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“Our next guest has stopped to see us at the tail end of her tour promoting her latest beauty line, as well as the memoir she’s written over the past year. Please welcome, Brooke Wayne!”
Brooke stepped out onto the polished bronze-colored stage, looking as poised and polished as ever. Shining black hair perfectly straight and framing an expertly made-up and gorgeous face, smile beaming as brightly as her jewelry when she turned to acknowledge and wave to the audience.
The host of Gotham Tonight, Ronni Reese, a short and rounded woman who never seemed to stop smiling, stood to greet her with a hug before they both settled in opposite plush armchairs on the stage.
“It’s great to see you tonight, Brooke, thanks for being here. How’s the tour been going?”
Brooke smiled, looking every inch the fabulously wealthy heiress she was, and rested her weight gracefully against the arm of her chair. “It’s been going fabulously, Ronni. I couldn’t be happier with how the book has been received, and this tour has been absolutely amazing. But I’m so glad to be back home in Gotham again.”
“Not something you hear very often,” Ronni joked with a wink, earning a laugh from the studio audience and Brooke herself, “I’ve heard that the book itself is very much about Gotham as well, is that true?”
“Well of course,” She nodded, gesturing to the backdrop of the stage, a mockup of the famed Gotham skyline, “this city is a major part of who I am, it’s molded me as much as anything has; I can’t imagine myself living anywhere else...at least not full-time.” A chuckle from the audience. “Writing a book about my life meant writing a book about Gotham City. Which of course I loved doing, I love this city so much.”
“I hate this city,” Jaycee complained, swinging a piece of broken pipe into a bird-like robot with bladed wing-arms. The metal head snapped from its body and flew across the warehouse, pinging off the wall while the body fountained sparks from its shattered neck and collapsed to the ground.
“It’s not so bad, when it’s not overrun by these things,” Dixie said conversationally, taking out two more robots at once with a graceful flip, “On your left, Hood.”
Jaycee spun and drove her fist straight into the expressionless face of another robot just as it was beginning a downswing with it’s blade arm. Sparks exploded in all directions and the robot fell backwards, the blade clanging to the ground alongside it. “How about we trade then, you work here and I’ll go take over in Bludhaven. Your right.”
Dixie ducked, barely avoiding the blade swinging at the perfect level to slice open her stomach. Once it whisked harmlessly overhead she sprang straight up, got her feet on the robot’s shoulders and shoved it into the ground, then shoved it off the access walkway they stood on. It hit the concrete floor below with a satisfying crash. “As if you would ever leave Gotham. You like it here, admit it. Besides, you wouldn’t look as good in black and blue.”
Her sister made a derisive noise in her throat as they backed up into each other, surveying the now-quiet warehouse for any more robots.
Their comms crackled to life.
“I disabled the ‘bots, you shouldn’t have any more trouble from them. I have a room the hostages are likely in, sending you the map right now.”
The audience ‘ooh’ed over the list of destinations Brooke had been to promote her book and beauty line.
“My goodness,” Ronni gasped as if hearing some kind of scandalous gossip, “You really have been all over the place in the last few weeks. Did any of your kids come with you?”
“Not this time, unfortunately,” Brooke sighed, frowning slightly in the perfect image of a forlorn mother, “they have their schoolwork and jobs and their own activities to deal with. We’ve been in contact almost constantly, but I get to see them in person tonight and I just can’t wait.”
The audience ‘aww’ed at that bit, touched by her love for her family. It was one of her big selling points after all- Brooke Wayne, slightly bumbling but managing to juggle motherhood, running the many facets of her own corporation, not to mention maintaining her own health and fitness.
“You’re close with your kids, then?”
“Oh absolutely. In fact, they helped me with the items for the new line coming out this fall.”
Ronni reached down beside her chair and pulled up several of the beauty products being released by Wayne Cosmetics later in the year. “Speaking of!”
The audience and Brooke laughed.
Ronni placed the items down on the table between them.
“How exactly have the girls helped with these?”
“Well, first of all they’re my inspiration, of course . There’s at least one item in each of these sets inspired by each one of them.”
More ‘aww’s from the audience.
“But besides that, you’ll notice the makeup sets are all being called ‘fitness beauty’?”
Ronni nodded, picking up an eyeshadow palette and pointing out the subtitle for the cameras. “I was wondering about that, are these going to help me lose weight?”
“I wish,” Brooke smiled, “but unfortunately we haven’t worked that out just yet. See, I noticed that no matter what makeup I tried, I would end up sweating it all off during my workouts and I would look like a mess, right?” Ronni and most of the women in the audience nodded. “Today’s busy woman doesn’t have time to be messing with makeup touch ups all of the time, so I wanted to create makeup that would stay on through everything .”
The audience cheered and applauded their approval.
“So, I gave our samples to my girls to test. They’re some of the most active people I know!”
Dixie sprinted down the hallway, splitting her attention between the map Red Robin had uploaded to her domino mask and the actual physical path in front of her.
“Got anything yet, Nightwing?” Kim asked in her ear.
She kicked open the third door in the hallway, and like the two before it, it swung open on its hinges to show her another empty office space. She groaned. “Not yet, Red Robin.”
“Nothing here either.” Came Jaycee’s voice over the comms from the other side of the building where she was checking rooms as well.
“We’re sure there are hostages in here?” Dixie asked, kicking open another door on an empty office.
“Positive. You still have rooms to check.”
“Wow, will do boss.” Jaycee snorted.
The last door turned up a final empty office, and Dixie was about to report it as such when Jaycee’s voice broke into the silence.
“Got the hostages, five of them, and Penguin.” Her voice was clipped and sounded vaguely strained. Like she was fighting.
Dixie checked the map for the little blinking dot that marked her sister’s location in the warehouse and ran for it.
She burst into a room full of desks with computers. Five workers, arms tied and mouths taped, were huddled in the far left corner of the room while Jaycee stood between Penguin’s two robotic bodyguards, ready to fight.
Ursula Cobblepot, aka The Penguin, lounged on a desk chair as if it were a throne, her massive pet vulture perched above her, talons stabbing through the worn fabric of the chair.
Several large shipping crates sat in the room, each stamped to be shipped to the Gotham museum. One was open, and Dixie guessed it was the source of the ornate crystal duck on Ursula’s lap, as well as the other bird-shaped jewels around her.
“Oh, the other pretty bird. How delightful.” Ursula’s nasal, whining voice was flat and heavy with a lack of amusement as she examined her reflection in an emerald swan. “And I was just getting into such a good mood.”
Dixie kept her eyes on Jaycee and the robots circling her while she pulled her escrima sticks from her back and held them at the ready. “Call them off, Penguin. Let the hostages go, put the jewels back, and get out of here. Then we can all call it a night.”
Ursula’s cruel sneer served to accentuate the harsh angles of her face and beaklike nose.
“You birdbrains are all the same. No fun for anyone else.” She held a ruby dove in the air, letting it catch the moonlight and reflect speckles of bright light all over the room. “Without me, these beauties are going to sit in a stuffy old case at the museum, never appreciated. I’ll give them what they truly deserve.”
“I’ll give her what she truly deserves…” Jaycee muttered.
“ What did you say?” Ursula shrieked.
Her voice echoed around the room, and Dixie heard a strange shuffling sound. At first, she thought it was one of the hostages moving against the concrete floor. But it came from above, so she glanced up.
The room had walls but the ceiling was open to the ceiling of the warehouse itself, far above them. In the rafters and lining the tops of the walls stood birds. Hundreds of birds of all kinds just sitting there, waiting. At Ursula’s command.
“So they all get along?”
Brooke nodded, then shrugged. “I’m as surprised as you, honestly. But yes. They have their moments, of course, but overall they’re great together.”
“You’re telling me that in a house with a thirteen-year-old and a seventeen-year-old, everything’s fine?”
“Absolutely. In fact, Dami absolutely idolizes Kim. Wants to do everything she’s doing.”
“I should be on comms.”
Kim glanced up from her computer screen, momentarily confused, then spun her chair to look at her younger sister, wincing when the movement jostled the knee she’d sprained the night before. “What?”
Damian stood barefoot on the batcave floor, in pajama pants and one of Dixie’s hoodies. “If I can’t be out there helping them take Penguin down, I should at least be on comms.”
There were sounds of a fight coming over the comms. Kim could see exactly where in the building Nightwing and Red Hood were, had been able to shut down the robots that had been swarming the place, but she couldn’t do anything to help them in this fight.
“What you should be doing is your homework, like Alice said.”
“It’s done. Move over.”
Kim turned back to the computer with a gusty sigh. “Dami I don’t have time to deal with you right now, I need to focus.”
As she let herself sink back into her work, she faintly registered the sound of bare feet on stone and assumed Damian had actually listened to her. Which would be a first.
Moments later her suspicions were confirmed when Brooke’s desk chair rolled over to the desk where she was working, and Damian crawled up into the flattened once-plush seat.
“What’s going on?”
Kim glanced over at her little sister without fully turning her head. “What’s happening is you’re butting your nose in to where it doesn’t belong, as usual.”
Damian crossed her legs, sitting in the center of the huge chair like a little princess on her throne, and reached out to use the desk to pull herself closer. “Since Mother isn’t here it’s my job to-”
“Since Mother isn’t here, I’m dealing with the comms for Nightwing and Red Hood. Go back upstairs and do your schoolwork.” Kim leaned over and pushed the younger girl’s chair away.
“I told you,” Damian grumbled, using one foot to push herself back over, “it’s done. I’m helping.”
Kim sighed more loudly this time. “Dami, don’t make me make my knee worse kicking you across the cave.” She shoved her sister’s chair away again.
“I’m not going-”
“Damian, go upstairs !”
“You’re not in charge of me!” The younger girl snapped back, yanking herself back to the desk quick enough to whack the arm of the chair into the table.
Kim stared at her. “Did you just ‘you’re not the boss of me’ at me?”
Damian scowled at her suspiciously. “Possibly.”
“I can’t believe you would-” She stopped mid-sentence, suddenly staring past Damian. For a moment the only noise in the cave was the muffled sounds of battle coming over the comm channel. Then Kim spun her chair back to the desk and began typing furiously.
“What are you doing?” Damian asked, leaning over to try and see for herself. The screens and lines of code went by too quickly for her to make any sense out of them.
“I may not be the boss of you, Dami, but there’s someone I can be the boss off…”
The audience applauded, and Brooke nodded graciously towards them.
“Honestly your life sounds like a dream. How do you do it all?”
“I wish I could tell you!” Brooke laughed, and the audience laughed with her. “Seriously, it’s all a mystery to me. I’m not organized at all, and I’m a terrible planner.”
Damian leaned forward in her chair, attempting to force her eyes to focus on the code passing by the screens more quickly than she could process.
“What are you going to do?”
Kim didn’t move, didn’t even look up. She watched the screens as if trying to see into the future through their flickering light.
“You know how B has an emergency contingency plan for everyone in the Justice League, in case they go bad somehow?”
The rapidly changing screens start to bug Damian’s eyes so she swiveled her chair to face her sister instead. “Yes?”
A smile that reminded Damian of a cartoonish mad scientist spread across Kim’s face. “Her plan for Red Tornado is an adapted computer virus that would allow B to control her remotely. Since I already wrote code to control the robots earlier, I just have to adapt this code to them.”
“And you’ll have full control?”
“I don’t need full control, I just need a way in.”
“So you can do what?”
The screens finally slowed, and Kim hit a couple of keys with the flourish of a musician. “You might want to cover your ears.”
Even though they hadn’t been completely shut down, Ursula’s robot bodyguards had clearly been seriously affected by Red Robin’s system shutdown. They lurched drunkenly in the corner of the room, metal heads clunking into the walls and their limbs flailing uselessly.
The birds filling the room were definitely a much bigger threat.
Ursula’s cruel cackling was almost entirely buried by the sounds of hundreds of pairs of wings beating, the air clogged with feathers and claws that lashed out at Dixie and Jaycee, slicing their faces, snagging both their clothes and the skin underneath.
The hostages in the corner shrieked when the birds went after them as well.
Dixie wanted to go towards their yelling, but that would mean leaving her spot against Jaycee’s back.
She kept one arm up over her face, holding an escrima stick in her other hand and swinging it wildly. But the moment she landed a hit on one, three more took its place.
Jaycee was yelling in colorful Spanish, and cursing in several other languages.
Ursula’s laughing continued, rising to an almost hysterical pitch amongst the whirlwind of birds and claws.
Somewhere in the chaos, a loud metallic clanking just barely rose above the noise.
Talons jabbed into the arm Dixie had covering her face and she let out a yell, swinging her arm wildly to try and dislodge the bird, leaving her face unprotected. A bird pecked at her mask and nearly pulled it off.
A high pitched squealing rose above the noise of the birds, continuing to rise both in pitch and volume.
Kim yelled over the comms, barely audible over the increasing racket. “You guys are gonna want to cover your ears!”
Dixie covered her head with both arms and ducked down low to the ground, felt Jaycee crouch behind her.
The noise kept getting louder, boring directly into Dixie’s head and making her head throb.
The birds squawked and shrieked, panicking, running into each other. The cloud of feathers began to rise as the panicked animals flew out of the room through the open ceiling, then out into the sky from the broken windows.
“No! No my pets! Come back!” Ursula screamed.
Dixie lowered her arms with a smile. She could see the hostages now, bloodied like she and Jaycee, but otherwise unharmed.
Feathers littered the ground but the birds were gone.
The noise, coming from the two half-broken robots slumped against the wall, faded away.
Through the ringing in her ears, Dixie could hear Kim laughing.
“Nice going, Little Wing.”
Jaycee grunted. “I thought that was my nickname…”
It was dark, rainy, and past midnight when Brooke arrived at the manor for the first time in three months. She walked through the entryway and sighed, letting out all of the tension she’d been gathering during her trip.
The house was mostly dark, except for a few lights strategically left on here and there.
She was still made up from the show, preferring to get home that much faster. Her silver heels clicked softly on the marble flooring of the foyer, changing tone when she reached the hardwood floor of the rest of the house.
She’d had a message from Kim on her phone that everyone was home, but she hadn’t heard any details about the night’s patrol yet, and she was antsy for things to get back to normal.
“Welcome home, Miss Wayne.”
Alice Pennyworth stood in the doorway leading to the living room, still dressed in her everyday work uniform despite the late hour.
Brooke smiled, and it was genuine for the first time in days. “Thank you, Alice. Where are the girls?”
“All four of them are on the couch, I tried to send them to bed,” she arched one eyebrow in her ‘I blame you for this’ way, “but they wanted food before bed.”
“Food in the living room?” Brooke smiled, shaking her head as she walked into the living room past the maid, “You’re losing your edge.”
“Don’t test me, Miss Wayne.” Alice smiled.
Brooke was surprised that the room was so quiet if all of the girls were in there together, until she saw them.
All four were piled on the couch, asleep.
Dixie was on the bottom in the sweatpants and tank top she kept in the cave, stretched across the couch with her feet on Jaycee’s lap. Band-aids criss-crossed her tan skin alongside a few dime-sized bruises. Her curly black hair was a mess, air dried from the shower.
Jaycee laid on the opposite edge of the couch, her feet tucked under Dixie’s butt. She hadn’t changed out of her Red Hood uniform, which wasn’t unusual. It was like she was keeping a barrier between herself and the house. Still.
Her nearly black, dark brown hair was undone from the braid she normally kept it in and fanned out over the couch armrest, the white trauma streak in her hair standing out sharply.
Scratches and cuts stood out against her skin as well, and a dark bruise ringed one eye.
Kim was stretched out across the two of them in her pajamas, or at least that’s what Brooke was assuming the faded t-shirt and threadbare plaid shorts were supposed to be. Her left leg, a brace around her knee, was propped up on Dixie’s shoulder, the other hooked over the back of the couch.
Her short black hair was a mess and hanging partially over her eyes.
Brooke gently brushed the wispy curls out of her face. The teenager slightly scrunched her face and turned her head away just a bit before falling still again.
Damian was curled up between Dixie and the back of the couch, her oversized hoodie covering most of her body to the point that Brooke hardly noticed her tucked in there.
One of Dixie’s arms was around her littlest sister, and Damian was hugging her arm to her chest.
Brooke touched Dixie’s arm, and she opened her eyes immediately, but didn’t move.
She smiled sleepily. “Hey, great job on your show tonight. You looked great.”
Brooke sighed. “How did patrol go?”
Dixie shrugged, and Damian stirred. Surprised, she hugged her littlest sister closer in an attempt to soothe her, and the smaller girl settled again.
“Oh you know,” she said, softly, so as not to disturb the others, “same old, same old.”
“Hm.”
“How was your trip?”
“Same old, same old.” Brooke sighed, resting one hand on the arm of the couch and reaching down to take off her heels.
“Hm. My mascara smudged, by the way.”
Brooke walked towards the kitchen with her shoes hanging from one finger. “Then you aren’t wearing one of mine.”
Dixie laughed, and immediately covered her mouth to silence herself.
“Goodnight, Dix.”
“‘Night, B.”