Date: Thu, 30 Mar 1995 20:06:35 -600 Reply-To: Jason Tippitt Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Jason Tippitt Subject: "Gothic" ("In the End..." Pt.2) Chapter 2 X-cc: Jonathan Haupt , Orrey Buttram , Brandy Lumpkins , Sarah Smith , Allen Monette , Elizabeth Donald , Pat Stubblefield If anyone's having trouble reading this, write me--I did this on a word processor, then pasted it into the mailer. If it's screwy, tell me and I'll fix it. BTW, check out my Web site; the address is listed below! --Jason ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jason R. Tippitt http://www.utm.edu:80/~jtippitt/j.html "That which does not kill us JTippitt@unix1.utm.edu still hurts like the dickens." Not even *I* am responsible for the opinions expressed here. :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---------- Forwarded message ---------- ****************************************************************************** "I N T H E E N D . . ." ****************************************************************************** A Highlander/Batman Crossover Jason R. Tippitt, 1994-95 Continuity Note: A Possible Future Book II: Gothic Chapter Two ******* After Michelle fell asleep, Jason kissed her softly on the cheek and got out of bed. He grabbed his robe and pulled it around his shoulders as he headed for the terrace outside the penthouse. He looked out over the Big Apple. Noon, rush hour. There were couples far below, walking hand-in-hand through Central Park. He saw two police cars at the front of this building; they had cornered a suspect and were cuffing him even as the Batman watched from over a hundred floors up. *Good. The city can get along without me for the most part. I hope I never get so full of myself that I think it can't. Don't want to end up like Bruce.* Bruce. That was part of what had Jason down. The way they had parted back in Gotham was not what either of them had wanted at all. But Bruce was moralizing and Jason was young and arrogant, so it was destined to happen. ====== Fifteen years ago, it was. Yet another in a seemingly endless stream of Immortals had shown up in Gotham looking for Bruce's head--it always stung a little that they assumed Batman was the Immortal, and no one ever gave a second thought to Robin, the Boy Wonder. That sometimes worked to their advantage, though, as Robin could take just about anything long enough for teamwork to payoff. Then along came the Russian, again. KGBeast, his masters dubbed him in an effort to be cutesy and frightening at the same time. He was a Cold War byproduct set on taking over the USA, but not opposed to making a bit of money on the side. He and Batman had tangled before, and he'd appeared to die, and suddenly he Sensed that one of them was Immortal, and assumed it was Batman. It all came to a head, pardon the pun, at a construction site; of all places for things to fall apart. The KGBeast was boasting, the standard spiel about the inferiority of capitalism combined with the rhetoric of an Immortal with his eyes on the Prize, and global domination. He'd smashed Jason's head against the wall a few times and killed him for a few minutes, during which time he'd had plenty of time to work Bruce over; a wall had collapsed on Bruce, pinning him. "Your skills combined with my own will make me an unstoppable warrior, Batman. Together we will make the world our own; does that not excite you?" The Beast raised up his battle axe, ready to behead the trapped crimefighter. Jason tackled him from the side, knocking him on his back. A hand flew to his utility belt, and he threw acid capsules at the Beast's eyes. The Beast kicked Jason off of himself and sprang up, running blindly, screaming. He stepped over an edge and fell three stories. Jason threw a grappling hook and caught it on a girder above the Beast, ready to swing down for the kill. He looked back at his mentor. "Robin, don't." He was trying to push the wall off himself. "I have to, Batman. He'll keep coming back, just like the Joker. And next time he'll win." "No killing in my city..." Jason helped Batman out from under the wall and told him, "Get out of here. I don't know what might happen to a mortal who stood too close to a Quickening." "I told you...no killing in my city." "There can be only one, Bruce--haven't you learned that by now?" Jason grabbed hold of the rope. "I've got to do this before he heals; there's no other way." "If you kill him, you're never setting foot in Gotham again, you hear me?" "Then have Alfred pack my bags. Don't judge what you don't know, Bruce." With that, he slid down to the floor where the KGBeast was still thrashing about, trying, from the looks of things, to destabilize the whole building. "Batman," the blinded Russian said, "if your weakness bids you to let me live, know that you will take your whole city with you when you die. I have the means to destroy Gotham. Fight me now or everyone pays the price!" Jason unsheathed his sword behind the Russian. "KGBeast." The Russian turned. "Is this a joke? Or is he a coward, sending out his sacrificial lamb?" Jason let go of his control over his body, felt his voice changing as the warrior within him took control. "I am Odysseus of Ithaca. There can be only one." The bags had been waiting for him when he returned to Wayne Manor, just as Bruce had said they would. Bruce had given him a black Stingray, as well--it was meant to have been his present for his 21st birthday, the note on the windshield had read, but now it was to help him "Get as far away from Gotham as possible. And don't look back; there's nothing left here for you." ====== He had travelled across the country for a while. He spent some time in Detroit, a week and a half in New Orleans, then six months in Hub City training with two Immortals, a reporter named Vic Sage and a martial artist named Richard Dragon. Then he'd ended up in Seattle. He met up with Green Arrow there, and it was Ollie who'd suggested Jason take up Dick Grayson's old Nightwing identity--Jason was too busy trying to get into the Senate to need it, after all. That's where Jason had met Michelle. For a while Nightwing had his own Catwoman, a Robin Hood-type who preyed on the fat cats of society and gave to the poor. He still remembered how they met... ====== The Hope Diamond Exhibition in Seattle. Three thousand a head for the banquet and unveiling ceremony, before it was put on exhibit for the common folk. Rumored mob ties in the inner-city mission the money was supposed to fund, stuff that reporters knew about but couldn't print. Jason figured that if his cat burglar would strike anywhere, it would be here. This was too prime an opportunity to pass up. He or she may have been planning this all along--the last few heists were getting bigger and bigger, almost like piece of music building to a crescendo. When he swung onto the rooftop and saw the unconscious guards tied together by the skylight, with a jetpack laid to one side, he knew he was probably right in his assumptions. He stood back in the shadows and waited for him or her to surface. Within five minutes, she was there. The black bodysuit didn't disguise her gender at all--she must have been good, he figured, to never have a single person pin down even that one detail. No one had ever seen her coming or going. He had to respect that. She had a pouch on her shirt, and that was where he assumed the diamond was secured. She looked around, then pulled her sword. "Who's there? I can Sense you--show yourself or I kill the guards." Muscles tensed, hoping she was bluffing, Jason stepped out of the shadows. "There's no need for that. I just want to talk." "You don't want to take me in?" "That depends. What's your cause?" She wrapped her arms around his neck. He could see her eyes were brown through the eye holes of her ski mask. "Buy me a drink and we'll talk, Spandex-boy. Your place or mine?" She kissed him, which knocked him off-balance mentally, but he liked it anyway. Within a week, they were platonically shacked-up; she'd never taken a head, and he offered to protect her, even help her out from time to time in jobs. Bruce wouldn't have approved, but what did he know? Besides, Greenpeace and Amnesty and AMFAR ended up with an extra two million dollars each a week after the Hope Diamond's return, and Jason and Michelle had a month in the Bahamas. ====== Seattle was the most fun of all the places Jason had lived. The Nightwing identity had served him well for the three years before the costume party all went bad. When Ollie killed that statesman and Superjerk took his arm in a fight, and everything got real serious, real fast. Green Lantern had left the planet, Wonder Woman had gone back to her people, Wally had hung up the Flash tights and become a film executive, and Bruce had retired and started racing cars. And Superjerk had become the President's monkey-boy. The only people he ever saw in costumes any more were both Immortals--Vic Sage as The Question, and then that merc, Slade Wilson, called himself Deathstroke. But neither of them messed with him; he and Vic were friends, and Slade at least respected him--the two of them had even pulled a caper or two together in his Nightwing days. Slade's ex-wife Addie had a computer network like nothing Jason had ever seen. Used it to operate something called Searchers, Inc. She had helped Jason set up a new identity a couple of times when the law had gotten too close for comfort. He was currently Jason Wayne--as fitting a tribute as possible to Bruce under the circumstances. Besides the whole identity thing, that is. What pissed him off more than anything, though, was that when Bruce died, no one called. No one told him. Alfred had died, but Dick could have called. Jason figured Dick's name was pretty appropriate, because he knew full well that he was one of the few people who knew where Jason was. He didn't even attend the funeral, taking the Politically Correct stance of condemning "vigilantism." Jason thought of telling the whole story to Vic and letting him have his Pulitzer, but thought better of it. Vic had it all figured out, that if Bruce was Batman then Dick must have been Robin before Jason, but he couldn't prove it. Jason figured that he might as well be honorable even if U.S. Senator Richard Grayson, youngest member of the Armed Services Committee, wasn't going to. Jason was in the car when he heard. Michelle was with him, thank the gods. They'd pulled over and she'd driven them home; the mood for shopping was no longer there. He cried himself to sleep in her arms, and started work on a costume the next day. He couldn't go back to Gotham, what for all the CIA and military folks still there, but he figured that New York was just as bad off--worse, in fact, because at least Gotham had the Sons of the Bat roaming around, the street gang-turned neighborhood watch who'd helped Batman contain riots in the city and thus earned at least marginal acceptance in the city. They should have called Jason, though. Someone should have called. He just got the one phone call from Vic, asking for a scoop, and a potted plant from Slade. Deathstroke, the Terminator, sending flowers. Maybe Slade had a heart after all. *I wonder if he still has a head--or if Vic does, for that matter.* With everyone else dead--the numbers were thinning, and fast...Jason shook his head. "Let me make it up to you, Bruce," Jason whispered as he looked at the dying limbs swaying in the breeze down below in Central Park. "You disowned me, but you'll always be the father I never had." He looked back into the apartment, and saw Michelle walking towards him in her robe. "Good morning, sleepyhead." He wrapped his arms around her lithe body and kissed her. "Is something wrong?" "Isn't it always? But we keep on keeping on. I've just been talking with the ghosts, Michelle, nothing to worry about. Wanna do lunch?" ******* To be continued... ========================================================================