Chapter Text
“I told you to stay out of my room Stephanie!” Arthur Brown slammed the door in Stephanie’s face. “Mind your father’s privacy or you will face the consequences!”
Like you’re any real father , Stephanie glared stalking away to her room not believing she had to put up with him.
It had been better the last few years at the Brown household, what with Arthur Brown being locked up in Arkham by the Batman. Better yet he’d been incarcerated as a John Doe so Stephanie and her mother hadn’t needed to even visit, unlike when he’d been in Blackgate. Crystal Brown had even been doing better, taking fewer pills than she used to. But now that he was out it had only gone down with his return and there wasn’t anything Stephanie could do about it!
Stephanie collapsed on her old and worn bed, wishing that Batman had done some more permanent damage to her father when he arrested him. The worst part about his return was that he somehow got even worse since the doctors had treated his obsession with clues.
Stephanie took out her phone. “I know you’re up to something dad, just need to figure out what.” She knew her father was planning something, she saw his old costume when she snuck into his room and their garage stunk of chemicals.
“Maybe I should call the cops,” She mused then sighed. “And tell them what? ‘Hello Officers my dad has a Halloween costume and is working with chemicals, can you arrest him?’ Yeah, I doubt that will go over well. I guess I can just hope that whatever he does gets him caught by the cops.”
Later she heard her father leave the house. “I’ll be back later, I have to go see some friends about a poker game.”
“Okay, have fun,” Crystal’s weary voice replied.
Stephanie scoffed as her father left, there was no way he was going out to play poker, whatever he was planning he was getting it started tonight. A thought struck Stephanie, her father was out and wasn’t likely going to be coming back for a while, and while he was gone she could search his room, see if he left anything that could tell her what he was planning.
It was easy to break into his room, Stephanie’s mother was rarely fully conscious since Arthur returned and the locks in their house were hardly state-of-the-art. Stephanie started poking around his drawers and fingering through his books.
Guess it was too much to ask for an evil to-do list , She thought placing another useless book back in its place. Stupid Arkham Doctors, of all the crazies in Gotham the only one you seem to be able to help is the one who left clues to his plans! It’s like they’re trying to make them better criminals!
Stephanie opened the closet where she had found her father’s old Cluemaster, but it was empty except for an old coat. “He took his costume! I can call the cops and tell them he’s wearing it again!”
Stephanie raced out of the room grabbing the home phone and calling 911. “Hello, dispatch?” The voice on the other end asked. “What is your emergency?”
“Yes I’d like to report a crime,” said Stephanie.
“What is the crime?”
“It’s…” Stephanie paused and again she realized that her dad hadn’t really done anything illegal and she didn’t know if he was planning on doing anything, even though she was certain he was. It wasn’t like she could just report him for wearing a costume, they’d never take her seriously.
“Ma’am are you there? Is everything alright? Do we need to send some uniforms over?”
Yes , Stephanie thought, out loud she said. “No, everything’s fine I just wanted to report that I saw some of the kids next door with spray paint, heard them talking about marking a building in Otisburg.”
“Alright, what is the address, someone will check it out.”
Stephanie punched the wall of her room, chipping the wall paint that hadn’t been redone since her birth. “Stupid!” She cursed. “Like the cops could do anything, even if I did have proof they couldn’t catch a cold if they stood in a freezer dripping wet! Let alone, my father.”
She groaned, there was nothing she could do, nothing except hope that he would get himself caught. Not like she could stop him herself.
~~~
Stephanie held the ice pack to her right eye, mentally cursing herself for being stupid enough to try and go through her dad’s room again. He’d come back from his ‘poker game’ unusually pleased and had either been holed up in the garage or his room since then. She’d hoped to find something, anything that might hint to what he was doing, and broke in while he was in the garage but she found nothing, worse still he walked in on her while she was still in there.
And that was how she found herself nursing a black eye, her father had stepped out again for one of his poker games. She didn’t bother searching his room or the garage, it had become pretty clear that he wasn’t keeping anything that could lead to whatever he was doing.
“Wonder what’s on the news, maybe dad got himself blown up or something,” She muttered turning onto WGTM.
It wasn't her father but she did see a bunch of guys that looked like they lost a fight with a gorilla. Commissioner Gordon refused to comment, his hair looked a lot whiter ever since his daughter got attacked, Stephanie wondered what it was like to have a father that actually seemed to care about his daughter. The image turned to a younger man with dark hair in a striped suit. Boy, he sure doesn’t have any fashion sense . Stephanie thought.
“Gotham is drowning in a cesspool of crime,” Armand Krol said. “The police are underfunded, poorly trained, and unmotivated.”
Well, he’s right there , Stephanie thought.
“It is this city’s shame that a phenomenon like the Batman has arisen.”
What’s Metropolis’ excuse for Superman then?
“It’s not up to some masked vigilante to protect our citizens…”
That ‘masked vigilante’ is doing a heck of a good job at it though.
“...No matter how good his intentions…”
Well, my intentions for stopping my dad are just as good as any Batman has for stopping criminals.
“...No matter how noble his cause…”
Noble cause, no I like the sound of that , Stephanie smiled to herself despite the pain in her eyes. Yeah, I like the sound of that a lot.
~~~
It took a few days to get the materials together and even longer to get the look just right, during that time she stayed out of her dad’s way as much as she could and he left almost every night for one of his ‘poker games'. Finally, after nearly a week of hard work, it was ready.
She wrapped the cape around herself and pulled up the mask, taking a look at herself in the mirror. The blue mask with white eye slits completely hid her face, the purple hooded cape helped hide her long blonde hair, the rest of her costume was a purple-paded long-sleeved shirt, dark blue pants, a blue tactical belt, blue gloves, and purple boots. She packed a listening antenna, some rope, and a spare set of regular clothes in a backpack.
“Now I just need a name,” She said to herself, wasn’t like she could go about using her real name. She needed something poetic to her father’s villain name, something that would really ruin his day. “Hmm Killjoy maybe, nah doesn’t fit right, oh I got it! Spoiler, heh watch out Cluemaster cause the Spoiler is going to ruin whatever you have planned.”
Spoiler waited until she heard her dad leave for his next ‘poker game’ before she headed to the garage to collect her moped and follow him. The moped was a gift from her mother during her more sober times, a way for Stephanie to move around when Crystal was unable, or to be able to pick up a set of pills for her mother. Still, she was happy to have it, it wasn’t a Batmobile but it beat walking.
She followed her father to an old auto parts building, he entered the building while Spoiler climbed up the one next to it, after parking her moped somewhere in sight with her backpack and spare clothes. Using the listening antenna she brought with her she pointed it at the auto parts building, tuning it until she could hear inside.
“...So that is the plan,” Cluemaster’s voice came through the antenna. “Follow it correctly and you’ll make off with a small fortune, we’ll meet back up hear when the job is done.”
“Alright,” A man with an eye patch Spoiler could see through the window said. “Just remember, no clues, got it?”
“Have no fear, that particular Achilles Heel has been conquered.”
“Unfortunately,” Spoiler muttered.
A few minutes later a black van speeds out of the building, cliche much? Spoiler considered following after but she would have no chance of catching them. Better just to wait until they returned as they said they would.
~~~
Bored!!!
Spoiler wished she had brought a game or something because she was bored out of her mind. Wherever Cluemaster and his new gang had headed off to it was taking a while for them to get back. Part of her hoped whatever they were doing had gotten them caught by the police, but then that would mean all her hard work on her awesome costume would have been put to waste!
Finally, the dark van returns, and Spoiler set up her listening equipment again, peering through the skylight as the men dumped a bag full of cash onto a table.
“Beautiful,” Eyepatch said.
“Must be a quarter million here,” A large man exclaimed.
“And you didn’t leave any kind of crazy clues. You gone cold turkey on that, huh?” Eyepatch asked.
“A prison psychiatrist cured me of that during my stay at Arkham. But my criminal instincts were left intact.”
And your ability to be a terrible father and husband.
“You see, I would use my puzzlements as a way of compensating for a lack of self-esteem. I wanted to show my intellectual superiority. But thanks to the wonders of modern psychiatry, all I want now is to be rich.”
Dad of the year he is not.
“You’re all right,” Eyepatch pushed a pile of money towards Cluemaster. “Here’s twenty-five grand. A full ten percent. So, tell me what other ideas you got.”
Finally, getting to the good stuff.
“This one is more ambitious, more complicated…”
Come on, get to the point!
“I’ll have greater details tomorrow but here is the gist of it.”
~~~
Spoiler smirked beneath her mask, she heard everything, his little plan to rob Castleland Park. Sure he had more details to share but it was a start. She considered just telling the police of Cluemaster’s location, that quarter million would guarantee he’d go away for some time, but if he was telling the truth about this being even more ambitious she could get rid of him for good if he was caught in the act.
She’d need to tell the police something though, so that they’d be around when it happened, or at least the Batman considering how he obviously worked for the police. She’d think of something later, for now, she needed to get off the roof and back to the house before Cluemaster returned and realized she was gone.
Spoiler started packing to leave when a shadow from the moonlight passed over her, she looked up in time to see a small dark figure crash into her. Spoiler grunted as she fell face down, then, before she could react to the sudden attack, her arm was grabbed and she was tossed around onto her back. She looked up at the small dark figure that had overpowered and pinned her before she could do anything.
So this is how I die, I was hoping it would be a bit more dignified than being killed on a roof by random evil shadows.
Then the light changed slightly and Spoiler realized she would die of embarrassment instead, for the figure was a kid. She was small, maybe eight or nine at the oldest, her hair was dark and greasy looking, she had an Asian look to her, her eyes were dark but didn’t look cold like her father's were. The kid was also really thin by the way her torn white shirt swayed and her dirty blue jeans hunt slightly on her waist, she wore no shoes, her feet were covered in grime and small scratches Spoiler was sure would cause infections.
“Uh, hello,” She said, she thought that was a good opener. “You should let me go before you get hurt.”
The kid raised an eye like she didn’t believe her. “I’m serious, if don’t let go this will get messy.”
The kid blinked.
“Fine, you asked for it,” Spoiler tried to push the kid off with her other hand, the kid swayed back then lashed out fast than Spoiler could see, grabbing her other arm. She pinned both hands and stepped on her stomach, leaning close to Spoiler's mask.
Ugh, fast kid, and yep an alley one too, great I just got this. The kid certainly had that Gotham smell of someone who’d slept on the streets. “Alright, what do you want?”
The kid released one of her hands, pointing a dirt-covered hand to the sky where the Bat-signal was in the sky. “You’re looking for Batman, why?”
The kid didn’t answer, not much of a talker, just pointing at Spoiler then at the signal again.
“Look I would love to help but first can you get off me?” Spoiler asked. The kid let her go, hopping off, pointing at Spoiler, then herself, then at the signal. “I get it, you want Batman, but I can’t help you there, I don’t know him. Maybe try the cops, they’re always going to him for help.”
The kid repeated the pointing. “I said I don’t know him, sorry but I can’t help, right now I need to go, I have other things to do.”
Spoiler tossed one end of the hooked rope down the side of the building. She looked at the kid again, she really did look like she needed help, but she didn’t think it was the kind of help Batman did. “You should probably head to a shelter, get something to eat and maybe they can even clean you up.”
The kid, predictably, said nothing. “Well… good luck and goodbye.”