell, he wasn’t sure, but it seemed friendly—then signed something with its hands that he didn’t quite catch.The teen somberly instructed him to take care of himself, then patted him a little awkwardly on the shoulder. And the little boy waited until the others were almost out of sight before planting a quick, almost embarrassed kiss on Bruce’s cheek and breathing, “Pleaseletmehaveadogokaythanksbye” and hurrying after the others.
Bruce watched them disappear back into the shadows before pushing himself onto his good knee with a quiet huff and giving Leslie a ring. He never told anyone about that night, though he thought about it from time to time. As strange as Gotham could be, being rescued by teenage Power Rangers was a level of weird too far even for Bruce Wayne.
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