ACT III
by Don Walsh
“Movie time!” Carrie called out as she jumped up onto her feet and snatched off the top case from the coffee table. Steph came back in from the kitchen with replacement snacks, rocking her hips back and forth, feeling rather jaunty.
“What's gotten into you?” Dinah chuckled at the sight as she snatched a cupcake.
“Just chasing the stray animals, is all. Man, does Wayne Manor have a pest control problem.” She plopped down in the middle of the girls, as Cassandra looked up quietly from where she sat near the corner of the antique table holding the snacks, drinks, empty glass bottle and more. She shook her head at her friend's exuberance and then turned to check out the television screen as Carrie flipped past the previews.
“Pests? We don't have pests here. I think Bruce would flip. I know Alfred would.” Carrie pursed her lips as the menu screen came on, and then glanced at the DVD holder.
“Hey! Who's the wise guy who brought 'Wimbledon' to the party?” Bette exclaimed as she looked around the room, before settling her green eyes on Mia.
“Oh right! Like I even knew they made a tennis movie,” Mia shot back, rolling her eyes up. “Like I've had the kind of life to go and watch stupid chick flicks. You know, not everything revolves around you! I didn't pick out my colors because of you, I didn't become a vigilante because of you, and I didn't try and become team leader because of you. And I sure didn't bring any stupid tennis movie because of you!”
Bette merely continued to glare as the other girls looked unsure of what to say. Barbara was about to step in when Dinah and Renee both noticed Cassandra, a hand over her silent mouth, her body shaking gently. Slowly, the rest of the occupants all started to turn their heads toward the silent girl, all except for Mia and Bette, who were eye to eye now, kneeling on the floor as they faced off with each other.
Again Barbara prepared to step in and get things calm, but Stephanie had other ideas. Quietly, she slipped something toward Bette, the older girl's hand gripping tightly and she grinned. “Oh yeah?”
“That's the best you can come back with? 'Oh yeah'?” Mia taunted Bette as she pressed her face a little closer.
“Girls,” Barbara started to say, but it was too late as she watched Bette move her arm.
“Nope! Got something better!” Bette declared as the large red pillow collided with the side of Mia's head, sending the slim archer bowling over on her side, completely shocked by the sudden turn of events.
“Pillow fight!” Carrie cried out as she flung another pillow at Stephanie, the instigator, the large padded violet cushion crashing into her friend's face and Barbara could only give a wide-eyed stare as chips, cookies, drinks and pillows flew around the room in a sudden blur of action as she struggled to regain control.
“Babs,” Renee said to the redhead as Barbara continued to call for a halt, picturing the cleaning bill ringing up a higher and higher total in her head.
“What?” Barbara turned to face Renee. “Renee?”
“This is what you wanted,” Renee said as she and Dinah, flanking the wheelchair-bound woman, crashed large cushions into her.
0-0-0-0-0
The bus pulled up to the stop, the doors opening and disgorging one person. He slouched under his umbrella, the rain pocking and cascading over the taut material as he held his hand out behind him, to hold onto thin air, much to the driver's alarm.
“Come on, dear,” the man said softly in the dark, and then waved to the driver. “Thanks for waiting. She's kind of nervous.”
The elderly man just looked down at the singular man, blinking and looking around, to see no one else in the wet gloom. “Right. 'Course. Good evening.” He gave a nervous wave and closed the doors, the bus pulling away.
The man looked down the large, well-maintained avenue. Unlike much of Gotham, it was in excellent condition, with the lanes of the avenue parted by a lovely tree-lined center. But then, the wealthy lived down this way, and they'd have it no other way. Let the rest of the city, the county, live in their rundown, grimy, congested villages. This was where the aristocracy lived, and the worn, wary looking man looked down the symbol of power and wealth nervously, his hand clutching the nothing beside him.
“You're sure about this?” He asked as he started to guide himself, and his nothing, down the street. “I mean...really?” He paused to listen, and nodded his head, letting a small smile break his face. “Well then, let's get going. It's already late. We don't want to miss anything.”
0-0-0-0-0
Alfred had just finished cleaning the kitchen up, the last of the platters of food and pitchers of ice cold lemonade sitting on the dining table. He looked up as the ladies, younger and older, trooped into the kitchen, grimy from drink and food and feathers and merely shook his head quietly as he stepped out of sight, to work on something else.
The women, for their part, descended on the table, laughing and giggling as Renee walked behind Barbara and plucked feathers from the lovely red hair. Dinah couldn't help but notice the attention being given and chuckled but said nothing of her suspicions. Instead she just looked down at her long-time friend and continued to apologize.
“How was I to know that big pillow was filled with goose feathers?” Barbara looked up at her with horrified eyes. “I mean...who? Who keeps a goose-feather pillow out in a sitting room, Babs?”
“Rich people, apparently,” Mia said as she swiped a cup and poured out something to drink.
“So...Mia, you didn't steal my colors or anything,” Bette admitted as she passed the archer a finger sandwich, trying to look apologetic. “Why did you get into the vigilante thing? I mean, it's not some new teen trend or something, is it?”
“No!” Mia snapped back. She looked around at everyone, who were still flushed from the pillow fight, and laughing among themselves only to look up at her quick, short response. “I mean, no.” She took the sandwich and handed the cup of liquid to Bette and poured a second glass. “Not as far as I know anyway. I don't have too many friends in school anymore.”
“Hey, it's okay,” Renee said as she took a seat next to Barbara. She looked at the young archer and gave her a reassuring smile. She could see hurt in Mia's eyes, and added, “If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay. But I've got a hunch you aren't gonna find a better group of people to understand.”
Mia looked over the group, all of them now looking at her in turn, the attention focused squarely on her. She squared her shoulders, swallowed her sandwich and took a deep drink from her glass.
“Well, see, my father was a small-time hood back in Keystone,” she said slowly. “He got into some deep trouble, and the bigger guys, they wanted him to do some jobs for them. Stuff he didn't want to do. He was a good guy in the beginning, but he was a gambler, and he just got...lost, I guess. But he wouldn't go robbing and killing people, like they wanted. And so they decided he needed to be taught a lesson.” She shook a bit, and closed her eyes, then continued, “So they gave him an ultimatum, and snatched me up on my way home from school one day. Mum, she was angry with Dad at that time, and they were separated, and she would tell me terrible things about him. Maybe some were true, maybe some weren't. All I remember is, these scary guys had me in a really nasty, rundown building, and threatening me and forcing Dad to kill someone, but he wouldn't. He came to my rescue, he did.” Her eyes watered as she sat back into her chair and she fiddled with her hands, moving a plate, then shifting a glass, then wiping at a ring of condensation with a napkin, before her other hand reached up to tug at her blond hair.
“And that's when you decided to become a super-hero?” Steph asked as she leaned back on her chair, balancing on the back two legs as she sipped her own drink.
“Not quite. See, Dad, he charged in and all, but...well...” Mia wiped her eyes and then took a deep breath. “After Dad was killed, the guys he owed money to felt that they needed to teach other welshers a lesson and get some profit back so they sold me off to some pimp named Sinless Sol.”
Steph fell out of her chair and pulled herself back up quickly as Bette gave a short gasp. Carrie just stared blankly, and even Cass looked unnerved, though less so than her fellows. The three older women already knew this story, or very similar in Renee's case, and could only look sympathetically. Renee walked over and put a hand on Mia's shoulder.
“I was rescued by the Flash though, the first one,” Mia assured the others. “A few months later. I think. I'm not really sure how long later, but Mr. Garrick showed up with this government guy, and they got me out, and sent Sol away, so Mr. Flag, he's the government guy, so he assured me and my mum and aunt. My aunt, she let me recover down in her home in Hub City, and I learned about that she was this Robin Hood kind of vigilante during the Sixties called Moonbow.”
Everyone looked blankly at Mia, none of them knowing the name, and she clarified, “Yeah, I never heard of her either, but she spent time fighting 'The Man' and being all hippie and stuff. So Aunt Sarah, she let me use her old equipment in my recovery, and I decided that it was a good way to work out some anger, to be Speedy. It's what my aunt nicknamed me and I liked it. I never intended to be a super-hero. I'm not really. I'm just a street kid, beating up street gangs because they're putting my former friends in danger. But none of my friends really hang with me anymore, because I'm damaged goods, or because I don't want to play with their gangs. And so...so...” She let her voice trail off, feeling stupid as she started to ramble like an emotional girl.
“Wow,” Bette said softly, eyes wide and hurt. “You're amazing. That's a hell of a lot more inspiring than my story.”
“Oh?” Mia asked, genuinely curious to know what brought the pampered starlet's child into crime-fighting.
“Like all good stories should, it begins with Dick Grayson's abs.”
0-0-0-0-0
The rain was making things harder to see, but the man continued to lead no one up to the last mansion in the area. He stopped, looking over the large iron gate that barred the main drive. “Shouldn't it be open, dear?” He looked down at the nothing that held his hand in return. “Oh. Well that makes sense, sure.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small plastic box, filled with clamps and wires and a small screwdriver. “It sure was good of that nice Mr. Film Freak to pass you the key, wasn't it, dear?”
He quickly worked at the gate alarm, and then the iron bars started to part for the man and his thin air. “Well, I guess you're right, sweetheart. I'm so sorry I doubted you. Obviously, the invitation was for you.” He reached his hand back out after he slipped the key back into his pocket, and took the nothing back into his grip. “Let's get to the party then.”
0-0-0-0-0
As the group of girls returned to the video room for their movie, Carrie and Steph were chuckling over Bette's tale. “So you put on a costume and bounced around the city trying to beat up bad guys because of a crush?” Mia asked incredulously as Cass shook her head in disbelief.
“It wasn't a crush!” Bette defended with a grin. “It was true love! Not my fault Dick never realized that.”
“And good thing for you I saw potential in you,” Dinah interjected as she put a friendly arm around Bette's shoulders. “Or Dick and Babs would have had you out of that costume so fast, it would have made your head spin.”
“Well, that was partly the idea, Dinah,” Bette shot back with a wink. “Well, except for the Babs part. No offense.” She looked over and winked at Barbara who just chuckled and nodded appreciatively.
“Hey, that whole potential thing,” Steph spoke up now, wanting to cut off the mushy stuff as she looked back at Dinah. “That sounds familiar.”
“Yeah, Dinah's always dragging home strays,” Barbara said quickly, and stuck her tongue out at Dinah.
Renee had been quiet as the others moved into the room, blushing a bit as Carrie asked who in their right mind went out to be a super-hero because of a crush, and then laughed as Barbara defended herself from Dinah's counter-charge of caring for strays, shooting a glance at the former police detective. The bell to the front door rang as more laughter broke out when the girls tried to find places to sit for the first of several Brad Pitt movies.
“The bonus of coming with your own chair,” Barbara teased them all as Renee laughed louder, walking down the hall to the front door. She put her hand on the knob, and turned it.
As the door opened up, her laughter froze in her throat. Her eyes grew wide and her face paled as she stared into the eyes of Robert Callaway.
“Mockingbird.” Her voice was dry and hoarse, her body trembling with a burst of adrenaline.
“Hi there! You do know my daughter then. Oh that's a relief. She said she was invited to the sleepover, but...well...I wasn't sure. She's never been the girl in the big social circle you know, and I thought...well, she can get carried away, sometimes,” Rob explained as he looked down at his sweet daughter. “And you're one of the chaperons? It's good to know that there will be some adult supervision.”
“Right,” Renee replied, unable to think of anything else to say at that moment. She wasn't sure what to do about this maniac's presence, as he smiled at her, completely unaware that he was facing his enemy, the Batgirl.
“Good evening, Mister Callaway,” Alfred called out as he stepped up with his rain coat in hand. “Of course your darling daughter is welcome. This is Renee, and she will be glad to bring...Jessica, was it? Jessica in to the others. Won't you now, Miss Montoya?”
“Right,” Renee said with blank eyes. Rob held his hand out, as if passing Jessica's hand to Renee. Renee took the empty air. “Come on in, Jess. We've...all been waiting for you?” She looked at Alfred, who shooed her along, while Rob waved at his darling daughter. Jess skipped away in his sight, down that stately hall, her bear backpack slung over her shoulders. He sniffed a bit, and wiped his nose.
“Come along now, sir. Must let the girls be girls, right? Why don't we go out for a drink?” Alfred closed the door behind him, and started down the path to the garage. “I'll drive. I know this darling little restaurant with the most delicious sherry.”
“Sounds good good...uh...Mister...”
“Just call me Alfred, sir. Everybody does.”
