[Billy Batson, aka Captain Marvel]
Billy's life had gotten really weird ever since his girlfriend… sort of… punched out the ghost that gave him superpowers. On second thought, it was definitely the being given superpowers by a ghost part that started the weirdness that was his life now.
But it was extra weird now. For one, he had a girlfriend who could punch out ghosts. And started turning into a demon when she got mad. Mom said that was normal, but Billy was pretty sure she was joking.
Sure, the girlfriend thing wasn't exactly real, but… she liked him. She always got mad when she realized she was blushing and zoning out over him… or any of those other jerks, although that made sense because he was supposed to stop them from talking to her.
She said it was 'unethical' and 'ill-advised' to date anyone before she became an adult, but she also changed personalities like other people changed clothes. She only got blushy with some of those personalities, so he couldn't rely on his good looks and winning smile for the rest of her.
Well, actually he started 'making moves', as she put it, as Captain Marvel that one time he got to meet her in her demon costume rather than demon form, and she got all huffy then too, turned into a full demon and berated him for not focusing on the task at hand. So that wasn't a lost cause either.
Tanya had something like… seven personalities that he knew of. Well, eight, if you include that one that's a man. He doesn't really know that one much, and he gets the impression Tanya doesn't let him out all that often. From the videos of him at her dad's bachelor party, though, he fit in with the adults pretty well.
The three he knew the best were the two that inhabited her main body, plus a third that wasn't bound to any particular body. One could call that one her 'true' personality… but you would be wrong. After thinking long and hard with the Wisdom of Solomon, Billy figured out that Tanya doesn't really have a 'true' personality, not a complete one, anyway. Half of one at best. Thinking of things in that way made her seem like a bad person, but she just wasn't. It was just how she was. A person who wore masks, but didn't have a face underneath it. The mask was her face. And that's okay.
He was Captain Marvel. He was Billy Batson. Dad was Superman, he was Clark Kent. Both were true, but they were not the same person. Tanya was the same way, just… more.
First, there was the persona that she brought forth when they were in public: the heiress. She took nothing seriously, made jokes aplenty, and pretended to be… heartless wasn't quite the right word… unconcerned about anything and everything, she was too rich to have normal people problems, everything was a game. Billy thought that the heiress was pretty fun, she was clever, was ready for anything, and she was the most prone to getting distracted by boys, but he liked the next personality better.
When they were more in private, and Tanya was around people who knew she was more than just a kid, her more relaxed personality came out. It was a more selfish personality: the heiress was always putting on a performance, she wanted to make people laugh, her dad most of all. Tanya's relaxed personality wanted to have fun instead, getting whatever tasks she needed to get done as fast and efficiently as possible, cheating when she could, and then back to having fun. If any of her personalities were considered to be the most true, it was probably this one, as she didn't pretend to be anything in particular and would probably point to it if she had to pick. But it had crucial parts of her hidden, she tended to shut out the world at large when she was like this, burrowing into the couch or a blanket cocoon, blinding herself to any problem that would tear her from her rest and relaxation and hating the world that would try. This one was also very touchy-feely, including with him sometimes.
But when she was recharged and ready to take on the world? She became the driven person that dragged him to the Rock of Eternity and punched a wizard ghost. She took on task after task to help the world, in all of her shapes, to further her plans to fix the world with her wealth and power. She built things, not lego models like she did to relax, but systems and organizations. Despite this focus on the big picture, she never lost sight of the small details as well, reaching out to individual people when needed and personally walking those people through the bureaucracies, both of her making and otherwise. It was this personality that proved that she belonged amongst the superheroes, and it was Billy's favorite one of the lot, despite her being the least blushy of the three he sees most often, even when she's in her real body.
But that one wasn't going to be around during her dad's wedding.
Billy didn't really want to be here, to be honest. It was kind of boring. Beautiful, to be certain, but it wasn't substantially different than those galas Tanya dragged him to, only he didn't even get to hang out around her because she was one of the flower girls, and while she looked great, her and her new sister Ace wearing matching dresses and smiles as they threw flower petals everywhere, all he did was sit around in the audience and wait for stuff to happen.
Wonder Woman's side of the wedding was filled with Amazons, each of which were in fancy togas that had armor as well as weapons. Apparently, there was a tournament on the Island of Amazons picking who got to go to the wedding. There were also some Justice League people in full costume, including a robot Batman and Superman. Because the other two options for Batman were the groom and a flower girl, so they had to use the robot. Also, there were a few Gods: Zeus had a throne of clouds floating over the event, and Hera was the one officiating. There were a few others, not all of which Billy knew, but they were all in seats of clouds that surrounded Zeus.
Batman's side, on the other hand, was where he was. Dad was the best man, and the other groomsmen were mostly people that Billy didn't know: There were Tanya's brothers, of course, Alfred, one was apparently the police commissioner, also Batgirl's dad, and another was this old black guy that was at the bachelor party, plus Batman's uncle who was apparently a villain and CEO. Were all CEOs secretly heroes or villains?
Still, you'd have to be crazy to attack this. Tanya was just being paranoid. But all she'd say is 'it's Gotham' when reassured.
He'd never been to a wedding before, so while he knew that this was supposed to be a blending of American traditions and stuff they dug up from literal ancient scrolls on how weddings were done in antiquity, he could not tell where one ended and the other began.
The vows were pretty nice, though. Wonder Woman talked about Batman's will to change the world, to fight for his beliefs. Batman talked about how Wonder Woman didn't hold herself back from envisioning and acting to create a better future.
One thing felt missing, though: wasn't there supposed to be a part where people got to object? They skipped it… Not that anyone would have objected, to be sure…
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The afterparty, which for weddings was called the reception for some reason, was pretty cool, though. The Gods cleared out… or so it appeared. When Billy drew on the Wisdom of Solomon along with just a spark of the Power of Zeus, he could see a hole in the sky that lead to the divine realm that Zeus and his cohort lived in, and some of them were looking down at the mortal's party, and they had goblets, so there was probably a party going on up there, too.
Tanya was with him now, they were hanging out in the gazebo of living wood that the ceremony was conducted at. Well, he was hanging out. She was napping, leaning against him while he looked over the dance floor. She'd been working hard this morning, casting spells on the manor's grounds and also to see if she could find any signs of a threat, but came up empty. It was one of the few times where her personalities blended into each other, when she was off balance with paranoia, worrying about what was about to happen. Or… does that count as a separate personality? Hm. Wisdom of Solomon time. "Eternity, Marvel, Hero." He murmured, his own personal mantra.
Some, like Mom, said that relying so much on the Wisdom of Solomon was a crutch. He disagreed. Yeah, it was called the Wisdom of Solomon, but all it really did was speed up his thinking, give him greater awareness, and also give him a little mental Lexicon that he can use to search magic stuff. It was still him having these thoughts, and it's not like they went away when he stopped using the magical thought acceleration, as Tanya called her own version of that trick.
Now, Tanya… no, she was just off balance because she was using her lazy, fun-loving personality, and had to deal with problems, and she hated doing that. One of the things that made her personalities true was that she didn't fully control which one was in the driver seat, it was more her surroundings and who she interacted with. In the wedding planning, she was surrounded by her friends and family, where she was her fun-loving self, but she had to consider threats and disasters, which was normally handled one of her more violent personalities, which Billy didn't see much. So it really stressed her out to mix things up like that.
Anyway, a group of Amazons had gone off for a bit, and had just returned. They were a bit dirtier than they were before, and two of them were cleaning their swords. Ah… did someone try and start trouble?
Billy glanced up at the invisible window into Olympus. Oh, Zeus was looking straight at him. He waved. Zeus pointed directly at him, then smiled, giving him a thumbs up. Billy grinned back and returned the gesture.
"Mm?" Tanya grumbled as the motion woke her up. "My spells got triggered… Rhine. Berechnung. Mahou." Her eyes glowed. "...It was handled." She concluded, before standing up. "I shouldn't be sleeping."
"You were out for twenty minutes." Billy dutifully informed her.
"Which means…" She took a phone out of nowhere and checked the clock. "I've got a song I have to play." She walked off to what Billy understood was a very expensive piano that they moved out onto a stage they set up as part of the wedding, already being played by some professional musician. She waited for his current song, something classical but upbeat, to be over, then tapped him on the shoulder and shooed him away before taking his place. Tapping the microphone, she started to announce. "In celebration of my new family, I've written a song for the occasion. Enjoy."
The song began dramatically, building up tension with powerful notes on the piano, her fingers slamming the keys down as she played. Then, she started to sing. The words began with a brief summary of Wonder Woman's life, both highlighting and de-emphasizing her age by describing it as a blur of days into years, centuries gone in a blink of an eye, old but still glimmering with the impetuous hope of youth. Very poetic.
Tanya went into the next… stanza? By describing the vague events of Batman's life, somehow managing to use enough wordplay to both be describing the official story, but also alluding to the truth of Batman's journeys before returning home, wiser for his journeys beyond his years.
Really, it was amazing, although he wasn't exactly a music critic, so for all he knows the piano part was stolen wholesale from some other composer. You could not tell that Tanya did not enjoy music, and avoided doing it whenever she could. Because one of Tanya's charm points, and there were a lot of those, is that her 'begrudging compliance' was most people's 'maniacal focus'. She just put her full effort into everything she does, and not wanting to do something barely slowed her down.
The third stanza was about Ace, and her dark, bloody past described in flowery innuendo, said in such a way that was deniable, but could easily be interpreted as Tanya describing them both instead of just Ace. He didn't really know the full story there, but Tanya told him about how she killed a lot of people before he even knew her name, so if Ace's story was anywhere close to that… yikes.
The fourth stanza was about Dick and Jason, and if you already knew of them as Robin, it was pretty obvious, but again the words were easily interpreted as being solely about their own personal tragedies and how they were shaped by them.
The fifth and final stanza was a hopeful piece about the bright future there was for the Wayne family, along with what he thinks was an allusion to Batman's nighttime activities? Why else would she mention owls? After a moment, he recalled that one of the groups who were high on the list of people who would want to interfere with the wedding was owl-themed, but that didn't make much sense so it was probably just playing coy with Batman by saying some other nocturnal animal.
Billy joined in on the applause, and Tanya bowed, drinking in the praise with a genuine smile, before leaving the stage and rejoining him. "That's one more responsibility taken care of." She said, adjusting her dress as she sat down in her previous spot. Billy sat down next to her.
Gene Powers, one of the boys that Tanya wanted him to keep away from her, tried to follow her up to the gazebo, but Billy glared at him and put his arm around Tanya's shoulders, so he left. He was the oldest one of the group, and he was also the smoothest operator of the bunch. He was his family's heir for his generation, his dad having recently taken control from his grandfather, and kept trying to get Tanya to help him prepare for taking over his family's company, and teaching people was one of Tanya's favorite things, so she occasionally talked to him with text messages despite Billy's boyfriend status. Well, she 'exchanged pleasantries' as she put it with all of them, but she had actual conversations with Gene. It was almost enough to make a guy jealous.
You know, if he was really her boyfriend.
Tanya didn't object to his arm, though, so that was nice.
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[Tanya Wayne aka Rhine aka Dr. Tanya Degurechaff aka Tenko, the Batman]
There was a total of seven incursions that attempted to disrupt the wedding. Two were dealt with by her spells; Two-Face escaped Arkham and got deluded into thinking that he wouldn't be welcomed with open arms if he just showed up peaceably, given food and gently escorted back into the asylum's van by the men in the clean white coats only afterward, instead trying to ruin the party for being 'snubbed'.
Harvey Dent was very sick in the head.
The other was Clayface trying to sneak in for some reason. Tanya didn't know why, but he had hostile intent so her defensive perimeter slammed him with a magical knockout spell, leaving him a puddle that was promptly contained and sent back to Arkham with Harvey.
Four more were dealt with by the Amazons, outsiders that were magically savvy enough to avoid Tanya's spells. Cheetah, Circe, Maxwell Lord, and Giganta.
The last was Jervis Tetch, who managed to use his mental magic to bypass her intent-based defenses and he made a play to slip one of his enchanted hypnotic hats on his latest 'Alice', a pretty fourteen year old blonde by the name of Stephanie Brown. She wasn't a normal high society girl, which was probably why the Hatter thought he could get away with it: after looking into how she secured an invitation, she was apparently the date of Oswald Cobblepot's nephew, a seventeen year old boy named Aiden. As part of Tanya's attempts to stop the Court of Owls from doing anything nefarious by virtue of putting them in the line of fire and occasionally glaring suspiciously at them, Constance Cobblepot was invited and permitted to bring three of her family (that wasn't Oswald) plus their dates. Stephanie's father was apparently a friend of the family, and given that Arthur Brown was a career criminal, this was troubling but unsurprising.
Tetch didn't get away with it, of course. Stephanie managed to resist the compulsion for just long enough to punch him in the face, causing a commotion and allowing the Amazons to cart the man away, and an application of the Lasso of Truth (which Diana had given to her mother for security duties) resolved matters. This wouldn't be the first time that the man had targeted girls of that age, and this would likely be the last. Frankly, only the Queen's promise that they'd avoid killing if possible and follow due process stopped him from being executed then and there.
Tanya smelled a plot. Why would Tetch target someone in such a high risk area? He wasn't usually that stupid. Insane, certainly, but not stupid. Unfortunately, Tetch wasn't under the influence of the lasso for long, and Tanya didn't get a chance to ask some questions of her own, so no one asked if he was working for everyone once it was clear that he was up to his old tricks again until he was put in the second van that Arkham had sent to replace the first one. Now that was excellent foresight on her part, even if it didn't quite work out how she wanted.
But it was official: Diana of Themyscira was now Diana Wayne, for as long as they both live. Stepmother acquired, as well as the associated stepsister. The pair of them were honeymooning via a trip to a famous resort in Proxima Centauri, and she was responsible for making sure that no one realizes that The Batman was away.
Fortunately, this did not require that she actually dress up and go out, because they had the Bat-bot. She just split off a heftier than usual section of her soul to watch over it and Jason as they did their thing, so that it would actually participate instead of passively observing and occasionally throwing out a stray spell for no particular reason.
Her actual body continued to keep an eye on the Court of Owls. Apparently, it wasn't typical for the Court to meet as often as they were, which was once a week, but as the Court was under attack by The Religion of Crime and then The Batman, there were frequent meetings to coordinate meetings and decide how to allocate the Talons.
"When can I get a Talon to boss around?" She asked at one such meeting. This one was held in an actual conference room, with everyone around a long table as they discussed things.
"Do you have a mission that could use one?" Jacob asked with his obscured voice, in his role as the Voice of the Court. "The Council has decided: The Talons will only be deployed at the approval of a Councilmember. We've been losing too many to The Bat."
She should hope they're running low, by the count they had on the Bat Computer two hundred and sixty-five have been permanently dealt with over the five months or so since the conflict with the Religion of Crime began. "Wait, how many do we have?" Tanya asked, as if the fact that there were a limited number just now occurred to her. "I mean, they're pretty complicated ghouls, you guys must have had a top notch necromancer back in the day. But are we even making more?"
"We have not lost the secrets of their creation." Jacob assured her. "But it is not a simple matter. They are too intelligent to simply obey us, we must instill their loyalty and skills before induction." He didn't say it, but Tanya had been doing enough spying that she knew there was another bottleneck in the process, the secret substance so similar to ectoplasm that they extracted from below Gotham before refining it into the miracle material they used to create the Talons. "Families sworn to loyalty, who turn themselves over to us generation after generation, as they should."
"So, about two hundred years, eight to twelve generations… How many families?" Tanya asked.
"Stop doing math." Jacob ordered. "The Talons numbered over eleven hundred at their peak, but we've lost about a fourth of them to that damned Batman."
"If we act too openly, we now risk Wonder Woman intervening, as well." A random member commented.
One of the occultists that Tanya didn't know snarled. "Everything related to Batman's locked down tight, I can't divine anything about him."
"He does have that demon following him around." Tanya said, rolling her eyes. "Of course he's warded to hell and back." She smirked at her little joke.
"You have any solutions, if you're so smart?" The occultist spat.
"Only thing I can think of is to hit him with all the Talons at once." Tanya said, "Lure him to a place where we can do that, like the place they're made. He'd never resist that kind of bait."
Jacob hummed. "An elegant suggestion. However, the Court has made contact with a potential ally against the Batman, so that plan will be a backup." He turned to the door. "Let her in."
The woman who entered was beautiful, but alarms blared in Tanya's head as she glanced around the room like she was determining what order she should kill them all in. This woman was dangerous. She came in with a man who followed her in, a clear subordinate.
"My name is Talia Al-Ghul." She introduced herself. "I represent the League of Shadows. This is David Cain, one of my top men. I'm sure our partnership will be fruitful."
Hm. This could be a problem.