Oracle's Chronicles Ch.1 - Bats night

“It’s not easy to fight crime when you’re stuck in a wheelchair.”

That is the first thought that came to me when I entered the Batcave after the Joker put a bullet in my spine through my belly and crippled me. Of course, I’ve been angry and spiteful to Bruce after the incident, and I never thought I would play nocturne bat-vigilantes ever again for obvious reasons. But let’s say I had a heat tracking bad guys.

At first, Bruce was cautious, as always. “That’s silly,” he said. “You’ve learnt to hate this after what happened, and now you want to give it another shot?”. He was right, though. I didn’t do it just because I missed how it was to put bad guys in jail and beat the crap out of them. After Batgirl’s retirement, I figured that other girls would rise to replace her, replace me.

I was okay with that, as long as hookers and beggars were safe by night. But when it comes to remind you how it ended for you, it is hard to see other people taking your place, taking the same risks. So, I decided to get back in the game and help in a different way. I decided, from the top of my Clock Tower, to look after my Birds of Prey, and fix them when they need it.

When you can’t fly, outrun bullets or simply can’t be as tough as the Detective, getting home with a few bumps happens a lot. One night Cassandra -the new Batgirl- and I were tracking the signal of one of Penguin’s snitch over the city. He escaped in the sewers and before Cas’ could get him he had called for back-up. She ended up with three broken ribs, one shoulder and her left foot got in the wrong direction. It took me days before I could win over and get her to the hospital. Since, I decided to be ready ; I bought a batch of casting tape and bandaging, surgeon tools and a wagon full of crutches and braces.

We had a few rough nights ; once, we thought Stephanie -the other new Batgirl- would end up in a wheelchair, just like me. But I’ve always managed to get them back on their feet. Beyond my role as Gotham’s watch tower, I felt I had to teach them how to make it home in one piece and I assume that having a strong female mentor with a disability gives them the strength to do so.

Although I eventually came to realize how hard it would be if one of my birds ended up crippled like me, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if every single one of them were striken at the same time. That’s my worst nightmare coming true, and I had no idea ho to deal with it.

It begun by a summer night ; Gotham was hot and fighting crime seven days a week was quite even enjoyable and fun. Except when one of your birds has gone mute. Stephanie was missing for hours, since she had some punches with a drug-smuggler at the Docks. The last sound of her I heard was “Don’t worry Babs, I’m going after that prick!”. And then, nothing.

After a little while, I eventually called Dick -Nightwing- Grayson, and asked him to look into it. It was smelling really bad, even him couldn’t find her, and as Steph was the prater of the crew I didn’t really think of that she might have needed focusing instead of talking. Anyway, it stinked.

My fears were justified : after six hours, Stephanie came back to the base, but she was not alone… and not in a very good shape. When the door opened, I thought Cassandra had come to rescue her, but it was Kathy Kane, a redhead who enjoys women’s company, the one some criminals fear as the Batwoman, -she was not part of our crew, but always ready to help when we needed. She was upholding Stephanie, who was discomfortly smiling like she always does. The blonde was standing but her right leg was off the ground, and it looked pretty serious injured.

Kathy went to lie her down on the operating table upstairs, and as I was looking for surgery implements, I shouted to Kathy : “Turn the radiograph on, it might be broken!”

“Done!” Kathy responded.

“What?” Stephanie reacted, “How could it be broken? I’m not even feeling any pain.”

“That’s adrenaline, sweetie.” I replied, “In the next few minutes pain will start to flow in your leg. Found it!”

The tools were preserved inside a medical briefcase in a closet, next to the main computer and under the deck on which the medic-area was set up. There was a huge stairway to get on it, and a lifting-platform adapted to my wheelchair has been riged up to allow me reach it. Once up there, I had to prepare a checkup for Stephanie, until I noticed Kathy’s left shoulder was luxated.

“What happened to your shoulder?” I asked.

Kathy nodded with inconvenience. “It’s just a scratch,” she said, “I’ve already reset it.”

“Let me get you some bandages.”

“Hey, what about me?” Stephanie yield, lying on the operating table.

“Gimme a break, Brown. It’s only gonna take a few minutes. I’ll get right back to your case when it’s done.”

I bandaged Kathy’s shoulder and gave her a sling which she put her left arm in. “Thanks,” she said.

“Now, there’s your turn, Stephanie.”

The X-ray revealed a severe fracture on Stephanie’s right femur, enough to open the leg and replace the bone. Stephanie was put into sleep, while Kathy helped me out with her only valid hand, giving me one by one the tools I needed. The incision on her thigh was a bit inexpert, but thanks to the first aids courses I attended in my teenage years were still rather deeply inscribed in my memories. We replaced the femur, Kathy keeping the incision wide enough to let me grab it. Then we put the rods and the nails to hold the whole thing together. It was almost like it has been made with a hammer and its burin, but howsoever we managed to fix her leg. “Now the casting tape,” I said, staggering.

When Stephanie woke up a few hours later, she felt numb and woozy, like something pressuring her head and leg. She lifted up and saw that her right leg was in big white fiberglass cast, starting at the top of her thigh and descending her bare little toes. The cast looked pretty heavy, even though he quite shaped Stephanie’s leg, but it was much larger than enough, slightly arched and without even a walking heel. Stephanie didn’t seem to be okay with that, neither did Kathy.

“At least you could have done something more convenient,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, look at this!” Stephanie yield, showing her new piece of outfit. “What do you expect me to do with this bulky-mishapened cast?”

“That’s the idea, sweetie,” I firmly replied. “You’re not doing anything or going anywhere as long as your leg’s broken. I know you, Brown. I know that even with all limbs crushed you would dare going down the streets to beat up some muggers.”

“Well, what am I supposed to do? It’s not like if I had a day-to-day job to balance with my heroine life.”

Stephanie’s way of thinking certainly was peculiar. Since she put up the Batgirl outfit for the first time and went on her first night as a Bird of Prey, she never considered daily life as normal anymore, neither an obligation. In a way, she became a bat herself : sleeping by day, beating thugs by night. Thereby, it was quite hard for her to be unable to do what she thought was her employment.

“I guess there is no way to convince you to go back at your place to get some rest, isn’t it?”

“Humf, what would you expect, you torturer.” Stephanie was making her sulky face like she always when she finds something inconvenient, like this cast. There was nothing childish in fighting criminals by night, but she would always be grumpy when you take her favourite toys from her. “You have me stuck here, anyway.”

“Well, you would find rather difficult going out with that bulky cast.” I was just trying to cheer her up ; the night wasn’t over yet. “Speaking of which, Kathy, would you mind looking in the closet for a pair of crutches for our friend? Besides, you two need to tell me what happened out there.”

Kathy found a pair of underarm-crutches in the closet, which Stephanie wasn’t very cumfortable with. But she managed to make it down the stairs -which was tough giving the size of her cast-, as the lifting-platform wasn’t large enough to fill it with a wheelchair and a clumsy crutching-lame girl.

Once we all got in the rest corner -Stephanie’s leg was lying on a pouffe, which Kathy found kind of cute and sexy- I asked to both of them what happened on the Docks, the last place from which Stephanie gave me a sign of life.

“When you sent me to the Docks,” Stephanie started, “you and I were thinking of a basic massive drugs dealing. But it was not. There were containers, scattered all over the wharf, but apparently nothing inside except pipes and some raw material.”

“Pipes, you said?”

“Yes. It was odd. They were all empty, from which I could’ve seen.”

“How large?” I asked.

Stephanie sketched a wide hole with her hands, maybe four inches large, which doesn’t help us figuring out what they could be used for -criminal purposes, if our source was correct.

“And then, what happened? Who’s beaten you?”

Stephanie kept going. “In the Docks I saw three men talking in the middle of the wharf. One of them had a weird accent, eastern Europe-like, I think. He and his accomplices were talking about some kind of a spreading, that could keep the city off balance for days…”

It was hard to get the end of it, as if her memories were cloudy after the operation. But she eventually made it to the crispy part.

“I was being unfocused,” she said, embarrassed, “and one of the guards noticed me. But I didn’t expect what would come next. And then, there’s that girl -or what I think was a girl- who popped up from nowhere. She was wearing a battle outfit ; claws, cutlasses and even a sword. Ah and yes, she was wearing a catlike mask!”

“It looks very much like Cheshire,” I noted, “though I wonder what she’s doing in Gotham.”

“She’s not the one who did this to me,” Stephanie pursued, pointing her bulky cast. “After a few fighting, I managed to make her flee, then I hounded her to the Narrows. It seems she had a hideaway under Arkham, but before I followed her I called for back-up.”

“That’s where I come in,” Kathy stepped in.

“Why not inform me?” I asked.

“You could have been busy,” the blonde clumsily replied. “Besides, I wanted to do things on my own. So I called Kathy.”
“We easily made our way to the stash,” Kathy continued, “and then we observed that Cheshire wasn’t alone. She was talking with other people about a plan and a third volley, something like that…”

“Have you seen with whom she were talking.”

Stephanie nodded. “We just heard a couple of voices.”

“And we recognized one of them,” Kathy retorted. “It was Harley Quinn’s.”

Quinn? My heart jumped for a brief moment ; that name was often associated to the one she pretends to be the lover, who’s nobody but the Joker himself. Suddenly, I felt like a scorch in my lower back, as if my spine was responding to the thought of the monster who crippled me. I and the Birds of Prey had never had to confront him, as he was always Bruce’s priority. The Dark Knight and his archenemy, the Joker. What could Joker be involved in? I wondered, thinking of the worse that could possibly happen. “What did the other voices sound like?”

“One of them was rasping, dreadful and scary,” Kathy analysed.

“Not human!” Stephanie added.

“And then? What happened to you two?”

“We got routed out,” Kathy said. Quinn and Cheshire emerged, with two other girls we didn’t recognize.”

“They were really skilled, and we quickly got outnumbered. Kathy took a bad blow in the shoulder, and Harley caught my poor leg with her big hammer.”

“And when they were gonna finish us, there was this strange voice coming from nowhere that told them to stop, and let us go. It was gently, but a bit creepy as well.”

We were all kind of puzzled at the end of the story. The girls apparently didn’t get much than I did, it was a very commonplace story in this town, but in the other hand it didn’t make much sense. The key feature was that two of Gotham’s best-skilled vigilantes ended up with either a broken leg or a damaged shoulder. I didn’t know where to start, but I had that uncanny and awful feeling that more broken chicks where to come.

Eventually the girls could get some rest ; Stephanie crutched to the bedroom and lied down for a while, whilst Kathy was checking on her wounded shoulder before say goodbay and take off. I couldn’t sleep til I could find a meaning to that story ; was it coming from of its extreme singularity, or the fact that I had a very bad feeling about it? I felt like I was gently taken away in sleepiness.

The computer woke me up maybe an hour later ; it was a call from Cassandra, who I thought wasn’t supposed to be out tonight. Instantly I recalled all this bad feeling I had about that story, and feverishly I turned the communicator on. Cassandra was breathing heavily, her voice sobby. She said “Barbara! They got me, they… they came out of nowhere!” she breathed out. “I… I think my leg is broken!”

The communication was fiercely shut down, taking Cassandra’s voice away. “Cassandra!” I shouted, “Cassandra, do you read me?”

The main computer screen went all luminous and shaken, pixels of white and grey, the speakers spitting an awful metallic shriek, so loud it filled the entire room and the rest of the building in a trice. It wasn’t just in the Clock Tower ; outside, an entire city of TVs and computers could be heard screaming like hell. Behind me, Stephanie’s crutches clattered.

“Babs, what the hell is happening?”

The screams of the cracklings stopped to leave room to a distressing voice, both gently and unsettling.

“Dear citizens of Gotham,” it said, “I feel sorry to interrupt your sleep, but there is a message which needs to be heard.”

“There!” Stephanie shouted, “it’s the voice Kathy and I heard back in the Narrows.”

The message came along with a warning statement : “I-Will-Break-Every-Single-One-Of-Them,” it said.

“You have been protected so far by the vigilantes. That time is over. I have already broken three of your birds. What good is to have a bird which cannot fly straight? I will continue, until their body are completely crippled. I am The Fetishist, and I am just starting!”