Ramifications

Kara had heard stories of the rages that the intergalactic despot Darksied would fly into. She had after all reviewed the debriefings of Scott and Barda Freeman. And if Darksied was only half as bad as their descriptions of his “Hissy fits,” then he was still no were near as bad how vocally angry Bruce was after the “Tumbler Disaster.”

“Still no word from the national zoological society about the mass morning flight of the bats across southern Connecticut,” the morning news caster pronounced, “Many have found nice warm homes however thanks to rescue efforts by local volunteers and generous grants from the Wayne Foundation. Noted Zoologist Doctor Francine Langstrom stated that if it were not for the efforts, then there most certainly would have been a mass die off from their exposure to the cold. Speaking of cold, I understand we have another cold front coming our way Vern, how does that affect our five day forecast?”

The camera shot changed to over to the weather man.

“In a word? Snow…”

“Great,” Kara muttered.

“It is not like you have any problems with the cold miss Kara,” Alfred said as he worked at the stove.

“Yeah,” Kara said, “But I was hoping for a clear night to go on the date.”

“The world doesn’t always see fit to grant your desire,” Alfred noted, “Like the Rolling Stones Song goes… Blast.”

Alfred looked at the phone chirping the notes to the old “Doctor No” movie theme song. Alfred rolled his eyes.

“Your Highness,” Alfred answered the phone, “I am sure you already know my response. Yes, exactly; A Gentleman’s gentleman does not reveal such things. I can assure you, the only things you will learn from such an exercise is that Bruce learned rather than inherited his stubbornness.”

Alfred hung up and went to put down the phone. Kara reached over and grabbed it. She held it to her forehead for a second and smiled.

“Princess Diana of The Amazons asking if Bruce was apologizing to the bats for scaring them when he yelled at us,” Kara said.

“Who ever started that rumor will be in more trouble than you scallywags were when Master Bruce had to call in Madam Karen,” Alfred noted.

“I can speak for all of Bruce’s Hooligans,” Kara said, “We know better than to do something that stupid. Dick gives the standard ‘neither confirm nor deny,’ Babs just giggles at them, and Jason? Well you know how many people he has punched out lately.”

“Speaking of Master Dick,” Alfred changed topics, “How is he and Princess Kori getting along?”

“You would know better than me,” Kara countered, “He called you this morning, not me.”

“There are some things that he doesn’t even talk to me about,” Alfred noted.

“A gentlemen doesn’t discuss such affairs?” Kara smiled, “Speaking of angry people, I am going to check on Bruce.”

Kara put the phone down and went to the secret passage to the cave under the manor.

*

“Kara…” Bruce said as Kara approached.

“Ah… I am going to go eat the kryptonite, ok?” Kara could sense the tension in the cave.

“Don’t even joke like that,” Bruce growled.

“Not going to bite my head off again?” Kara asked.

Bruce scowled at Kara before turning back to the terminal. Kara walked over and looked at what Bruce was looking at.

“Barry and Wally sending you clips of Vicky’s interviews with the ‘witnesses’ of K-1, for the hundredth time?” Kara asked

“Not this time,” Bruce sneered, “I am going over the ‘witnesses’ that went on camera when Vale came to get her ‘scoop’ story.”

“You got most of them,” Kara noted looking at the biography profiles next to each interview clip, “But you are missing Steve Clark…”

Bruce rolled his eyes and even put his hand over his face.

“Every class he is supposed to be has been running his interview at the begin of each class.” Kara smirked.

“Right…” Bruce was about to go back to the spread out files, “I have been…”

“It was a black chariot, pulled by thirteen black wolves,” the boy’s interview came out the speak of Kara’s phone, “And riding it was an angel of Judgement, clad in black armor and robes with burning red eyes…”

Bruce groaned as the audio continued with Vicki Vale’s commentary came on.

“Have you been doing acid?” Vicki asked.

“Not in the last hour…” the interviewee admitted.

Kara started giggling. Bruce knew what was happening on screen, he had seen the clip enough times already.

“Sir you do know that the drunk driving laws cover Marijuana, PCP, LSD and anything else that makes you trip balls while driving, correct?” the female officer asked.

“Here it comes,” Kara giggled.

“Whaaaaaaaa?” Was the response.

“Alright, out of the car,” the male officer ordered.

Kara was chuckling until Bruce cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” Kara put the phone away and tried to put on a straight face, “It has reached the number one post on Redit, facebook, twitter and is at the top of YouTube’s Search cues.”

“Well I don’t think he will be returning to classes any time soon,” Bruce groaned as he hit a button and brought up a lengthy document.

“Is that? Wow,” Kara started reading, “The State of Connecticut vs Steven Clark… Fifty-three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell? Wow… Four counts of operating a motor vehicle under the influence?”

“He was high on four different drugs at the time,” Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose.

“This is public records?” Kara asked.

“Court posted it on their website this morning,” Bruce said, “Can we move on?”

“Yep,” Kara smiled.

“Very well,” Bruce rolled his eyes and brought up a map of Gotham, “The first of Miss Vale’s witnesses, Carol Deshawn was here, and despite her lucid description, she was behind this cargo van.”

Bruce brought up a shot from the cameras around K-1 and there was in fact the box body of a whole saler delivery van in the way.

“Explains why she claimed it was a Lamborghini,” Kara shrugged, “No cameras on her?”

“No,” Bruce said before moving on to the next witness, “He literally only had a fleeting glance. Third story, blink and you’ll miss it view.”

Bruce brought up another image from the cameras. There was a man looking out a window.

“Explains why he claimed it was some sort of jet, he probably only saw after burner on that thing,” Kara noted, “That quality… do you have those Venom Imax highspeed slomo playback cameras on that thing?”

Bruce just looked at her.

“Stupid question, you have better… three years?” Kara asked.

“Five,” Bruce said, “In five years Lucius will release these on the specialty market.”

“Ok, so he has a fleeting glance and saw your after burners,” Kara bobbed her head, “So he tells Vicki he saw some sort of jet at street level.”

“Correct, again no camera. And of course, we shut down the street cameras in the area,” Bruce leaned back, “Next is this young lady.”

“Not the most reliable witness, but she is had the best view from your mapping, second floor, front room,” Kara noted.

“While her description of a black station wagon isn’t the most useful, this is more concerning. It seems her parents are sufficiently paranoid.

Another still frame came up and highlighted in the upper back corner looking out the window into the streets was a security camera.

“Any transmissions?” Kara asked when she spotted the antenna.

“No, but the camera might still have the image on there in the system,” Bruce noted.

“Who has the camera now?” Kara asked.

“It was turned over to Gordon this morning,” Bruce noted, “So far the GPD haven’t found anything.”

“Let me guess, the fed and Luthor are trying to get their mitts on it too,” Kara noted.

“Right,” Jason said as he walked over, “Too bad, GPD has a rat problem.”

“What did you do?” Kara asked.

“Nothing,” Jason said, “Pull up fifty-three.”

Bruce brought up the camera feed of the back hallway behind the forensic lab. The black suited goons were being rushed by rats.

“You reprogramed the hyper-sonics white noise generators didn’t you?” Kara asked.

“I did nothing,” Jason shrugged, “Camera ten.”

Bruce glared at Jason.

“I did not do anything, check camera ten,” Jason said.

The camera feed changed and there was three cops with shotguns and an exterminator with some sort of machine hooked up to expensive looking speakers.

“You have your dampeners cranked up?” Jason asked.

“Yeah,” Kara rubbed her ears and then rubbed them again, “Ouch. That is some obnoxious hyper-sonics. That must be what the exterminator is using to get the Rats out of GPD headquarters. And the rats are running right into the goons.”

“I will break open a case of Whiskey,” Alfred remarked dryly, “The boy is actually innocent.”

“I did do what you wanted however,” Jason said as he crossed his arms, “The camera is running, for what ever that will do.”

“It will over write the memory again and again with the images from the inside of the lab, and each loop of memory use will erode any residual data of the image it took of K-1,” Bruce informed the group.

“Well,” Alfred spoke up, “The rest of this briefing will have to happen later, Miss Kyle is here for dinner with the Wayne family. And she has the young miss Falcone with her.”

*

Dinner had been rather stiff with a lot less of the usual banter. Kitrina’s presence had put the kibosh on the normal nightlife conversations and banter. The girl was kind of cute in a traumatized rag doll sort of way. Kara walked over and stood next to the girl as Bruce and Selina were talking with Alfred.

“You must be going throw a lot,” Kara said.

“Yeah…” Kitrina said.

“I can’t imagine,” Kara said, “But if you want someone to talk to… I had my troubles too.”

“Like what?” Kitrina asked.

“When I first came to Gotham I was wet and alone and all my family, my entire home town had been blown up and I had been put on a ship and dropped in Gotham Harbor,” Kara said.

“Oh, yeah…” Kitrina said, “I heard the story about the magic orphan.”

“Yeah,” Kara said, “It hasn’t been all rainbows and unicorns. What do you think of Bruce?”

“He seems nice, but stiff and old fashioned,” Kitrina looked back over her shoulder.

“Yeah, Old Fashioned. See this painting? This is Bruce’s Great Great Great… Well he was around before the civil war,” Kara then cupped her mouth to whisper a secret to Kitrina, “Almost as old as Alfred.”

“I heard that!” Alfred snapped.

“So the story goes, he would drive out into the country and buy turkeys and ducks at three times their market price and would come back and give them away in the poor sections of Gotham,” Kara told the story, “So for Bruce, being kind to the less fortunate is a family tradition. I mean Bruce saw what he thought was someone dropping a bag of puppies into the river, he didn’t hesitate to rescue him… but once we got to know Jason, it was too late to put him back in the bag and toss it in the river.”

“I heard that,” Jason snapped.

That got Kitrina to smile a bit. Selina walked over. She was far from her most elegant or even interesting. The black dress was cotton and conservatively cut. She put her hand on Kara.

“Kara here is right,” Selina said, “Bruce does his best to help others. And you are right, he can be rather stuffy at times.”

“My dad and Grandpa use to call him; ‘an insufferable holier than thou son of a bitch!’ all the time,” Kitrina said.

“Well,” Selina looked back at Bruce, “He has his moments.”

“I would take that as a compliment,” Bruce’s voice wasn’t the jolly fop nor was it ‘I am the night’, “Ironically everyone associates Ebenezer with being a penny pincher. He demanded the best from his workers, but he paid the best in Gotham. And he nearly bankrupted the family with that shipping company smuggling escaped slaves to free towns in Canada and the Caribbean. But there were a lot of less clear details and even a few accusations of murder so we just say he was an Abolitionist.”

“Did he really kill someone?” Kitrina asked.

“Not sure. According to records a slave owning neighbor died in a house fire. Some people claim he was going to turn Ebenezer in for stealing slaves…” Bruce shrugged.

“Pretty metal to burn the whole building to the ground,” Kitrina said.

*

The next few nights of patrols didn’t accomplish anything more. Kara stood on the roof of the Gotham Cathedrals. Barbara landed next to her.

“That is absolutely disgusting,” Barbara said unceremoniously.

“It is an afront to every religion,” Kara agreed.

The new plastered bill board across from the Cathedral had Nasty Luthor in a Cute Miss Clause mini dress and Lex in a red Santa hat, wishing everyone Merry Christmas from Lex Corps.

“Think Boss man would mind a little arson?” Barbara asked, “we can blame it on Robin…”

“I might be playing with fire,” Kara said, “But I am going to wear one of the dresses Selina got me for my date tomorrow evening. I have to see how J-P reacts.”

“I take no responsibility for what happens,” Barbara put her arm around Kara’s shoulders.

“Me neither,” Selina’s voice came from the shadows.

Both of the ladies in their batsuits turned around and looked at Selina.

“Who is watching the kid?” Barbara asked.

“State has her taking sleep tests,” Selina said, “The state insisted.”

“And?” Kara asked.

“Maven volunteered for the first watch,” Selina said, “I will relieve her in a bit and spend most of the night at the lab.”