Title: Because I Can't Escape... (DC SI)
Author: Rouge Rogue
Universe: DC
Word Count: 54k
Status: Ongoing (recently updated)
Synopsis:
Some things are inevitable. Things such as the destruction of Krypton, the existence of Superman and all the others, as well as the rising and setting of the yellow sun. But other, smaller things can be found and changed around those larger inevitables. Another starship flying away from Krypton before the big explosion, for example.
Now I'm in Gotham. I have a decent situation and I'm hiding from the big players because it's too early to know where certain things stand. But as I said, some things are inevitable.
Rec Reading Site: SpaceBattles
First Chapter:
I arrived on an enclosed spaceship.
Which makes… sense, when you think about it. Glass is generally a structural weak point. Sure, there are things that can be done to enhance the tensile strength of glass and reduce fragility, but for the purposes of enclosing an area to protect it from an uncaring void it is better to just use stronger materials. The only benefit glass has as a window is that you can see through it. Which, as it turns out, isn't really that special.
My childhood was educational, both before and after I got in that little spaceship. I hadn't thought I'd use the first part of that education, but then when I reached the second…
Well… Saying 'Gotham' would be an adequate one word explanation. For a part of it, at the very least.
But somehow, in spite of that, I ended up in an actually decent situation.
"I'm home!" I called out as I kicked the door behind me.
Then I winced as a boom echoed through the apartment.
"What did I say about slamming the door!?" a voice shouted back through two closed doors and a corner.
"Not to do it," I mumbled as I turned and stared at the grey painted slab of vertical wood with consternation. Yesterday, I had used a similar amount of effort to kick the door shut, and yesterday it had glided shut with a smooth 'woosh' and a click. Just as it had every day before that. Until today. "Sorry!"
I went through the usual business of kicking off my shoes and shucking my bag, my hoodie, my hat, my gloves, and my sunglasses and mask. Sure, that may have been overkill, but my gloves were kinda trendy.
And people who walked around all covered up like that tended to get avoided. A positive thing when one lived in Gotham. Sure, that may have been because people with that description tended to be the ones committing crimes, but I was one to break that mold.
Mostly.
"How was school?" my adoptive mom asked when I poked my head into the apartment's office.
"Fine. Nothing exploded," I said, which was a low bar that didn't get crossed occasionally.
The person who had taken me in was honestly quite young. Not too young to be a mother in a city where indiscretions were as commonplace as the sidewalk, but definitely not a day over twenty five. It had led to some misunderstandings when I, a young girl already in her teens, had been introduced as her daughter while leaving out the 'adoptive' part for brevity.
But misunderstandings or not, the Wayne Foundation sent mom three hundred dollars a week for adopting me as part of an initiative to rehome estranged and orphaned children. The fact that we liked each other was just a cherry on top. I'd definitely take this over another night in an orphanage. Way too loud and way too small in that place.
So instead of giving the standard one or two word answers that was so typical of people my age, I kept talking as I leaned against the doorframe. "There was a new kid at school. An actual permanent transfer. Had a funny name."
"Oh?"
"Dick," I said with a straight face.
Mom stopped typing into her laptop and turned to face me. We held a few long seconds of sustained eye contact.
"Don't you mean Richard?" she finally asked, breaking the staredown.
"No, he specifically said Dick," I responded, still keeping my face straight.
…
…
"Pfft!"
Mom was the one who broke first. I relaxed and put on a smile.
"I'll bet your juvenile classmates were laughing about that all day," she accused, still laughing but accurate nevertheless.
"This is the most I've laughed about it so far," I said with a chuckle. In the moment I'd been grappling with the chilling realisation that destiny had just kool-aid manned into my school and classroom. Hardly the best moment for a laugh. The comedy was much more apparent in hindsight.
"That's very mature of you, Alessa." Mom glanced back at her laptop. "I've still got fifty minutes of lecture to get through, but then we'll see about dinner."
"I'll be in my room." I ducked out of the office and disappeared into my room.
There, I had a set up of my own. My bed, almost too small for me now that I was hitting growth spurts again, was shoved into one dismal corner. The windows were covered in blackout curtains because there was no other insulation option, and the only reason this apartment was so cheap in spite of the wide floor space was because of the poor insulation. Taking up the rest of the space was my wardrobe and desk.
And on that desk was my pride and joy, a desktop computer whose components hadn't been iterated into obscurity two years ago.
64 GB of RAM, water cooling, a motherboard that wasn't the Intel analogue I'd identified, and a then bleeding edge graphics card if one considered 'then' to be 'christmas last year.' The keyboard and mouse were wireless, obviously, since that was the minimum requirement for the sci-fi fantasy that went hand in hand with the development of super-gadgets, and I had a comfortable seven terabytes of storage left after downloading my entire games library. Plus an SSD, so it didn't take even two minutes to bring up my latest fascination from pressing the power button. Mech games were startlingly absent from this place, but a decent one had recently dropped.
And it was like that that I whiled away the rest of the day.
– > ( ) < –
It took a couple of days for me to admit that I had a problem.
I went to Gotham City High School, seeing that the fund that paid for my board was the same fund that bankrolled my Earth education. That in itself was problematic considering it required I commute via the train system, but wasn't the problem giving me consternation. The true source of my problem was the recent transfer student.
My situation had led me to certain conclusions, and those conclusions had caused me to make decisions such as picking the seat farthest from the window in the darkest part of the classroom. Consequently, there was considerable distance between Dick and myself when we were both eavesdropping on some of our classmates at the start of morning break.
"Look, it says that the bat took on an apprentice last night!" one was claiming. The girl in question was, frankly, vapid. She had an airheaded tendency to forget details and occasionally entire topics.
"Last night?" the other, much less vapid girl responded incredulously. "Tracy, you're so far behind the curve. That rumour is already a month old!"
"It is!?" Tracy gasped.
I smothered an amused giggle. Tracy and Gertrude were an odd pair that refused to be split up, and had a dynamic that was oddly convenient for me. Essentially, Tracy would ask Gertrude about a topic that was already old news, and then Gertrude would berate Tracy for being behind the times before catching her up with excruciating detail.
Holding true to character, that was exactly what Gertrude went on to do.
"It was down by the docks. Batman took down a record breaking number of criminals and left them for the police to find. They smothered it up, but a few journalists managed to hear from those criminals that Batman had a teenage boy with them. The only reason it didn't get all the way through to the front page press was because it was just hearsay, they didn't have any pictures."
"Ah! But I saw one last night!" Tracy jumped in.
"Yes, that's from three nights ago. Someone tried carjacking a taxi and someone else stopped the car. That second someone was seen fighting that first someone on the dashboard camera. And then they were yanked away by a grapple hook that caught in his cape once the carjacker was subdued. That's why the picture is so good! And they were wearing green and red, and had a yellow cape, which matches how the dock criminals were describing Batman's apprentice who was calling himself Robin, the Boy Wonder!"
I found that whole explanation funny, if I was being honest. Tracy's enthusiastic gasps as Gertrude went on to describe the other events that Robin had likely been a part of were something that I was mirroring internally, while also playing down. And I was playing them down because someone else across the room was also reacting in subdued ways.
Dick had actually been getting up to leave the room before Tracy had started her little scene with Gertrude, but had found a reason to stay when the topic was revealed. He was 'going over' the lesson notes left on the board, and I could hear each time he huffed in amusement. Though, amusement turned to embarrassment when the bit about him getting pulled away with a grappling hook was mentioned.
And I, already trying to play down my own reactions, accidently snorted.
I immediately focused down on my phone. Up at the front of the room, I heard the sound of clothes rustling as Dick half turned around. My super hearing, which was only good enough to make out subtle sounds from the other side of the room, was just capable of picking up the thoughtful hum rumbling in Dick's throat. That didn't help the unassuming posture I was attempting to put on.
For the rest of the day, I did my best to not pay overt attention to my newest classmate. At the same, I tried not to outright ignore him. Dick would probably pick up on it if I did, and I didn't want to present a whetstone for him to sharpen his burgeoning detective skills.
So yeah, I had a problem.
– > ( ) < –
But that wasn't the only problem I had to deal with that day. Just an hour after lunch break began, it was time for PE.
We changed into casual clothes for that period, thankfully. So I was able to wear my preferred long sleeves with cargo pants. Alas, my trendy gloves and sunglasses weren't allowed on campus, but Gotham's perpetual cloud cover meant there wasn't going to be much sunlight making it through anyway. And the ever present Gotham chills meant that I wasn't the odd one out despite it still being the warmer half of the year.
"... Alright, Tracy. Get on my team," Gertrude called out, and the named girl happily rushed over to her friend's side.
… Leaving just me and Dick waiting to be selected for the dodgeball teams.
"Hmm…" Ed, the class jock, crossed his arms as he cast a critical eye over the both of us.
As the moment went on, Dick leaned over and whispered in my direction. "Wow, it's kind of insulting how they've left us for last."
I turned a confused frown his way. "What?"
"Ah." Dick gave an understanding nod. He continued, this time speaking in a whisper that was reasonable for me to hear. "You know, I'm actually quite athletic. So sorry, but whoever picks me wins."
"How humble," I commented right as Ed came to a decision.
"Alessa, you're on my team," he said, sealing his defeat for today.
"Then I get Dick, the new kid," Gertrude said with an uncontained smirk. One that was mirrored on the faces of her entire team.
"You'd think the new kid would be chosen straight away," I said as I walked to Ed's side of the court.
"Or at least somewhere in the middle," Dick snarked. "Good luck!"
The first few games passed in earnest. Each time I leaned into my reputation as an unathletic loner and let myself get hit the first time a ball got thrown my way. In the event I found myself holding a ball, I'd give it the old underarm toss. Dick got to dodge one of those. Once, Tracy threw a very soft underarm of her own my way, and I couldn't justify not catching it.
"Aww…" Tracy complained as she left the court. At least, until Gertrude shouted that me catching the ball let one of my teammates come back and didn't get her out.
I felt a little bad, then heard another ball being thrown towards me. My head turned just in time for the ball in my hands to be hit away by the ball Dick had just thrown.
He pointed and gave me a cocky smile. "Gotcha!"
"Does that get me out?" I asked, turning towards the PE teacher.
"Hm?" Predictably, he wasn't paying attention. "Does what get you out?" he asked, looking up from where he was sitting, absorbed in his phone.
"A ball hit the ball in my hand, but it didn't hit-"
I stopped talking as I registered that another ball had just hit the side of my head. It took me so off guard that I forgot to move my head with the impact, but it did ruffle my hair.
"...Nevermind," I said, moving off the field.
A couple of steps in, I realised a perfect excuse to stop participating, and started wobbling on my feet. I collapsed as delicately as I could on one of the benches beside the court. My performance was… I wasn't confident in it. For all I had an aversion to the sun, I still hadn't been unwell once since landing on Earth. My act had no frame of reference.
"Ooh, I don't feel too good," I said, just loud enough that part of the class would hear it as I held my head.
"Oh my god, Gertrude! Why did you throw that at Alessa so hard!?" Funnily enough, it was Tracy who became my voice amplifier, who became outraged that her friend had done something so dangerous. "You hit her head, she could have a concussion!"
"She caught your ball!" Gertrude shouted back. "She had to pay!"
I spared a moment to glance at Dick, who had caught a ball and was pointing at one of his off teammates. He was holding it thoughtfully, and happened to glance my way at just that moment, causing eye contact. Dick shot me a smirk rather than look away like most people would, then narrowed his eyes at Ed.
As for me, I let out a sigh. That thoughtful expression had returned, even as he dodged a ball coming his way with a graceful sway. Dick had found something he wanted to investigate.
Guess this was the end of my anonymity.
– > ( ) < –
Dick Grayson
Strange things frequently passed without anyone taking real notice. That was one of the first lessons Dick had received under the mysterious Dark Knight of Gotham.
Most of the lessons had been physical, and still were. Even now Dick had full body aches that he was contending with, but they were a familiar pain even before he had made the identity of Robin. What had come as a surprise were the questions. Apparently Batman had expected him to keep track of all sorts of things.
How many times that sassy british butler had come in and out of the Batcave during a training session, the number of batarangs had been left in various places around the cave, where Batman had moved the surveillance cameras to since the last training session. Then it got even worse out in the field. Robin needed to keep track of the number of bad guys, which rooms they were in, how quickly they could move between them, and that was just in advance of doing a take down. Tracking down the criminals in the first place was much more work.
Especially because Batman insisted he take note of everything that could be relevant, and a lot of what wasn't relevant as well. Batman would quiz Robin throughout the night, leaving Dick to hit the sack after it all with his head spinning when he should have been satisfied with the justice delivered that night.
And every time Robin was asked about something he didn't think to remember, Batman would give him that disapproving bat stare. One time Batman had even called him 'sloppy.'
Now Dick was in high school, an entirely new environment after spending a life on the move, performing in a circus. Everything was odd and strange, and he was having difficulty distinguishing what was 'normal' from his own perspective.
But not reacting to a ball thrown hard at one's own head like what happened to Alessa stuck out.
The worst of the damage Dick had observed was a ruffling of Alessa's straight dark hair as Gertrude's ball had bounced away. At least until she stumbled after leaving the court, lightly staggered over to the bench, and gently put her hand down first before letting the rest of herself down to sit. It was remarkably controlled. Textbook for what someone with a concussion should be doing.
The fact that stuck out in Dick's mind, however, was how blows to the head didn't work like that.
Considering that, Dick let himself fade a bit with the ease of practice and ghosted to the far side of the dodgeball court. Thinking back, he nodded and hoisted the ball in his hand with a calculated amount of force. But before throwing, he glanced at Gertrude to refresh himself on how she threw the ball.
"Go Gertrude! Get Ed too!" Tracy cheered from where she'd been knocked out of the game, the balls not having stopped flying since Alessa had walked off the court only to stumble. Glancing at Gertrude's target, Dick saw the ball bouncing off of their shoulder. A legal shot according to the rules established at the start of the games that had subsequently become ignored.
Now refreshed, Dick locked his eyes on Ed, who had purposefully not chosen Dick at every opportunity when making the teams, and threw the ball at him. This throw was a little special, using the exact same technique as Gertrude's had and using about the same amount of force he remembered hitting Alessa's head. Unsurprisingly, though very much so for Ed, the ball hit his head hard, sending the tall boy tumbling to the ground.
Yeah, that was how headshots were supposed to work.
"Oh, shoot," Dick said when he realised how many people were looking at him. He raised both hands. "I was just following the team leader!"