Batman's son aka Robin aka Damian Wayne pulling off the crisp vertical kick made famous by the likes of Donnie Yen and Jet Li.
Pics from Super Sons # 13 and Tiger Cage.
It is 8:20 in the morning, and the sky is pressing down like the tired choke of omen. Grey and dim as fall threatens to slip into winter, the sun hidden by the horizon and a thick blanket of foggy clouds. A chill sits on the air.
The children, waiting, do not feel it. In twenty minutes, the bell will ring and their day will begin in earnest. The playground monitor will blow her shrill whistle and they will form into narrow lines, march into the brick building, and disappear into the mist of being. But for now, they remain floating suspended in the early morning light, hanging, grasping desperately at what little is left to hold.
The game they are playing is called “Tiger Cage”. It’s the only game they play on the dome: a geometric mesh of bars bolted into triangles, attached into pentagons, molded into a half sphere. Other games take place around the dome, or through it: tag where the chased are cornered against it, play pretend where the dome can be a castle, a cave, or a prison, but only Tiger Cage is possessed by the dome. A game that exists only here, only now- before the playground monitor has power enough to stop them, to tell them it isn’t safe and scatter them about. Tiger Cage is part of the dream, part of the blur before school, of waiting for the bell to ring. It is a fervor, as many children’s games are. So consuming as to mold you into character, enrapture you into a new being. The children are caught. The game is being played.
More than twenty of them weigh down onto the creaking metal bars, writhing as they clamor to the top. Twisting in and out of the triangular openings, hanging by tiny fingers, pushing over each other and the whole structure sways under the pressure of them all. They wait to see who will drop first, who will start.
Eventually, unspoken, someone slips. They tumble down onto the wood chips, and the game begins. He is the Tiger now, and the cage presses in. The Tiger in its blue jacket snarls, twisting away from the grasping hands. The other side of the cage shutters and hands become arms, the Tiger bears its teeth and pulls back. Surrounded on all sides, the cage becomes impenetrable, a wall of writhing, reaching hands, desperate to hold it, snatch it. The cage is sanctuary, and only so safe as it can curl right within its center, thrashing as their hands lash though the air, wanting, wanting, wanting. It finds the middle of the dome eventually, crouching out of reach. The cage waits, performs the perfunctory strain of failure for a moment, before the second act begins. One of the hands at the side, perhaps midway up the dome, starts the show. In one smooth motion, hand becomes arm becomes shoulder, then a whole body breeches the boundaries of the cage, half suspended by an aching little arm twisted backwards, balanced on the thin metal as the Tiger’s safety is lanced through. The body swipes down and out, and the Tiger must throw itself backwards, then roll on its feet to the center again, away from the hungry walls as the body rebalances from the attempt, then retreats. But it is too slow, and as it jumps back to safety a pale hand snatches at it. Too late, too slow: so he is no longer the Tiger. His blue jacket scrambles back onto the dome, pulling up and disappearing into the roiling web of hands and bodies and reaching.
The next Tiger drops into the pit on bright red sneakers, crunch-crushing the wood chips as his weight becomes predator, as he arches forward into its four-legged growling snarling anger. The cage does not wait long before they begins to swing down, death-defying dives as they clamor to consume it. It snarls and spins and grows and roars and twists into its own dives avoiding. But the cage is all blood and air, swooping like taloned birds bereft of weight, and it is only mortal, rolling into splinter-soil till it is heavy with it. A body from the center top, nearly the perilous center ring, pulls him back out of the cage.
And then the next, a girl in a green knit cap. Then next, a boy in a black jacket. It is movement, it is trial. They are children, and children are becoming things. So they are becoming: Predators trapped, all consuming grasp, a silent dance of death on the cold autumn morning. They don’t speak, not really. Just act.
A girl drops into the cage- or what was thought to be a girl, before this. She is wearing a brown canvas jacket. But there is no girl in the cage, there never was. Only the Tiger. It is warmer here, caught in cloying heat as the sky becomes skin, reaches in, for the kill. It roars, spins. Pacing becomes panting, anguished dancing running as it twists. The hands grab in-in-in. Its eyes wide, gold- rimmed, slitting into beastly adrenaline. A body falls, it flips. Pushes with its hind claws as it amends. Another lunges and it tucks, ducking, hackles raised. Howls back away, hitches forward to avoid a graze. Whirls back from a close miss, panting heavy. Its ribs swell like prey-kin, and there is fear. But it is a Tiger, and tigers have teeth, not armor. And it has teeth. Spitting as it yowls upwards, and suddenly it is done: the grandest feat. A body at the very top, all in visceral strength, plummets to the center of the cage, caught only by the legs. And the Tiger roars, stomach exposed as it’s thrown, deep into the shrapnel at its back. Belly up as it stares into the eyes of the cage, double-dozen-thousand staring pin point as the Tiger’s teeth bear down into sharp fangs, fingers made paws bloom white claws, and then-
The bell rings. For a moment, the children stay perfectly still. The girl who hangs from the top of the dome, inches away, doesn’t blink. Then the recess monitor’s shrill whistle screams, and they all slowly pull away. Shuffling just slow enough that by the next blink, the girl in the brown canvas jacket has human eyes.
