Truth & Justice I #2

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Truth and Justice #2

Written by JC Roberts (Calamityjamie)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

"What did you think of Gren trying to edge out your dad?” Martha asked, hours later, as she and Lian began unpacking boxes in the small two-bedroom apartment they’d rented in Northeast Gotham.

Her roommate grimaced. “What a joke. Who’d follow him?”

“I don’t think I could,” said Martha. “He’s got some real power issues.”

“He’s an obnoxious jerk,” said Lian. “He acts like having been in the army makes him a leader. And he’s such a fool with women. You haven’t seen him in action lately, but he actually thinks all the bimbo worship means something.”

She pulled a skimpy gauze blouse from the brown cardboard box and held it up against her ample chest. “Hey, I forgot about this one! Does it still look hot on me?”

“The box would look hot on you.” Martha reminded herself that friends don’t psychoanalyze friends and ripped the packing tape off of a Seagram’s box. “Jeez, Lian, you have an entire box full of underwear?”

“Well, you know, you need different ones for different occasions.”

Martha snorted softly and reached for a slice of Sartelli’s veggie works pizza. Lian had built her entire identity around her sexuality. Even her crime-fighting name – Quiver – evoked a provocativeness she couldn’t seem to turn off. She was naturally gorgeous – Roy’s red hair and green eyes had mixed lusciously with her mother’s striking Vietnamese features. She’d also inherited Roy’s sexual attitudes – at least those of his younger days – and had taken them to what Martha considered an alarming step further. Being Lian’s roommate, Martha knew, would mean spending a lot of nights alone. That was OK. She expected this year to be one of the busiest of her life. She hoped to spend every spare moment at Arkham, either working with patients or doing research. And then there was the Justice League and her solo patrolling. She needed a night’s sleep every few days, but otherwise didn’t expect to be home much herself.

Lian bit into a slice. “This is good pizza.”

“Harvey Dent thought so.”

She laughed. “Maybe that’s why Bats looked so mad. You didn’t offer him a slice.”

Martha leaned back against the tower of liquor store boxes that contained the rest of Lian’s clothes. “Li, I think he always looks mad.”

Lian’s eyes glinted mischievously. “Remember when you were 14?”

“Shut up.”

Martha had badgered her father into letting her fight with the Justice League in what became an experimental – and ultimately discarded – trainee program. Lian, at 18, was already a full member, battling alongside Superman, Batman, her father, the Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman.

“My God, you had a crush on him.” Lian took a sip of Dr. Pepper and laughed again. “Oh, your poor father. He was so embarrassed watching you mooning all over the Big Bad Bat. Bats was embarrassed. Hell, I was embarrassed. It was painful to watch.”

Martha sucked down half of her 20-ounce Dr. Pepper and sighed. “Yes, Lian, and for the next 14 years, I’ve been embarrassed, as you’ve never let me live it down.”

Learning that Batman was also Bruce Wayne had put an immediate and unequivocal end to her infatuation. She could thank Eclipso for that. She was horrified to learn that her great, noble hero was the sleazy playboy she often saw splashed across the front page of supermarket tabloids, always with a different woman. He was, Martha believed at the time, as skanky as that lecherous geezer, Donald Trump. Her mother did her best to reinforce this impression.

“My mom said he once had sex with Selena Kyle in our bathroom,” Martha said, covering the last slice of pizza with a layer of hot peppers.

“Really?” Lian leaned forward. She found this sort of dirt irresistible.

“Yeah. At a party Dad threw to celebrate the publication of one of Mom’s books. Mom said he did it out of contempt for my dad.” Martha ran her finger around the rim of her bottle.

Lian frowned. “She sure? He doesn’t even bother with that act anymore. I mean, you almost never see him with a woman. Kinda thought he might be gay.”

Probably because somewhere along the line, he said “No” to you, Martha thought. “Think he’d hide it? No one cares anymore.”

“Old people do,” said Lian sagely.

“He’s not old.”

Her roommate raised an eyebrow.

“My mom’s the same age. She’s not old,” said Martha.

So many sore subjects, thought Lian. Lois Lane, at 55, was one of the most beautiful, intelligent women Lian had ever met. Her husband worshiped her, despite the fact that he hadn’t visibly aged a day since he’d reached manhood and Lois was, it could not be denied, a human woman past middle age. Her mortality was a scary subject, one Martha rarely discussed. Lian had lost her own mother before she was three, and hadn’t really known her much before then. She could only imagine Martha’s anxiety. What Lian didn’t have to imagine was her friend’s crippling grief, eight years ago, when Dave was shot to death. She had been there when Martha had dropped the telephone and crumpled onto the floor. She never wanted to see her friend that broken again.

“So,” she said lightly, returning to a safer topic. “You don’t think he’s hot at all?”

“Huh?” Martha was ripping the tape off of another box and had lost track of the subject. “Oh, no. I like them well-adjusted these days.”

Her roommate regarded her carefully. “Now that you’re back, I want to put you on a training regime. We can’t have Gren calling you out of shape again. And maybe Friday we can scout this city for a couple ‘well-adjusted’ guys.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The better the weather, the more time for crime, thought Batman idly, as he smashed his fist into the face of a gang banger who’s picked the wrong mugging victims. The punk smashed into an alley wall and slid to the ground, unconscious. Batman bound him to a light pole and escorted two trembling teenaged girls onto a well-lit street. He asked them to call 911 and report the location of the mugger – then lectured them sternly about taking shortcuts until a cab pulled up a few moments later. By the time they drove off, it was unclear who the girls considered more frightening – the gangster or the man who’d rescued them from him.

It was an unseasonably warm September. The summer crime wave had not abated at the arrival of fall. As soon as he’d opened the door to the Batmobile, his scanner reported another disturbance – this one at the city’s new billion dollar performing arts center.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Orest Lyakhovolska was one of the few astronomically wealthy entrepreneurs who actually believed in the possibility of a Gotham renaissance. Lyakhovolska, a Ukrainian immigrant, had arrived here as an eight-year-old and eventually become wealthy through the acquisition of several popular foreign-language cable companies. Not only had he been extravagantly generous in his drive to build the Gotham Center for the Performing Arts, he had been considerate enough not to call it the Lyakhovolska Center. “Even I couldn’t pronounce it,” he joked, probably a few times too many.

Bruce Wayne had attended the grand opening of the center days before. He’d been moved by the tasteful grandeur of the center, and impressed by the work that had gone into the sound design and the architecture. The main auditorium had been built so there literally wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and the cello shape of the room allowed for extraordinary acoustics.

Someone less impressed by Lyakhovolska’s labor of love was trying to make an impression of his own, Batman thought grimly.

The center was ringed with police when Batman arrived. He approached Lakeeta Reardon, the city’s third police commissioner after the retirement of Jim Gordon, and asked what was going on.

She swore. “An unknown number of persons had sealed off the main auditorium and were holding the theater-goers hostage,” Reardon said. All of them were supremely wealthy society types, bedecked with enough jewelry and cash to rival the contents of any bank in Gotham.

“They went in black tie,” she said tonelessly. “Blended in with the crowd, then locked the doors. We’ve heard some shots fired. Ambulances are on the way.”

“Good.” Reardon was the first commissioner he’d halfway respected since Gordon retired. She was analytical, calm and didn’t give a rat’s ass about public relations. Unlike her immediate predecessors, she was glad there was still a Batman roaming her streets. Batman could sense this and he appreciated it.

He returned to the Batmobile long enough to study a blueprint of the center he’d uploaded to his on-board computer just a few days before. He shuttered the car with a push of a button and hurtled a Batarang at the ornate upper façade of the theater.

A few minutes later, he was crawling through the rafters just over the main auditorium. He tuned out the whimpers and sobs of terrified patrons, intent on locating the source of their terror. He counted nine men, their potato-sack masks contrasting eerily with their formal wear. Six of them brandished machine guns. They appeared to ring the hall while their collaborators divested audience members of their heirloom jewelry, their obscenely priced watches and their cash.

Two members of the orchestra lay prone on the stage, their white shirts drenched in growing pools of blood. Batman wondered momentarily if there was any chance the robbers could be drawn out of the auditorium. The gunmen were too spread out for him to be able to nail them all before someone started shooting.

He’d have to knock everyone out. He reached into a compartment in his belt and unfolded a compact gas mask. After he’d secured it around his face, he started loading a multi-directional launcher with knock-out capsules. He only had four. Six would be better. He wasn’t prepared for this sort of crowd. It would have to do, though.

A sudden streak of indigo distracted him from his preparations. The gunmen, all six of them, stared down at their empty hands and started cursing. Most of them began to run.

Most of the hostages couldn’t see what had happened, but many of them sensed a change in the dynamics of the situation. Screams replaced whimpers as thousands of people began flailing about the hall in a blind panic. Batman saw several parents push small children to the ground and use own bodies to shield them. He kicked out the vent and dropped from the 100-foot ceiling into the middle of the chaos.

One of the robbers was clawing at a door he’d probably sealed himself; he was nearly crushed by a surge of theatergoers desperate to escape the auditorium.

Batman had no time to worry that the perpetrators would get away. His immediate concern was to prevent a mass trampling. He shouldered an overweight man with a goatee out of the way moments before he slammed into a frail old woman. He quickly moved to assist a young couple who, along with their young son, had the misfortune to stand between a mob of panicked socialites and an emergency exit.

“Everybody freeze!” Batman was startled by the sound of Reardon’s authoritative voice, enhanced electronically by the state of the art sound system. “Now! Freeze!”

Enough people obeyed for Batman to glance, for a second, at the stage, where Reardon stood, her usual stern features alternating with surprise at her own appearance in the hall. “The crisis is over; everyone is safe. You are to stop running and Sit. Down. Now!”

Gotham’s finest were flooding into the vast room through every theater entrance now. One of them hauled up a robber, who, Batman noticed, was definitely unconscious and possibly flatter. Before he could continue his efforts to calm the crowd, he found himself lifted off of his feet, out of the auditorium and into the street.

“They split up,” said Superwoman as she eased him to the sidewalk. “At least four of them are loose.”

“Where?” He realized, dispassionately, that he was going to be furious at her later. Right now he had more pressing concerns.

“Don’t know. I was kind of busy dragging the Commissioner on stage. Let’s split up.”

Batman started to open his mouth to respond, but realized he was standing alone.

The streets of Gotham were ingrained in his head, an internal map created through 30 years of living on these streets. He knew immediately that the best escape route lay just east of the performing arts center, through a series of small allies that eventually led to the river.

It took him two minutes to corner three of them; less than 60 seconds to relieve them of consciousness. He examined the overturned trash cans and strewn pieces of glass that coated the alley floor, looking for some sign that would lead him to the fourth thief.

Before he continued his pursuit, however, Superwoman alighted next to him, holding the final fugitive by the back of his tuxedo. He was dazed, but still conscious. Batman punched him hard in the jaw and he flopped like an unattended marionette. Superwoman’s eyes flicked from Batman’s grim face to her prisoner’s prone form. The hologram couldn’t fully reflect her true expression, but he could tell she was once more failing to suppress an amused smile. She released the robber’s jacket. He fell face first into the dirt and broken glass.

“You want to get something to eat?” Superwoman asked. “I was hoping to talk to you.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The casualty count for the debacle at the Gotham Center was miraculously low, Reardon informed them. The only deaths were those of the orchestra members who had been executed in what had been an attempt by the gunmen to send a message to their captive audience. Both had died instantly, long before any manner of law enforcement had arrived on scene.

Of the injuries, the most serious were sustained by the robbers themselves; three of those who had not escaped had been crushed against the walls and doors of the auditorium; the other two had been stomped into unconsciousness by livid arts patrons. Among the audience, there were three fractures and scores of cuts and bruises, but nothing life-threatening. Compared to the hellish outcomes of similar hostage situations around the world, Reardon said, she found tonight’s resolution “satisfactory”.

She seemed taken with Superwoman, whom she’d never met before. “Thanks for the ride,” she said. “I’ve never made that kind of entrance before.”

Superwoman smiled. “I’m like a human hang-glider,” she said modestly. “It was really nice meeting you. Batman’s going to take me out to an early breakfast now.”

Oh no, he’s fucking not, he thought. He turned and strode furiously toward the Batmobile.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

She let him go for the moment, but when he pulled into the Batcave at 4 AM, Alfred silently handed him Bruce Wayne’s cell phone.

“Oh, come on Bruce. You can tell me all the ways you want me to stay out of your life,” she said. “Just meet me at the IHOP for 45 minutes. My treat.”

He realized that he was talking to Lois Lane’s daughter and that she would badger him until she got her way. Better to get it over with and set down some ground rules – but on his terms – and his territory.

“You can come here,” he said. He snapped closed the phone, handed it back to Alfred and headed for the shower.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

She arrived just after 5 AM, as Martha Kent, wearing jeans, a pink spaghetti-strap blouse and tie-dyed Croc knock-offs. When he opened the door, Alfred was puzzled to see no car in the drive.

“Hi, Mr. Pennyworth,” she said, extending a hand. “You may not remember me. We met at a charity picnic when I was a little girl? Martha Kent.”

She had a bright, open smile and Alfred found himself instantly liking her. “Please, come in,” he said. “Mr. Wayne is in the kitchen.”

He had just finished quarreling with Bruce over the amount of effort he was expected to put into breakfast. Bruce had flatly told him to offer her a box of cereal and some milk. A suggestion Alfred found repugnant.

“I will not have it said that I offered a guest in this house dry cereal,” he said indignantly. “However, if that’s what you would prefer to eat, please, help yourself.”

Bruce had been tempted to offer bacon and sausage as second suggestion, as he knew the Kents were vegetarians. Lois and the kids were, anyway. He knew Clark sneaked an occasional hamburger.

At this point, Alfred was unwilling to listen to him. Although Martha immediately asked him not to go to any trouble, he insisted on whipping her up a plate of strawberry pancakes.

He stuck a box of Cheerios in front of Bruce.

Since she’d shown up as a civilian, there was anything of substance Bruce could say to her while Alfred was in the room. Martha asked the elderly butler if she could help him – a gesture that offended Alfred when it came from Bruce, but apparently charmed him when the offer was made by an attractive young woman.

They discussed England – Martha had visited there several times when she was at the Sorbonne and shared Alfred’s passion for the gardens in Devon and Kent.

“Does your family come from Kent?”

Martha sipped her glass of water and flicked mischievous eyes at Bruce. “Some of them, maybe. We’re sorta… from all over.”

Alfred placed cups of Darjeeling before them and informed her that Mr. Wayne preferred his without the civilizing addition of milk. Would she like some in hers?

She smiled again. Other facial expressions were seemingly unknown to her. “I’m afraid I’m just as barbaric. I like to taste the tea.”

As soon as the elderly man placed the steaming stack of pancakes on the table, Bruce said, “Thank you, Alfred.” It was an obvious dismissal.

“It was so nice meeting you again, Dr. Kent. You have grown up beautifully. I hope you will grace this manor with your presence again,” he said, daring Bruce, with his tone, to veto this invitation. Bruce made a mental note to never again to suggest compromising Alfred’s professional skills when attempting rid himself of an unwanted guest.

“Please, Mr. Pennyworth, call me Martha. Only my patients call me Dr. Kent.” She paused. “Oh, wait, they don’t. I can’t actually repeat the things most of them call me.”

They agreed that she would call him Alfred and he would try to call her Martha (Bruce knew the butler would not keep his part of the deal). Finally, he left the room.

“These are the best pancakes I’ve ever had,” she said passionately, adding, “Sorry I took so long to get here. That’s what happens when the person who invites you over doesn’t actually give you his address. You have to fly all over the city looking for a mansion.”

He leaned across the table and whispered fiercely, “People could have been killed last night.”

“Well, yeah,” she said, as if this was obvious, “but they weren’t, because I took away all the guns.”

“And started a riot.”

A shadow of annoyance crossed her features. “And how were you going to handle it? Swing around on your rope and kick the machine guns out of their hands?”

He described his plan to render the occupants of the room – criminal and civilian – unconscious. She looked skeptical.

“That was a great idea when they tried it in Moscow. How many people died?” She was too young to remember that nightmare. Apparently, she’d taken a rudimentary class on the history of terrorism.

He blew out a lungful of breath he didn’t know he was holding and said, “That was 25 years ago. And orchestrated by amateurs. What I have is state-of-the-art and safe.”

Martha frowned at the kitchen table for a few moments. “Maybe this was a little larger a crowd then I’m used to, but I did the only thing I could think to do. I didn’t even know you were there.” She brushed a careless hand at her eyes. “No x-ray vision, remember?”

He didn’t see the point in prolonging the argument, other than to extend the mild satisfaction he was getting in putting her on the defensive. “Next time, assume I am.”

She nodded. “Look, I just wanted to tell you that I know this is your town and I have no intention of getting in your way. I mean, I hope it’ll be my town – I’ve always loved this city. But in a crime fighter sort of way, I know it belongs to you.

Yeah, thought Bruce, I’ve peed on all of the boundaries. She would have laughed if he’d said it aloud, but he didn’t think it was funny. He wasn’t some sort of territorial old animal. He just wanted what was best for Gotham.

“Fine,” he said.

“I mean, I could help, sometimes, if you…” He stared at a wall beyond her head and said nothing.

“…My resources at Arkham...”

He’d hacked into the Arkham server years ago and would have access to her records the moment she’d entered them, but he had no intention of telling her that.

Martha gave up. “OK, so then there’s just the doctor thing.” He frowned at her. “I’m the Justice League doctor, remember? So I’ll have to give you a physical, or, at least, get a copy of your latest medical records.”

“No, thank you.” Bruce stood. “You can finish the pancakes,” he said, and walked out of the kitchen.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

“Buffy.”

“Are you nuts?” Lian threw a piece of popcorn at her roommate from across the round, white table where they sat with Mira and their new teammate with the unpronounceable name. They were lounging in the observation room on the Watchtower. Martha was there sans hologram, having recently been introduced to the new girl as the team physician.

Life on Colu did not appear to have been fun for their brainy colleague; she was enamored of all things human and eager to assume an Earthly name. Roy had asked the other women to befriend her.

Martha said solemnly, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the most kick-ass superhero who never lived.”

“But we live,” said Meera Buhpathi,. “And we want our new friend to be taken seriously.”

She cocked her head at the newbie and offered, “Parvati was the Hindu god of love and devotion. And she saved the world.”

The Coluan’s face brightened hopefully.

“A little egotistical, though, to name yourself after a god,” Martha mused.

The new girl’s smile tumbled.

Lian rolled her eyes. “Thank you so very much. Maybe we should tell that to Superman and Superwoman.”

Martha said defensively, “They didn’t name themselves.”

“My green skin is unique here,” the recruit suggested. “How about Greenie?”

“Yeah,” said Lian, “and we can name our next black recruit ‘Blackie’, and the next Latino or Asian one ‘Brownie’.”

“Lian,” said Martha.

Meera shook her head.

“Sorry,” Lian said to the newcomer, who was totally oblivious to her sarcasm.

Meera leaned forward again. “How about Midori? It’s Japanese for green, but it’s also a relatively common name.”

“And a tasty liquor,” Lian added brightly.

“I think it’s cute,” said Martha, ignoring her roommate. “But what do you think?”

The recruit repeated the name several times, as though engaged in an experiment involving sound energy. “It’s good. I can be Midori.”

Martha added, “And your middle name can be Buffy.”

“Shut up,” Lian and Meera chorused.

Martha who never had problem laughing at herself, grinned and reached into the container of popcorn.

This bonding session offered Midori her first chance to question her new teammates about their tenure with the Justice League. She learned that Lian, whose expertise with archery and weapons had been passed down from her father, had been a member of the group for half of her life. Meera, who’d moved to Canada from Southern India in her teens, had been with the League for five years.

“I’m a telepath,” she explained, in response to Midori’s question, “and an empath. If you hear my voice in your head, it’s not your imagination. I do most of the communication.” She had other powers, but they were hard to explain and most people found them a little scary. There were things she could do to a person’s mind that would have made her a formidable supervillian had she not possessed such an honest and peaceful nature. Although Meera was among the most emotionally balanced of the team, took nothing for granted. She spent daily hours in meditation and mindfulness practice in order to fortify her mental health. No one could afford for her to “lose it”.

"And I’m, y’know, the doctor,” said Martha offhandedly.

“And Superwoman,” said Midori. “I’ve meant to tell you – I can improve your hologram.”

Not for the first time since she’d arrived on Earth, Midori found that everyone in the room was staring at her.

“How do you know this?” asked Martha.

Midori looked surprised. “It’s not a very good hologram. And you don’t change your voice.”

Martha tried not to talk too much as Superwoman, at least to civilians. She considered the hologram a necessary evil and made no effort to imbue her alter ego with a personality. Her father had developed the device years ago, in collaboration with some scientists from the Cadmus Project, after his 14-year-old daughter jubilantly modeled for her parents the skin-tight, flesh-baring costume she’d unveiled as her “crime-fighting uniform”. It had not helped that Lian had designed the outfit.

A ferocious argument had followed. No daughter of hers, announced Lois Lane, was going out in public looking like a pubescent spokesperson for the Skank of the Month Club. Clark silently agreed, explaining to his indignant daughter that her proposed costume didn’t disguise her face at all; they need more of a full-body cover, something that would present a Supergirl who looked completely different from Martha Kent. Although Lois objected to the depiction of Superman’s daughter as a “vapid blonde bimbo,” Martha initially enjoyed the irony of the contrast between herself and her alter ego.

As she grew older, Martha came around to her mother’s way of thinking, both on the topic of spandex costumes and on the Barbie-doll image of Supergirl, now Superwoman. She would have preferred to be herself, fighting crime in a pair of jeans and a tank shirt – her usual attire when not at work – however she had never thought seriously of doing so. She held her secret identity as sacred as her father did. The safety of their family depended upon these facades; it always would.

She was not sorry Midori was in on the secret. It would make working with her easier. And the newcomer was certainly intelligent enough to understand the importance of keeping such dangerous information quiet.

“I always thought it was pretty good, but if you can make it better, cool,” she said. “Right now I’ve gotta run. Got some laundry to do before work tomorrow.”

Lian rose. “Then I’ve got to go, too. If I don’t stand over her, Martha won’t separate the whites from the colors.

“We’re not finished with you, though,” she promised Midori, examining the latter’s plain white coveralls and unstyled hair. “We’ve got some major clothes shopping to do. And a make-over.”

Meera laughed. “And my wife is waiting for me, so I’ll say goodbye.”

Midori looked puzzled. “I thought men have wives?”

“Here on Earth,” said Meera, “some women do, too.”

Continued...