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Life Ore Death - DC Feruchemy [Young Justice]

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I guess that's why Clark likes baking sweets? He can be more or less sure that they taste normal to other humans, as opposed to cooking and accidentally making sour omelettes or something?
 
Lykantos said:
I guess that's why Clark likes baking sweets? He can be more or less sure that they taste normal to other humans, as opposed to cooking and accidentally making sour omelettes or something?
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But think, he never gets the contrasts of a real good lemon meringue pie. Or a tequila sour.
 
Crimson Doom said:
Seems like a fair trade-off for the superpowers he gets, though. Though admittedly, I say this as someone who's never liked lemon meringue pie anyways.
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This makes you a person to be pitied, not reviled. Your penance is to drink several tequila sours in a row.

Sours mix (lemon juice and sugar)
Top shelf tequila.
Sugar and chilli powder mix, for rimming the glass.
 
But what do sour and salt taste like to him? Some kind of weird mix of both or does he just... not taste anything? Asking the real questions here.
 
Lykantos said:
But what do sour and salt taste like to him? Some kind of weird mix of both or does he just... not taste anything? Asking the real questions here.
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They taste like what they taste like? There is no taste molecule. Not a particle of taste exists anywhere (outside Dream). Taste doesn't exist as a wavelength. It has no value.

It's ultimately arbitrary. You can't be certain another human experiences taste the same way you do - you know they'll generally experience it in a reasonably similar manner, because we can meaningfully talk about shared experiences with each other, but we can't know how similar it actually is.
 
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Even A Man - part 13
  • Threadmarks
    • Life Ore Death​
    * December 5 [Overview]

    Kate Kane had become very familiar with the truism, 'No plan survives contact with the enemy,' over the course of her life.

    She found it insufficient.

    It was one of the many ways in which she disagreed with Batman, as he had occasionally asserted that a plan with the proper branches and contingencies could survive contact with the enemy – and he believably claimed to have executed a few such plans in the past – whereas Kate had learned that it didn't even need to be an enemy that interfered with a plan of events, prompting her to make two amendments:

    1. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but some plans don't even survive contact with your allies.

    2. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but the same thing holds true for enemies' plans.

    When things were calmer and clearer, she would later reminisce that both facts had held true on this particular night.

    "You what?" she hissed at her thrill-seeking, impulsive, something-something-too-furious-to-fucking-insult-her-properly niece.

    "You needed help, I can't exactly do anything right now, and she practically jumped at the chance," Bette snapped back. "We've got Poison Ivy running around, a woman with snake powers, and at least a dozen-,"

    "Twenty seven," Kate corrected on automatic as her ears categorized everyone active in hearing range, listening for approach.

    "-Intergang guys armed with lasers, not to mention the bitch with the whip," Bette finished, motioning to the burns slashed across her legs that kept her from putting on any costumes and trying to get her fool self killed again tonight. "She practically jumped at the chance."

    "That does not make it o-fucking-kay to send a damn thirteen-year-old out in a partial copy of my goddamn costume all because you want her to dis-fucking-tract the damn Intergang cocksuckers!" Kate all but screamed at her idiot niece even as she kept moving to get changed as quickly as possible, wondering where the brains that had figured out her secret had gotten to in that blonde head.

    "Robin is, what, eleven? Barbara will be fourteen in a week," Bette dismissed, which was not the fucking point, but before Kate could get that through her skull, the blonde kept going. "She is my friend, and I know she's in horrible danger, but our other friends are in danger and she was going out there with or without the costume! This way she's got armor, and we know they want to capture Batwoman alive, so-,"

    "So they'll kill her dead immediately in a fury when they catch her and realize she's not me," Kate countered. "If she dies-,"

    "I know," Bette in interrupted, sounding almost on the verge of tears, "but our friends are already in danger of dying, too! Artemis and her boyfriend left us here after they shuffled us away, Dick is down with a concussion and his brain might be bleeding," she emphasized, directing Kate's attention to the unconscious young man who'd been made as comfortable as was safe in the overgrown bedroom, "I can't do shit with my ankle like this even if I'm not- not c-crippled for life, and Barbara was going to go get herself killed fighting because she thinks Poison Ivy-,"

    "Is obsessed with her. Barbara Gordon was probably the last person to see Pam Isley before her change, and she's been targeted before."

    "Right," Bette huffed at Kate's clinical interruption. "She was going to go out and get herself killed fighting with no armor, or, or nothing. At least this way she has some protection and equipment, and she knows that she needs to run around and hide instead of fight because it's more important that she be a distraction. Now are you going to help her or not?" Bette demanded, holding out Kate's wig.

    Kate clicked the last latch of her costume into place, donned her long-haired, deep red wig, and pulled the cowl over her head.

    "I'm going out," she confirmed, but first she reached around Bette to the bedside table with the one hand not yet in its glove.

    Her thumbprint on a scanner hidden on the underside of the table unlocked the reinforced metal bottom drawer.

    "Holy shit," Bette gasped as Kate carefully removed the sidearm and ammunition she kept locked there.

    "You remember your lessons? Load it and use it if you need to, but only if you need to," Kate reiterated.

    Bette swallowed thickly. "Yes, sir." She took the weapons with all proper care, as taught. "Any- any idea if Batman and Robin-?"

    "With how busy the city is, I expect they'll be here only at the end of it all, no more than an hour from now," Kate lied as she left.

    'Shit. Shit. God fucking damn it all,' she cursed as she fell into her stealth training and began to sneak. 'Intergang is here for me, and Whisper brought in her damn mother from the League of Shadows – probably on some condition Ra's made about Bruce. It doesn't look like al Ghul revealed his identity, but Whisper Sr. knew to take him down immediately, and knew exactly how to do it, and we both should have fucking known better than to write off anyone as a petty burglar, but fucking hell I knew she wasn't Junior and I had bigger problems. …Now.'

    Batwoman lashed out, and several seconds later she was busy only with binding and hiding the two Intergang agents she had dropped.

    'Sit rep,' she listed silently. 'Poison Ivy has made this place pretty impassable to conventional forces, and I think there might be a mild drug in the pollen; Whisper Jr. is leading a bunch of Intergang thugs with xeno-tech on a campaign to capture me and finish cutting my heart out; Whisper Sr. has shown up to take a dozen wealthy hostages, including my goddamn family, and I've never fought her so I don't know enough about her capabilities. Last but not fucking least, Kyle Abbott is also running around somewhere, potentially scent-tracking me.'

    'The good news: even though Batman is incapacitated - for however briefly he stays that way - and Dick is concussed, there are two other members of that Team he's on here, and they're both armed for an engagement, albeit not to this scale. They might have contacted the Justice League- shit. That's Kid Flash.'

    The redheaded young man was hobbled heavily in this environment, unable to use his full speed, but he was Robin's friend and she could see he'd trained under Batman enough to have held his own against a pair of Intergang thugs in spite of their lasers and armor.

    He just hadn't been prepared for the next two to come running at him before their friends were out.

    In a less crowded environment, Batwoman would have preferred a flying kick or two to take them down, but her own damn home was overgrown by all those fucking vines, so she ducked down and around, casually tore out a creeping vine that had unexpectedly come alive to grab at her in passing, and spun to drive her heel into the head of one as her hand snatched the laser weapon from the other.

    She swung with the momentum, switched feet, and snapped a kick straight into the solar plexus of the second gangster.

    "Whoa," Kid Flash whispered, and Kate felt rather proud of the cracks in her wall where he hit, even through its layer of plant cushioning.

    "Kid Flash, right?" she checked as she quickly began securing the men.

    "What! I mean, uh-,"

    "Yes, I do work with Batman," she explained, simplifying things rather than go into the details of their separate operations and her cousin's controlling tendencies. The young man relaxed slightly, nodding. "You injured?"

    "Mostly my pride," he grumbled, though his care in picking himself up suggested some bruises. "I thought you were a myth."

    "People thought the same thing about Batman, before he went international in the Justice League. Some still do." Men secured, Kate got down to business. "I know you know the identities of several people involved. Intergang is working with the League of Shadows, and it looks like Ra's al Ghul gave them information on exactly how to take Batman and Robin down efficiently," she listed briskly. "Intergang wants to capture me alive, but Miss Gordon is unlikely to be so lucky, if they catch her while she's running around in my costume as a distraction."

    "Wait, she's what? Babs is good, but why the heck would you let her-?"

    "I didn't let her, and wouldn't," Batwoman snapped, "but she damn well didn't need my permission to run off with it and play distraction on her own! The first thing you should do if you see her is make clear that I've arrived, and she should ditch the disguise to stay safe. Clear?"

    "Yessir," he replied nodding frantically as she leaned back after having got up in his face.

    "Good. No one knew you and Green Arrow's new partner would be here, so whatever plans they've made don't account for you two, either. It's a large advantage to us," she admitted, loath to get more minors involved, but at least they were more experienced than Bette had been.

    "We won't let you down." She let his assurance pass without comment.

    "There are a number of civilian hostages, and we need to shave down Intergang's numbers as much as possible. Conventional forces aren't going to do much with all of Ivy's plants blocking the way; they'll die out in a day or two from the cold, but I can see an outer ring of thorns and poisonous plants from here," she informed the kid, gesturing out the window. "Is the Justice League on its way?"

    Batwoman was less than sure if they would come – Bruce didn't like them in Gotham uninvited – but this was a hard situation.

    Not an emergency. Not quite. Not yet.

    "Not sure," he admitted. "We were keeping contact with- uh, you know about…?"

    "The Team working out of Mount Justice, yes," she confirmed drily.

    "Right. We had periodic check-ins with Ferris back there, in case any of the others needed help on their missions, but when things started going down she couldn't connect a few times, and then the link just dropped. Not sure what's the status; Artemis has the comm."

    "Find her, find Barbara, and call me on this," she instructed, pulling a similar comm link from her own belt.

    "GRroowwwww!"

    Just as she was pressing it into his palm, a roar rattled through the house.

    "Shit, Abbott," she swore, bolting down the hall and vaulting off her second story landing to close in on where the sound came from.

    One Intergang thug was carelessly elbowed out the window, and several of the increasingly common vines that tried to snag her were torn up as Batwoman raced past, because to judge from the shouting-

    She kicked her solar's door off its hinges rather than slow down to open it, smashed a blow into the floating ribs of the thug on the other side as she passed, and rounded a corner to find-



    "C'monc'monc'mon-!" yelled the teenage girl in the ill-fitting Batwoman costume as she flipped in mid-air over the head of the wolf-man, allowing him to pass harmlessly under her before she landed, leapt onto a table, and kicked off a wall to grab at an above balcony.

    "You miserable-!" Abbott roared through his misshapen muzzle.

    "Yeah! You want the goddamn Batwoman? Come and get- um?" Under her borrowed cowl, the young Barbara Gordon broke off in confusion.

    Kyle Abbott spun around, nostrils flaring, and got a snoutful of burning gas, courtesy of Batwoman's flamethrower gloves.

    "You did good, kid! Now," she shouted over the sound of Abbott's howls as she threw first a bola, then a python coil at him, "get somewhere safe with your friends and listen to them!" Batwoman didn't tell the kid Barbara to stop fighting – she'd learned from Bette that even the attempt was an exercise in futility – but she hoped a few closer-to-properly-trained teens could keep her in minimal danger.

    "I- right!" she yelled back, and raced off. Batwoman took a moment to appreciate that the young woman appeared to have taken down at least three agents while surviving against Abbott—to count from the unconscious bodies in the room—before Abbott was upon her.

    She judo threw him into the wall easily enough, as he was half-blinded by tears from his irritated nose, and promptly began pummeling his floating ribs, taking the opportunity to land several kidney shots. She backed away when he recovered enough to swipe at her, and let his hand 'catch' the Taser wires from her glove to run a charge through them.

    He snarled instead of screamed, and reacted faster and more accurately than she had anticipated, scratching her body armor as she spun out of the way. They were in a momentary standoff, and began carefully circling.

    Abbott's grin was all the warning Batwoman had.

    Scorching pain burst across her back simultaneous to the sound of laser fire reaching her, and Batwoman had the oddly ludicrous thought as she stumbled of wondering whether it had burned off her nautical star tattoo or not.

    She surged forward and head-butted Abbott in the skull as he charged at her to capitalize on the weakness. That stunned him for just long enough that Batwoman could swing around at the men firing at her from farther down a long hall. Her vision was just blurry enough that her aim was likely to be shot, she knew, so instead of precision she threw two handfuls of batarangs, tear gas pellets, and light explosives in a spread pattern sure to catch someone in its radius.

    The sounds of their shouting would've been music to her ears, if not for Abbott's growls.

    He'd gotten smart and backed up in the brief breather he'd had; under her cowl, Kate sighed at the realization that she'd have to buy a lot of new furniture after this, because Abbot was throwing chairs at her with enough force that they splintered against the wall when she dodged.

    Batwoman kept him moving with thrown batarangs aimed at his knees and other nasty tricks, but she kept her ears open.

    It would be embarrassing to fall for the same flanking trick twice, after all.

    Running out of chairs, Abbott threw one of the smaller snack tables at her, and used its bulk to hide his next actions.

    He charged her obvious dodge position only to find that Batwoman was not there, having jumped onto the chandelier Kate had installed with enough reinforcement to hold human weight in case of exactly this kind of shit, but she'd generously left a flash-bang behind for him to find.

    Closing her semi-blinded right eye and relying on the left eye she'd covered, Batwoman took the opportunity to Taser him again.

    Someone on the second floor shot the chandelier chain from outside her observational range, and Batwoman dropped a few feet. She landed without harm, but it broke the flow of Taser current, meaning the frothing and furious Abbott was on her again mid-recovery.

    Unpleasantly familiar sounds met her ears, and she maneuvered to fault over Abbott for a clear view of the upper floor.

    The younger, more familiar form of Whisper A'Daire Jr. was wielding her trademark laser whips in an attempt to hold off both of the younger heroines. She was losing ground fast, and limping, but they both had a few burns showing.

    "Just shoot her, blondie!" Batwoman shouted at the girl with the commandeered laser pistol, suiting word to deed as she snagged a laser pistol off an unconscious body with one hand while the other flicked three batarangs at Whisper even as Batwoman was forced to jump and flip over Abbott as he pounced again. She hurled a bola at his legs from behind even as she fired at Whisper, only to hear the blonde's shout confirm that she should not have done that.

    "Tried that," the blonde called even as Batwoman pulled the trigger, "but it only- shit!"

    The blaster bolt got pulled off-course as Batwoman watched, into the glowing laser whips, and it somehow super-charged them. Whisper lashed out with an ugly smile, sending one projectile arc of power searing across the hall at the girls, and another forced Batwoman back and set fire to the plants across the floor even as Abbott loped at her again from another angle.

    Batwoman took a moment to feel really glad that she had concussed him so badly, if he could only attack along that one avenue.

    It made him very predictable.

    "Aim for her head," she called to the younger girls as Abbott pounced on her. The arm that had held the blaster before it proved worse than useless instead aimed a grapple gun at Whisper's legs while the woman was preoccupied fending off the attacks at her head.

    The rest of Batwoman's body threw Abbott out the window and jumped after him, firing the grapple and ensnaring Whisper as well. In the air as they fell, she hit Abbott and quickly manhandled him as they fell toward the pool and patio on the lower deck. The coil attached to Whisper Jr. jerked tight sharply, and since it neither snapped nor was ripped from her grasp, it must have dragged Intergang's highest-ranking woman down and out with them, though Batwoman was a bit too preoccupied to visually check.

    They landed hard, her weight driving Abbott skull first through a tabletop, and Batwoman slapped a generic restraint collar around his neck before she rolled away to face Whisper and her whips, just as a lash of red passed through where her head had been.

    "I thought you wanted to take me alive," Batwoman mocked as her furious and ragged enemy seethed.

    "Modern medicine can fix a lot of things," Whispered answered venomously. Then, "Hey! Ivy! We've got a code fucking red here!"

    "I'm- yeah, fine, I'm on it already," Poison Ivy called back, staggering into view from the sitting room next to the pool patio.

    Batwoman tensed for an assault and palmed a few of her remaining projectiles even as she assessed Ivy's appearance.

    Far from being tinged by chlorophyll as in their last encounter, Ivy's once freckled skin had now turned entirely green, and the facial markings around her eyes that Batwoman had noted on the Injustice League's broadcast were now obvious to her as discolored skin or veins, rather than intimidating makeup as she had first assumed.

    Ivy's eyes would've been bloodshot, except they were the not the color of blood, but something darker, and despite its change in color, her skin had still broken out into a cold sweat. There were deep bags under her eyes as well, and Ivy's hands shook as she raised them.

    Then Batwoman refocused on the vines that that reared up like snakes, mirroring Ivy's arms.

    She read their angles as best she could, checking her weak reflection in the glass door to ensure that no vines were behind her, and braced for attack, readying her throwing arm for the moment when Ivy would commit to commanding and couldn't dodge.

    As Whisper scrambled out of range smugly, Ivy slowly, deliberately, closed her spread fingers into fists.

    The vines did not attack.

    Batwoman quickly glanced around, and especially at her feet, to find what she was missing. Instead of moving, the vines stiffened into stalks, and began to bud flowers that rapidly blossomed, and more purple and yellow 5- and 6-petalled flowers opened nearby.

    Batwoman got a lungful of pollen and realized quickly that she'd have to drop a handful of her projectiles to get to her rebreather. She opted to throw them instead, and more stalks shot up in front of Ivy to block the attack even as Batwoman affixed the apparatus.

    Some about the nature of the flowers caught her attention; the 6-petalled yellow flower looked a little like a Star of David, despite its phallic center, and she definitely remembered seeing it in more than just her botany studies.

    'Why would… Tomato! But why would Ivy use tomato flow- oh shit! Tomatoes are part of the Solanaceae family, and those purple flowers are belladonna,' she realized, her body starting to panic even as her head kept calm. 'Solanaceae all contain natural tropane alkaloids,' she mentally recited even as her hand went for an injector in her belt, 'which can cause delirium and spike heart rates.'

    Whisper's red energy whip buzzed through the air before Batwoman could inject an appropriate treatment, forcing her to quickly dodge away. The sudden increase in physical activity as Whisper kept up the attack was not conducive to lowering Batwoman's heart rate, and she could feel the first prickles of numbness and pain as her pulse became increasingly irregular, with her old stab wound so agitated.

    Ivy had enough of spreading pollen as well, and went in for the attack with animated vines; Batwoman found it bitterly ironic that her own body armor was preventing her from injecting herself, as the only exposed skin was around her jaw and neck.

    Other sounds of combat reached her ears, growing closer, before an explosion blew out several windows.

    <I'm up, ETA two minutes or less, > Batman's voice informed her from her ear bud under the cowl. <Ferris has arrived with equipment and a civilian girl; jeans, black skin. Kid Flash is down from drugs; Artemis has light injuries and is treating civilians. Robin's status? >

    "Concussed but unharmed, last I checked," she answered bluntly, tossing away the used injector after having taken advantage of her opponents' surprise. "Gordon got a spare suit, and was unharmed. Abbott is down; I'm fighting Ivy and Junior by the pool."

    <They, > Batman began, just as Jr. swore and dragged Ivy back into the overgrown house at top speed, <may fall back to Whisper Senior's location, if she just called them. I suspect they will attempt to use hostages. Were you the target? >

    "Solanceae pollen," she said, which would be all the explanation Batman needed, since he knew of her old heart injury.

    <Th- Senior just killed a hostage, male, pre-adolescent, wants Bruce Wayne to surrender in exchange for others. Hasn't ID'd Batman. >

    "Go," she confirmed, knowing which way his strategic mind was working as helpless, bloody fury hummed in her veins. "I'll-," She almost paused as she pursued them up the stairs, knowing her heart rate far still far from settled. "-cover you; I don't think they know."

    <Noted. Civilian says Ferris has a plan to engage. She's running to safety and I'm preparing for Wayne to "surrender". >

    "Trust her plan?" Batwoman asked as she skidded to a stop outside the room where the three women had taken hostages. She mentally assessed all the approaches she could use, backed up a bit, and retrieved more spare equipment from a store behind a vent in the hall.

    It was significant that Batman didn't offer a negative comment, but his unwillingness to offer an affirmation suggested that he still had other reservations. Batwoman assessed that he most likely felt she would endanger the hostages, but Whisper Sr. had already killed one.

    It was a bad situation.

    But they faced bad situations every other night, in Gotham, and her house was flush with tricks and traps, even if Kate had hidden most of them away so that no adventurous party-goers would set anything off.

    Thinking carefully, she began to finalize an attack plan of her own.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Obloquy said:
    1. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but some plans don't even survive contact with your allies.

    2. No plan survives contact with the enemy, but the same thing holds true for enemies' plans.
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    Haven't even read any further and I can safely say that no one planned for a half dead Ferris to break out the magical powers she's been developing and crash this party.
     
    Fuster Cluck in Motion :)

    I semi expect something snapping and ,overall, to see, again, something truly unexpected happening.
     
    Hmm. Did we just get some foreshadowing suggesting Ferris's plan will be ruined by an ally? Possible, but I'm betting that Ferris's scheme with the magic items will be successful. Perhaps she will be too successful and Ivy will get killed?

    Got it! Ferris will attempt to ruin Ivy's connection to the Green OR will attempt to ruin the effectiveness of the power-boosting drug in her system. Ivy would not sit still for such a thing though...


    Where does Batman fit into this? I figure Artemis will be directed to Bruce's location for the hostsges and Bruce will share some tool Batman "gave him for emergencies." No clue as to whether Artemis will learn Batman's identity.
     
    PatrickDiomedes said:
    You had a perfectly good opportunity to say "NO ONE EXPECTS THE STEEL INQUISITION" and you wasted it.
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    One day, I may really have her say this line.

    With a proper Dynamic Entry, of course.

    ...By the way, here's a Future Ferris Funny:
    Later on, when she actually has a daily planner to keep track of things, she goes through and literally schedules "INQUISITION" every day at some time early in the morning, just so she can say, "You're late, I was expecting you hours ago" if anyone ever tries this on her.
     
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    Dark as Silver said:
    "Why are you so injured!?! Did you stop to fight Doomsday on the way?"
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    "Nope, just the zeta tube"
    Speaking of the zeta tubes, she just used her mantle to force the system to recognize and give her access right? Because I can see it being a problem if she got through by damaging the systems ability to differentiate between who does and doesn't have access to the network, especially if it isn't fixed quickly
     
    On the other hand, it does look like League IT network is under attack - or at least part of it is.

    Lesser of the evils, so to speak. Also, Batman - it would not surprise me at all if Tube's hardware have contingencies for the scenario just like this.
     
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    *NO LONGER CANON TO LOD [Fun Facts - Batman]
  • Apocrypha
    • Dear Readers,

    I enjoyed writing these and they helped me break some nasty writer's blocks, but with my evolving understanding of the story, plot, and characters as I continue to write Life Ore Death over time, I have had to remove some of these from LOD canon.

    To avoid spoilers, I'm not going to tell you which ones no longer apply, or why, but you'll find out more as the story progresses.

    I'll keep these posts     Preserved for posterity, so you can still reference/read them if you want, but they're no longer 100% accurate to LOD.

    Batman Facts!​

    1. Other than changes in his parents' histories (due to JSA activity, etc.), the main detail that separates Earth-16 Bruce Wayne from the majority of his counterparts is his impatience to become the Bat, and the consequences thereof. Most iterations of Bruce Wayne's Identity first become Batman between the ages of 23-26, after having spent the past 5-8 years traveling the world to train and prepare. On Earth-16, Bruce Wayne also spent several years training to prepare for becoming Batman, but he started at the far younger age of 21.

    Brucie cannot, for instance, believably be a total moron at social events; it is a matter of public record that he attained his high school diploma at age 16 and then sought emancipation (which freed him up to begin traveling the world to train). Instead, he plays the Drunken Dunce.

    An established "fact" of Gotham Society is that Brucie is an alcoholic. A highly functioning one, yes, but an alcoholic all the same, often carrying a hip flask from which he sips throughout the day. It is only at parties that he downs drinks rapidly and "lets himself go," resulting in tongue-tied mistakes, moronic comments, and sad statements from his "friends" of how pitiable it is but, but understandable, and aren't there worse vices?


    2. While he is not alcoholic, Bruce did, arguably, abuse steroid treatments throughout his adolescence. His mother was fit from her training, but slender, and Thomas Wayne was not a large man. Bruce figured that strength and size would benefit The Mission. He self-medicated with carefully calculated hormone and nutritional supplements through his teen years, on top of working out and exercising fanatically. He disguised the doses by emptying out One-A-Day vitamin bottles and replacing the contents; Alfred is deeply ashamed of having never caught on.

    Since becoming an adult, he's taken to not hiding it (from Alfred), and switched formulas to include more precise and better qualities of chemicals with his periodic injections of antitoxins to Smilex, Fear Gas, Ivy's Enthrallers, etc.

    However, Bruce has absolutely forbidden Dick from doing the same thing before hitting adulthood. His own life is one thing, but Bruce Wayne will not risk his ward's health with that drug regimen, no matter the benefits to fighting crime.


    3. As for the aforementioned details in his parents' histories… Clark Kent, stung by the Jor-El AI's words, once asked Bruce how he reconciled being the violent vigilante son of two philanthropic pacifists. Bruce asked how Clark kept his job as a reporter, if that type of ham-handed inquisition was Clark's version of background research. (The burgeoning fight fizzled out when Diana cut in and reprimanded Bruce, saying he had no cause to complain about Clark respecting his privacy and only asking for what information Bruce was willing to share.)

    Bruce answered Clark, in the end, with the observation that while everyone remembered both parents' generous philanthropy and his father's career as a surgeon, they tended to forget what his mother was busy with before she settled down to get married in 1973, at age 30.

    Martha Wayne née Kane (1942-1986) was an alumnus of West Point's second ever co-ed class, and a Vietnam veteran. She was Bruce's first teacher in martial arts, and in the mornings he still practices a wake-up routine she taught him. Before Batman, Bruce had considered fighting evil by following in her footsteps, but his distaste for guns - and the contents of her personal journals - persuaded him otherwise.


    4. Bruce Wayne believes in magic and the supernatural, and has always done so due to the overwhelming historic evidence, such as WWII records of Doctor Fate in the JSA. While he does not practice them, he is well-informed enough to recognize when a threat may be of mystic origin and take the appropriate precautions. He originally sought to study under Zatara for the man's escapology skills, but when he learned the man possessed genuine mystic powers as well he nearly dove into basic arcane studies. He does not practice it because the of Monkey's Paw concern.

    Bruce has run the numbers. It is far from a precise art, but at age 25 his life contained a statistically significant number of unlikely co-incidences: a familiarity with Selina Kyle long before she became Catwoman; how quickly Bruce caught the attention of Ra's al Ghul despite his incomplete training in the Shadows; and connections between others in his life as Bruce who would become significant for separate reasons to Batman.

    Bruce is not religious and - despite his father's lapsed Catholicism and his mother's Reform Judaism - he does not worship the God of Abraham, though he acknowledges that there is some significant "supernatural" energy behind artifacts like the Spear of Destiny. He has, however, run the numbers. There is some supernatural force interfering with his life - there are statistically too many coincidences for there not to be - and if he ever isolates its existence and identity, he fully intends to make it wish he were merciful enough to kill.


    5. While he drinks enough to acquire a trained palate and a healthy immunity to alcohol's effects, his alcoholism is carefully faked through sleight of hand and suggestion. Bruce Wayne's tendency to sleep around, however, is not. His self-medication as a teen came with increased hormonal responses as a side-effect; development of his mental discipline and physical fitness were aided by his desire to not be a slavering horn-dog.

    He lost his virginity a few months before he turned 15, he had a pregnancy scare with his then-girlfriend the month he turned 16, and he abstained for almost all of his time traveling abroad, because so many of the women he met were poor enough that he'd be taking advantage of them. Since his return to Gotham, he has used at least two types of prophylactics per encounter, and he has religiously made clear with each date - ahead of time, and while they were both wholly sober - exactly how far their activities that night would potentially go.

    He did not anticipate having children as Batman, but was not originally averse to the idea; it was only after Poison Ivy appeared in Gotham that Bruce had a vasectomy, unwilling to risk how close he had come to falling under her control. He plans to discuss having it reversed with his wife, if he ever weds, but short of that he had long given up on parenthood until the day Dick Grayson entered his life.


    6. Bruce first knew Andrea Beaumont through his cousin, Kate, as they met at her 11th birthday party. They weren't especially close, at the start, but grew closer in high school as she - being a bit older than him - was willing to help him in his summer school classes and advanced studies.

    Andrea was one of the people he subtly bounced ideas off of in developing how he would pursue The Mission as an adult; she was also his first introduction to the extra-normal aspects of Earth, privately coming out to him as a closeted meta-human capable of short-range teleportation.

    They broke up when her father fled the country, unable to sustain a long-distance relationship, but Bruce bought a ring shortly after he and she returned to Gotham. Had she been willing to forgo her revenge… As it is, he tries not to dare to hope. (It's hard not to hope: she let Joker live because he was too crazy to be accountable. If she'd only stick around and stop killing people, he would happily cover it all up to protect her.)


    7. Bruce met Selina Kyle when he was 14, although she never met Bruce Wayne until after he became Batman. Instead, it was "Matches" Malone she knew first, after he strolled into and joined Wildcat's gym, where she was doing laundry & janitorial duties. Ted Grant taught Matches basic boxing, but Selina was the one who introduced him to street-fighting when she beat him with a handful of chalk dust thrown in his eyes.

    He challenged her to a rematch (including an obligatory "re-Matches" joke corny enough to make her wheeze with laughter) on the condition that it be a fair fight, with the stakes that the winner bought dinner for the loser. He threw the fight for a date with her, and they grew closer over the three months she worked at the gym before she pulled up her stakes and vanished to home. When they met again as adults, Bruce recognized both her manner, and her mild kleptomania. In the painful aftermath of losing Andrea, he pulled out every technique he had to charm her.

    She never committed to him, not in either identity, but they've had a few flings over the years, which has contributed to Batman's slightly less than zealous pursuit of Catwoman. He's certain she doesn't know the truth about him, and while he has a ring that would fit her finger, he can't trust her enough to tell her his secret; Bruce knows she won't stop committing crimes for him because she doesn't need to in the first place. Selina steals because she wants to, and his only hope is that she will one day realize why theft is wrong, even from the rich.


    8. Talia is the only one of the three who is younger than him, assuming she was honest about her chronological age. Bruce believes her to be honest, though. That is a fundamental part of their relationship: in a world where he deals regularly with many of Gotham's filthiest crimes, Bruce Wayne can still believe that Talia al Ghul is a fundamentally good person; he can hardly fault her for loving her father so dearly.

    He considers it a case of, "Love alone isn't enough," but he will always leave the door open for her; even after the end of their relationship, he programmed the DNA sniffers to lower other security features for her, should she try to enter the Bat-cave. Talia was in her mid-teens when Bruce began training with the Shadows; Master Duvall's unexpected decree that he would supervise his students' first kills was what brought things to a head. Bruce planned to refuse and dared to obliquely confide in Talia. She secretly had the prisoners they were to kill released.

    Duvall found out. When the fight was over, and the other 5 students rendered unconscious, Duvall told Talia that their father would not be informed, and arranged for Bruce to study under Elijah Snow. It was not until a few years later that Bruce and Talia met again, when she accompanied Ra's on his mission to investigate the failed operations in Gotham, only to recognize Bruce. He has a ring for her as well, kept with the other two, but despite his hope that Talia will eventually find the strength to leave Ra's, he isn't sure he will live long enough to see it.


    9. For the first few years of his career, Bruce had a complex about accepting the World's Greatest Detective title Old Man Snow had said was his to use. Despite his investigative success, even Ra's began addressing him as "Detective" before Bruce could privately admit to himself that he was. The personal turning point, where Bruce acknowledged his own abilities in the matter, came in 2007.

    The exact details of the case shall remain lost to other minds for the moment, but once Bruce could pride himself on unraveling the intricacies of a past event that had been retconned out of existence via time-travel, then he could confidently call himself the World's Greatest Detective.


    10. "Insane (adj): being in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction."

    Massive emotional trauma as a child leading to aberrant behavior as an adult? Bruce Wayne fits the bill, and he knows it.

    Among other things, he can lie through his emotions without a flinch and declare his drunken devotion to any particular date of an evening, but Bruce cannot say "I love you," to Dick at all easily, despite his ward prefacing almost every evening's "good night" with those sacred words.

    In many ways, he considers Batman "the ultimate failure," rather than a wonderful accomplishment. Bruce has to watch people he doesn't deserve to care about suffer, because they care more for him than he deserves and he makes them watch him kill himself day by day by day. Worse, every time he looks at someone he cares about, his training has him cataloguing how he could take them down, lethally or otherwise. His meditation techniques help him clear his mind of that as well, but it's become a habit with him, and one more horrible cost he has to live with.

    Even so, there are some days - when he's training or patrolling with Robin, when he sits down for an hour with Diana and Clark, when he sees a criminal brought to justice or a victim brought closure or a person who's turned their life around - when he feels, however briefly, happy.

    Bruce knows he does not deserve to be happy, but he allows him to enjoy it while it lasts all the same, because the people who love him don't suffer to suffer through seeing more of his self-flagellation. He has made a difference, and while he will never be at peace with it, precisely… what's well begun is half done, and he considers this an acceptable beginning, no matter that he will still try to improve upon it.
     
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