Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 00:26:25 -600 Reply-To: Jason Tippitt Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Jason Tippitt Subject: ("In the End..." Pt.2) Chapter 3 ****************************************************************************** "I N T H E E N D . . ." ****************************************************************************** A Highlander/Batman Crossover Jason R. Tippitt, 1994-95 Continuity Note: A Possible Future Warning: Profanity and Violence Book II: Gothic Chapter Three ******* The doctors told Ollie that Carrie was going to be okay about an hour after he and Kenny had brought her in. Kenny had pestered him about wanting to see Batman the whole time. He began to wish he'd let the thugs behead the boy--or let the guy in the fancy car take him away. The kid gave Ollie a bad feeling, and he was usually right about these things. Well, he'd trusted Superman, but that was a common mistake. He had overestimated the Man of Steel's intelligence, or maybe underestimated his Boy Scout tendencies. One or the other. But if it were a choice between killing a Goddamn terrorist and letting three million people die, he'd make the same choice. He'd been wrong; the Quraci ambassador hadn't been carrying nerve gas at all, but that was where his informant had fucked things up. "So I'm here with the infamous Green Arrow," Kenny marveled. "Wow, I've met two superheroes in one day, if you count the substitute Robin. Wanna quit playing games with me and make three my lucky number?" "I'm telling you, kid, Batman's dead. We're just continuing his work here." The Sons of the Bat gang members stopped milling about and suddenly snapped to attention. Kenny looked around, no buzz alerting him of any Immortal approaching. What if the archer was telling him the truth? What it Batman were just a mortal gifted with extraordinary courage? What if he really *was* dead? Who could protect Kenny? Out of a side passage he stepped. Bruce Wayne--the supposedly-dead millionaire philanthropist and race car driver who'd spent years wearing a cloak to protect the citizens of his city--and even the world. Much like a feudal lord in many ways--Kenny remembered the respect the best lords had received. It was like this; Wayne may have carried more respect than any warrior since Beowulf. He was tall, almost too tall--six and a half feet in height. His hair was grey, but his muscle tone seemed hardly diminished at all. He was as imposing as Marlon Brando in that movie about the river--what was the name?--"Apocalypse Now." Yeah, that was it. This reminded Kenny of that movie--the soldiers seemed to worship Wayne as he moved among them, like the god-king of some lost civilization. And "Apocalypse" meant end times, and for the Immortals, this was it... "Is Carrie going to be alright, Ollie?" His voice was deep and rough. The voice of control. "The doc says she's gonna be fine, Bruce. She'll just need to lay off anything strenuous for a few days, ya know? Let the wounds heal." "I *knew* you were lying..." Kenny whispered... "Who's the kid?" "My name's Kenny--" "Did I tell you to bring strangers in here, Ollie?" "There were folks after him. Two guys were trying to lop off his head, and there was a Fed in a souped-up car with machine guns like James Fucking Bond--" Bruce looked down at Kenny with his stern grey eyes. "Trying to lop off your head, eh? So you're one of them." "Yes--I need protection--" "At least until you're ready to take a head, isn't that what you're trying to say. I've had to fire one of my people for that before. Why don't you Immortals leave me alone?" Kenny looked up at Wayne's stern expression. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest. Discussion closed, that's what the look said. Kenny'd seen it before. "I can't fight--do you want me dead?" "I've seen a fifteen year-old Immortal take the head off a man twice my size, boy. How old are you?" "Over a thousand years old--" "If you haven't learned how to fight by now, you've been tricking your way through life. How do I know you won't just use me? If I were in your shoes I'd probably learn all I could from a mentor, gain their trust, then take their head and move on. Is that what you planned until you found out I was only one of them?" "You can teach me--" "I've got other things to do besides babysitting. You've got to want to keep up. If you want to goof off, go somewhere else. Got it?" "Yes, I--" "Ollie, start teaching him some mental exercises or something." The archer's eyes grew wide. "Me? I can't stand kids, Bruce--" "You need someone to mellow you out. You're a big boy, Ollie, you can handle it. Unless you think you can't keep up with the younger folks?" Ollie snarled underneath his walrus moustache. "I think I can make it just fine, codger. Remember, *you're* the one who took ten years off--*I* didn't." The two old soldiers looked one another in the eye for a moment, both their faces tight, their bodies tense. Then they laughed. Kenny wondered if he was getting into too much weirdness for even a millenium-old Immortal to handle... ******* Michelle was taking her second shower of the day, this one alone, when Jason felt the beginnings of a buzz. So did she, because the water stopped and she poked her head out of the bathroom door. "Do you feel--?" "Yeah," he said. "Maybe we can shake him. Get dressed and we'll take the express route." Within a couple of minutes, they were in the secret elevator (hidden behind his bookcase), heading down to the subbasement which Jason had turned into his own Batcave. "Renting the penthouse above a building constructed through a front for the Wayne Corporation has its advantages," Jason had told Michelle the first time he'd showed this to her. She dressed during the three-minute ride down. Jason had their weapons. They hopped into the Stingray and were off. Within minutes, they were topside in the Bronx, the buzz out of range. "Hate running like a rabbit, but I don't want to take a head anywhere near the house," Jason said. "I wonder who it was?" Michelle asked. "Dunno. Better to avoid finding out for as long as possible. Maybe they were just passing through. Either that or they were after us--either to take our heads or use us. That's how most of it works these days." "It couldn't have been any of your friends?" "Dunno. Vic or Slade would have called beforehand...so I wouldn't be laying in wait with an ambush when they got here. I think Dragon's the same way. No, I imagine it was a stranger--or at least not a good friend." *Guess it _could_ have been MacLeod, but I doubt it.* ******* In his limosine, Senator Carl Robinson felt the passage of a fairly strong buzz. "I'll be--" It had been over two years since he'd encountered another Immortal. The last one was a friend of MacLeod's who'd fallen deeply in love with one of Carl's aides and begun terrorizing her when she spurned his affections. Carl had taken his Quickening--and Duncan had breathed a sigh of sad relief over it, having encountered the same situation with the man. The Immortal had retreated into the back of Carl's mind and given him no help or trouble since--sulking, or as close as a dead Immortal could come to it. Carl had even forgotten the man's name, it was that inconsequential. He wondered if it might have been one of the MacLeod kinsmen he was sensing--but the last he'd heard of Connor, he was running some sort of covert mission in Tibet or thereabouts. He tended to keep his reports hazy. And Carl had intentionally never been in the man's vicinity--there was something about the man that seemed borderline, and he felt the longer his Immortality could be a secret from MacLeod, the better. The trip into New York had been pleasantly uneventful. The NAACP had honored him by putting his name on a big collegiate scholarship. It was nice, a lot nicer than the politics of DC. Rev. Jackson had been seemed a bit disappointed that *he* wasn't the honoree, but that had still been much less intense than serving on the Armed Services Committee. He had to go over some details with Senator Grayson when he returned to DC this afternoon. But for now, a lunch and interview with Catherine Grant for her slot on "20/20"--she was like a wine, she kept improving with age. Carl looked forward to meeting her again. And then back to DC to talk to Richard Grayson... ******* To be Continued... =========================================================================