Living life as the children of an old money billionaire wasn't all fun and games, though. There were expectations, after all. Singing christmas carols was only the start; they had to show that they were becoming cultured as well as intelligent, and there was further expectations of a young lady, to do something athletic so as to remain trim, although only the most odious of high society busybodies dared question Alfred's control over their diets.
So Tanya had to pick between ballet, figure skating, gymnastics, dressage, and tennis. Further, she had to pick between opera singing, piano, violin, the harp, or clarinet. The thing was, she had learned tennis in her first life, performing… adequately, and learned opera singing in her second.
Alfred was not impressed with her decision. So she had to pick a second thing from each list, so she could actually show she was learning instead of faking it. Which… was fine, she saw the logic. Mostly, the logic was that Richard had to pick something other than gymnastics so as to be seen as becoming cultured instead of just continuing to be a carny, and if he let her get away with previous experience it wouldn't be fair to the boy.
So it was to roaring applause that Tanya was tossed up into the air by the older boy and then caught before being smoothly put back on her skates, turning once before stopping and taking a bow. Was it wasteful to rent out the skating arena so Bruce can show off his children's talent and hard work? Oh yes. But it was the kind of waste that, as an old money family, he was expected to do. Just like the eventual plans to rent out the opera house so that Tanya could play the piano while singing in front of an audience with Richard accompanying her on the cello. When they got better at it.
"Man, I've missed having an audience." Richard said cheerily. His unitard was green, of a complementary shade to Tanya's lavender dress, both elaborately festooned with lace designs. They bowed again to another section of the audience.
"Good for you." Tanya said through her plastic smile. "Can we leave yet?" They bowed to the third section of the audience.
"Just one more set of bows." Richard said quietly back. Putting word to deed, they then skated off the arena as the next set of skaters entered. Naturally, Bruce being himself, he sponsored a whole class of underprivileged youth who also got figure skating lessons from the same olympians hired to teach Richard and Tanya, with full-ride college scholarships on the line for 'promising youths', which was a lot easier to qualify for than was implied. "What's wrong? Don't you speak in front of crowds all the time?"
"Speak." Tanya reiterated as she grappled with her leotard, "Not dance around with-" Ah, much better. "-a flubbed catch giving me a wedgie for half the routine."
"Oh." Richard said, wincing. "Sorry about that. The show must go on, you know? You followed my improv'ed recovery well."
Tanya took a deep, calming breath, "It's fine," He's just a kid, it was an accident, he apologized. "I'm just in a bad mood after losing all of that clay of life." Damn Gotham. Waynetech's insurance on high-value shipments meant that it wasn't as massive of a financial hit as it could have been, but it takes more than money to convince Themyscira to give up that amount of what used to be their only way to make more of themselves without getting men involved.
The only silver lining to the whole nonsense was that the clay of life wasn't involved in the fertility ritual, it was for the skin cream, and a component of a few other ideas they had when considering the new magical ingredient. So they would at least be able to still fulfill their part of the deal with the island of women. It just sets them back immensely on other fronts. The trust between them and "Men's World" was still too thin to ask them for more than they're already giving up.
"If we're lucky, it'll just show up in an underworld auction and we can just buy it back." Richard said consolingly, repeating Bruce's words on the subject. Unspoken was 'or Batman and Robin can bust it up and give it back to the rightful owners, ArcWayne'.
"We're never that lucky." Tanya groused, although sometimes the unspoken event does end up happening. They split up and changed outfits, Tanya into an black gothic dress with a fur coat and Richard into a suit that was appropriate for an upper class outing. The braid she had during the figure skating routine was kept, although she swapped out the lace decorations for a simple lotus flower comb she started to wear for no particular reason.
They managed to get back to the VIP box having missed only a single performance. "How did we do, Daddy?" Tanya asked Bruce with her usual 'cute' voice with just a dash of Alfred's British accent, a little girl trying to sound fancy. Others were in the box, after all, and it's the little things that can give one away, at times.
"You did great." Bruce said, smiling easily.
"You flubbed the second catch." Said the man seated next to Bruce, Jacob Kane. He was very recently a Colonel in the United States military, had retired a few months ago to assume the role of CEO of his family's company, Kane industries. He was also Bruce's uncle through his mother. He was not a fan of Bruce adopting Richard.
Richard glared at the former Colonel. "I guarantee you most of that audience didn't notice. That's how you get perfect shows, by keeping it going."
"You recovered wonderfully." Bruce added.
The two of them sat in their seats, Tanya deliberately putting Richard between Bruce and her, reached into her fur coat, and after double-checking that the volume was muted and the screen's backlight was off, turned on her gameboy, twirling the stylus in her hand as it loaded. All this skating and piano was really cutting into her gaming time, which was already impeded by her duties with ArcWayne and as Rhine. She hadn't gotten to play a console all week.
Fortunately, her night vision was stellar, easily augmented with magic without any vocalizations nor with any visual effect that could be detected without careful examination of her eyes, which is awfully hard to do in the dark. She had another gym to defeat.
Eventually, after Mahou, her witch ghost, emerged victorious, Richard elbowed her and she looked up, paying attention to her surroundings once more. Oh, it was time for applause. She smoothly closed her gameboy, stashed the stylus, and slipped the handheld back into her fur coat's pocket, before giving an energetic but polite applause to… ah, of course. Barbara Gordon and her partner, Jason Bard. While she didn't exactly fit the bill when it came to 'underprivileged youth' that most of the class is, Barbie (as Tanya liked to call her to annoy her) had occasionally, about six times total, been asked to 'babysit Tanya and Richard' which was just an excuse to get her safe and sound within the admittedly overblown security umbrella of Wayne Manor, whenever Jim Gordon thought that there was a risk to his family for a weekend or whatever. He was divorced, so it was just the daughter he needed to worry about. So she was connected enough to the family to be let in on the lessons with no one thinking twice.
The point here was that Barbie and Jason were the oldest members of the class, and Barbie was by far the most talented: the sixteen-year old was already an Olympic-qualified gymnast (but with a very low chance of actually being selected for the American team) and a black belt in both Karate and Jujitsu, and she didn't get those from some strip-mall dojo, either. Jason… managed to keep up with Barbie, which is honestly more than could be reasonably expected of the boy.
So the applause was likely because they did a great performance, and as they were scheduled last, it was also a good time to stop playing. "Thanks." She whispered to Richard.
"No problem." He said, glancing at Bruce who definitely noticed her act of petty self-centeredness but pretended not to so as to maintain his image as a bit of an airhead. Jacob might have noticed, but he would ignore it on the basis of blatant favoritism.
Just another evening for the Wayne family.
-----------------------
There was a set of high-rise luxury apartments that were, through a holding company, owned by the Wayne trust. Actually, something like 28% of the apartments in the city were owned by Bruce through various intermediaries, but most of them were low-income, and while that indirectness had a price of control, the lack of top-level pressure for maximum profit did mean they tended to be cheaper than the market.
Naturally, there were tons of safehouses scattered throughout Gotham in these complexes. In this case, one of the penthouse suites was owned by Tanya's cover identity as Tanya Degurechaff, Director of ArcWayne. It was deliberately mocked up to be as witchy as was practical, and was, in fact, where she did most of her magical research and less resource-intensive experiments nowadays.
"Experiment number eighteen on project Nadir." Tanya said softly into a microphone connected to her computer. Waynetech's incredible text-to-speech technology was primarily motivated by Bruce wanting to increase his efficiency when writing reports, so she'd have it even if it wasn't out on the market, but the fact that it is out means she can use it in the office, too. Having to use an Imperia-well, German accent was a slight imposition, but it was far less of one than having to listen to her own unmodified voice, as it always reminded her of that one time she didn't pitch down her voice, warning the Dacians they were about to attack.
Even after being literally executed on stupid and also false charges, that was still a decision that, in hindsight, was probably her most morally indefensible act in the war. At least, that she can remember. A lot of the stuff she did in the war was pretty fuzzy, she only had clear memories of the things she thought about regularly afterwards, and she knew enough neuroscience to know that they were probably pretty inaccurate as well.
The joke about the visas was still hilarious, though. She'll never apologize for that one. Even if Bruce would probably not see the humor. Alfred might, though. She's not sure of his stance on gallows humor.
Still, she was almost done with the ritual setup. One of the things that makes the blood purification ritual practical was a magical ingredient called liquid sunlight. Normally, the ritual needed to be done at high noon under an open sky, which was naturally difficult to manage and impossible to keep sterile besides. However, liquid sunlight was something created under those conditions with the specific property of being able to power rituals with that requirement at other times and conditions. The amount created per attempt varied immensely depending on conditions, the ritualist's skill, and how much supplementary power was provided, but that was far preferable to a consistent amount of varying purities, as it could not only be mixed with the results of other creations of bottled sunlight, but shipped long distances to boot.
Tanya had theorized that other forms of magically significant conditions could be similarly bottled, and had been, over the last year and a half or so, attempted to create a similar ritual for the conditions of the zenith of the full moon and the nadir of the new moon, bottled moonlight and bottled midnight respectively. She hasn't found any references to such a thing, neither Professor Blood, John Constantine, Zatara, nor that new magical member of the Justice League Nabu, alias 'Doctor Fate' had heard of any practitioner selling that kind of reagent, but she was reasonably confident that it was possible, and John agreed. He was back in Britain, attempting the same thing, and was promised two million dollars for the patent if he managed it before she did.
The bottled sunlight ritual had four relevant components: The circle, the crucible, the incantation, and the script. It was created by a vampire hunting coven in Romania back in the 15th century, during the Sixth Eternal Eclipse (that is, the sixth time in the last 2000 years that some jumped-up vampire lord decided to attempt world conquest), using Romanian for the incantation and Greek of all things for the script.
Tanya was… as certain as she could be that she had adjusted the circle, script, and incantation appropriately. Professor Blood agreed. The main issue was the crucible. In the sunlight ritual, you needed a very specific glass container which can mercifully be re-used after the output was moved to mirrored bottles… which while a large obstacle way back when, nowadays ordering batches of custom glassware was easy enough that ArcWayne gives them out for free as part of the ritual kit they give out to anyone willing to make bottled sunlight for them, paying twenty dollars per centiliter, which is enough to purify one liter of blood. Given that processing blood the normal way costs two-fifty to three hundred dollars per liter, this is a very sustainable price point, even if it's nowhere near the only expense in the magical process. Hundreds of minor practitioners in the English-speaking world have revealed themselves to ArcWayne on the promise of gig work, as one of the commonalities of the eclectic bunch that practice magic is that they're not big fans of proper employment, but creating a magical reagent to be sold to another practitioner is respectable enough to their sensibilities that it overcame their natural inclination against having a regular job.
Unfortunately, glass was a dead-end for both project Nadir and project Luna. She had gotten some progress with a silver vessel for project Luna, but the liquid moonlight wasn't staying liquid, so she was experimenting with the shape to fix that. Unfortunately, she has had no luck with Project Nadir.
"Circle, script, and incantation are all as per attempt seventeen." She continued, before rattling off the summarized nuances for clarity's sake. Science was so tedious sometimes. "Crucible is a discus of obsidian, a perfect circle of one meter diameter, with one micron layer of vantablack paint." This was not easy to get. The crucible's role in the ritual was containing and stabilizing the component, which was why she was certain she got the rest right, but while it was an improvement over the control conditions of literally nothing, it didn't yet create what she was looking for.
Fortunately, Waynetech has plenty of machines that could paint a precisely one micron layer of something on a surface. It just… costs one hundred thousand dollars of labor and materials plus two hundred thousand dollars worth of lost productivity to retool the machine, do the job, and retool it back to layer chemicals on phone processors or whatever it's normally for. Which came out of ArcWayne's budget. Fortunately, with the single, solitary success ArcWayne has under its pointy hat she can justify pretty much anything below a million as just a minor R&D expense, and if she runs out of money the board won't even blink when Bruce authorizes more.
"Executing test when parameters are optimal, ETA two minutes." She said into the microphone, nervously smoothing out her skirt as she breathed deeply through her nose, using her magic sense to determine when the nadir of the new moon was truly upon them. She set the microphone down and took her coffee thermos, taking a deep pull from it. If this works, she'll need it.
Her view of the night sky was interrupted by a ground-based spotlight targeting one of the few clouds that remained. The Bat-signal was lit. Commissioner Gordon wanted a meeting with the Batman.
This wouldn't affect the ritual… sort of. She knows from experience that things like pollution and similar negative conditions reduced the yield of the sunlight ritual, but it didn't stop it altogether. This ritual should be similar, which is also why she expects that this one will require a dedicated facility set up several miles away from the city once she gets it working to create a significant amount of product.
Still, it was time to commence. "Here we stand on the border of darkness, brushing on the infinity of the abyss." Tanya intoned in Romanian, the cadence refined over the various attempts to align the magical fluctuations caused by the words with the natural rhythm of the cosmos. She walked in precisely calibrated steps around the line of Greek letters, each rotation taking a precisely calibrated 29.5 steps. Getting that right was a pain, but she had marked a series of dots around the circle to act as an aid. "I entreat Erebus to crystallize the deepest night for our works, to bring a phial of his tenebrousness to the brightest peaks of the world." Tanya's heartbeat accelerated as she changed but one word in the chant, not even sure why. But it worked, her enhanced night vision seeing the mystical energies coalesce onto the crucible. She repeated the chant, confident in her last-second inspiration, and even more power flowed to the platform.
…Of course. Liquid midnight could not exist. Powdered midnight, on the other hand… It took six hours of continuous chanting and walking until this particular ritual's window for the nadir to close. Exhausted, with sore muscles and even sorer vocal chords, Tanya hurriedly went for her alchemy kit, getting the tools necessary to handle powdered reagents and gently scooped the results of her successful ritual into a container that could be used to measure it. "...okay, so this is certainly more than you get out of a sunlight ritual, which is good, because you can only do it once a month instead of every day. But this is definitely going to be more expensive." She said to herself after taking a water bottle and draining it in one go. This will require some additional measures…
Still, she took her phone into the restroom and checked her messages. There weren't any emergency alerts, but apparently all three of the fertility rituals that were occurring during her experiment were successful pending a pregnancy test in a week for the final confirmation, a great step forward for the process. Was it a little ethically ambiguous to attempt these kinds of process refinements with live patients before the government's approval? Yes. But Themyscira was fully confident in the ritual's efficacy and safety, and it… probably wouldn't ruin anything irrevocably if the ritual got botched due to inexperienced ritualists, even if the real reason things got botched was because they tried some way to do things faster or more cheaply.
Idly, she wondered about the sociological implications of the society of amazons getting a whole new generation of Amazons all at once. Well, sort of all at once, but they ordered forty pregnancies over less than two years… Their pre-existing population was less than a thousand, it would definitely have some significant impact. Especially when you consider that these girls would not know of a world where Diana wasn't a world-famous representative of the Amazons. It was interesting.
Still, she called the office. "Yes, boss?" asked her secretary, a handsome man by the name of Richard Karlo. The man was incredibly disappointed that she had absolutely no interest in fraternizing, but his initial probes in that direction were subtle enough that she didn't want to raise a fuss. He gave her an autograph of his brother Basil, a reasonably successful heartthrob actor, to apologize, which she politely accepted and then put it somewhere she could ignore it. The thing wasn't even worth one hundred dollars, she checked.
"I heard that we achieved a one hundred percent success rate." Tanya said, "Is this true?" Mr. Karlo was aware that she relied on him to be her eyes on the site, when she could not do so in person.
"The witches said it worked." Mr. Karlo confirmed. He was referring to the magically sensitive people she'd hired two years ago. Coincidentally, all four of them, only minor talents, not only knew each other, but were in a coven together at Gotham University before they were hired. All but one have moved to graduate school by now and can thus help with research, but their primary duty is to sense magic. "Did your thing work?"
"It did." Tanya said proudly. "I'll bring in the results after I get some sleep. Try to get one of our consultants on site for the initial examination, at two in the afternoon."
"You got it, boss." Mr. Karlo said, "Now get some rest, you sound like you need it."
"Remind me to finish the log. Good night." She said in dismissal, hanging up the phone before calling the Batcave. "Alfred? I'm too tired to teleport, can you summon me home? I just gotta lock up." While yes, she could technically sleep in the penthouse she was currently inside, she'd need to call to inform them of this anyway, and she didn't have any perishable food, and the bed wasn't as soft as the one she had in her room at the manor. This was easier.
"Right away, Miss Tanya." Alfred said easily, "You'll be just in time to meet Master Bruce arrive home after a long night."
Tanya smiled. "Does that mean you have food ready?" She asked.
"Always." He replied before hanging up.
"Rhine, Berechnung, Mahou." Tanya chanted, using the gathered power to telekinetically shut the skylight, move the powdered midnight into the already open reagent safe, close it, and engage the technological and magical security system after entering the penthouse's bedroom, locking the place down to give the impression that she existed independently of the Wayne heir. Finally, she used the last of her gathered magic to dissolve the spell letting her assume the form of her second life, shrinking back down to her true form right on time for the gentle tug of her summoning catalyst being used.
The first thing she felt on arrival was the warmth of the Batcave, as while it wasn't particularly warm by most people's standards, leaving the skylight open for hours, at night, in October, meant that she had come from a place that was literally below freezing in temperature. She was wearing robes with warming enchantments before she changed back, but it was rough for those seconds between turning back and being summoned. Alfred immediately wrapped her in an electric blanket and put a mug of hot cocoa in her hands. Ooh, toasty…
On cue, the Batmobile entered from the waterfall entrance, and Bruce pulled himself out of the vehicle without grace, and Robin stormed out, somehow still full of energy. "Who does she think she is?" He said indignantly, "Going out with no backup, a stolen cache of tech, and thinking that's a good idea?"
"I've prepared a gentle meal to quell your no-doubt rumbling stomachs, sirs." Alfred announced, taking the lid off of a tray to reveal bowls of soup and some very appealingly seasoned toast. "In the morning, I must insist on something hearty, however."
Tanya immediately took one of the bowls herself and started to eat. It was chicken noodle soup, perfect for someone who had just spent hours out in the cold.
Robin took off his mask and sat down to enjoy a bowl himself. "What happened to you?" Richard asked Tanya.
"My ritual worked." She summarized, "Which meant I had to actually go through the whole six hour ordeal instead of cutting it off after the first fifteen minutes." She took a big bite out of the toast.
"...Can I see it?" Richard asked.
"Left it." She said dismissively. "It's not much to look at, anyway." Well, it was actually slightly darker than the vantablack paint, and probably could be mixed into a paint compound to create an even darker coloring, but that just has to go on the list of experiments. "You've seen vantablack, it's basically just that but in powder form." She could barely discern the difference between the two, and that was with magically augmented vision. Once you've seen one incredibly dark paint, you've seen them all.
Alfred finally dragged Bruce from typing out his report on the night's events and sat him in front of them, the man obligingly took his own bowl of soup, twice the size as the other two. Tanya smiled. Good, he was eating. How that man managed to maintain the same muscles she did in her first life while being so resistant to taking care of himself was beyond her. Being X could learn a thing or two from Alfred about miracles.
"So what did Commissioner Gordon want?" Tanya asked, just to keep conversation.
"Some odd cases." Bruce explained between spoonfuls of soup. "There's a new metahuman in Gotham. They're some kind of fluid entity, leaving behind traces of clay." Uh oh… "The exact makeup of the clay is hard to discern, as it's so thoroughly contaminated with local materials, particularly sewage, but one thing stands out: a type of pozzolana that's only found in one place: Mediterranean volcanic islands. Like Themyscira."
"It looks like that clay of life that was stolen has finally resurfaced." Tanya said sadly. "The truly horrible thing is that it's entirely possible that this entity could just be the clay literally getting up by itself and wandering off."
"Unlikely." Bruce said, "The crimes aren't random enough for that. Someone's guiding this thing to do something specific. Unfortunately, whatever that thing is, it's not something obvious, or else Jim wouldn't have come to me with it. I took some evidence from the crime scenes, but I'll need hours to process them, search the databases for additional connections… It's going to be a busy morning."
"Or you could leave it for after you've had a proper rest." Alfred suggested instead.
"There is a parent-teacher conference today." Richard reminded him.
Bruce winced. "On a Saturday?"
"You're the one who scheduled it that way." Tanya pointed out, "Gotham Academy's very accommodating, but there are limits. You have to actually go if you don't want Margie to get one up on you."
At the mention of the odious woman who somehow manages to get under the billionaire's skin despite being a middle-aged housewife whose only scrap of power is being on the board of the parent-teacher association, Bruce scowled. "Tanya-" He began.
"You've skipped sleep the last three days in a row, Daddy." Tanya said immediately, using the affectionate title to defray his annoyance. "Alfred threatened my ice cream." She added, shrugging. "Nothing I can do." With the matter settled, she turned to Richard. "Who's 'she'?"
The boy was clearly aching to tell the story. "Okay, so you know how last month one of our caches got hacked and looted?" He asked rhetorically. "Apparently, some girl made her own Batman outfit with our stuff and has started copying us! Calls herself Batgirl."
Hmmm. "She beat you up?" Tanya asked. From Richard's immediate blush, she hit the nail on the head.
"She surprised me!" He stammered, "Next time, I'll kick her butt!"
"Next time, call me instead of engaging her yourself." Bruce corrected, "There's quite a bit that she has that we don't want to fall into the wrong hands."
"It is in the wrong hands!" Richard insisted. Bruce grunted a dismissal of the statement.
"I'll help you track her down." Tanya promised, "Tomorrow night. But first, finish your soup."Gotham Academy is a private school, K-12, feeding directly into Gotham University. In practice, there's separate buildings for elementary, middle, and high schools, but there is a central campus where the dorms for the boarding students, the sports stadium, and the administration is based.
As an eleven year old in the middle of the winter, Richard would ordinarily be in the sixth grade. However, one of the academic benchmarks that Bruce demanded to allow him to be Robin was to be one grade ahead of his age level, so he was currently in seventh. The boy managed the feat of jumping ahead startlingly quickly, quite demonstrative of how motivated he was.
The meeting was held on a weekend, because one of the perks of being a private school is that the parents are paying customers instead of taxpayers, and that tilted things more towards accommodation than the public school system. Then again, public school administrators also have less ability to eject problematic students… which was more influential?
Tanya contemplated this as she idly grinded a pastry-making minigame. She finally caught that damn fish. Four random patches of water? Bullshit. After finishing a round and getting the last pastry she needed, she glanced over to the classroom where Bruce was speaking to one of Richard's teachers. Which one? Heck if she knew.
…If everything goes on schedule, she can make it to the meeting. Or she could do something about the buzzing feeling of energy, like she had over imbibed on coffee, and her game just wasn't helping like it should.
While it was a weekend, Bruce was not the only parent that was too busy for a weekday meeting with the teachers. So the middle school's halls had a few people in it. Richard, seeing her fidget, spoke up: "Oh no. Tanya? Do not. No. Stay put." He said, but there was a resigned quality to his voice.
Egged on by the siren call of being told not to do something, Tanya decided that it was a good time to have a nice public bit of mischief to further reinforce her cover. "You're it." She said, poking Richard. "Catch me if you can!" She shouted, bolting down the reasonably clear hall.
Surprisingly, one of the older boys, well built, went for a textbook football tackle. Unfortunately, 'textbook' meant he was already a little off-target, she was much shorter than he was probably used to. She went for a baseball slide, ducking underneath the bulk of the teenager who probably played football. Using a nearby bench as an anchor, she pulled herself back up smoothly, reflexively leaping into the air and spinning. Once back on the ground, she oriented herself and bolted down another hallway far faster than anyone who didn't know she was a figure skater would expect.
This was fun! Tanya cackled as she ran down the halls. "No running in the halls!" Echoed an adult who decided to park his own impressive girth in her way.
"Fight with spirit!" Tanya said in Japanese, comparing their confrontation with a sumo match. Assessing his stance, she leapt up and let the man absorb the full force of her impact. He staggered, but was able to immediately grab her fur coat. It was all for naught, because she had already slipped out and used the opportunity the stop provided to slip into a different hallway. She needed to shed a layer to prevent overheating from this exertion anyway.
Every other hallway, an adult or older teenager decided to attempt to stop her, but they were increasingly distracted by the other children who were inspired by her actions and started running around themselves.
After enough turns that she had genuinely lost track of where she was going, a set of powerful arms shot out and plucked her mid-stride. "Hi Daddy!" Tanya said, grinning widely.
It always impressed Tanya just how good Bruce was at acting; he was playing the perfect exasperated parent while including an undercurrent of 'trying not to smile'. "What, pray tell, caused this little ruckus?" He asked, with an extremely unamused Headmaster behind him.
"Felt like running." She said simply, taking deep breaths. Even with the energy of a child, running at full tilt for that long took it out of her.
Bruce looked amusedly at the Headmaster. "What was that about Tanya leaving homeschooling?" He asked.
"I maintain that she would benefit." The older man said. "She'd learn that such things would be unacceptable, for one."
"Uh huh." Bruce said, unimpressed. "Tanya, right triangle. A is five, B is seven. C?"
Tanya thought about the problem. 25 + 49, square root of 74…"Eight and a half, eight point six?"
"Why did the American Revolution happen?" Bruce added.
"Taxes." Tanya stated confidently.
Bruce offered the floor to the Headmaster. "How do cells make more of themselves?" He asked.
"Mitosis." Tanya said immediately.
"Which is?" The Headmaster continued, not accepting a potentially memorized response.
"They grow big, make a second core, line up everything, then fwoop!" Tanya said, miming two cells splitting apart. Single-word vocabulary was one thing, but saying things in a childish manner both maintained her cover and also demonstrated that she actually understood the topic in question.
"I told you she was further ahead than Dick was, Mr. Hammer." Bruce said, "She's just… impulsive. Easily distracted. Because she's five."
"Hm. Quite." Hammer the Headmaster (who Tanya just remembered was nicknamed 'Hammerhead' by the students) said. "Well, while I could ask you to stay for one last meeting with young Richard's math teacher…" He glanced to the side, where Richard was walking up with Tanya's fur coat in his hands. "...I think I'd much rather all of you leave. Now."
Minutes later, in the limo, Bruce sighed. "I can already see Margie's smug article in the PTA newsletter…" He said, seeming more bothered by that than he should.
"I did get us out of there early." Tanya pointed out. "You could have just let me stay at the manor, you know."
"The Headmaster insisted on meeting you." Bruce countered, "Still, despite it being more public than I wanted, good job on stopping that cold. Homeschooling isn't an enshrined right in this state, and Collingwood's soft power could make things difficult." Hammer's first name was Collingwood?
"...Can we go to Bat Burger?" Richard asked. Bat Burger was a Batman-themed fast food restaurant that opened two months ago when a local well-liked fast food franchise was ruined by an encounter with the Condiment King, losing their franchise license. Local support allowed them to rebuild and rebrand, to much rejoicing.
"Fried Batarangs!" Tanya said with excitement. Yes, they were just chicken nuggets. But the sauce!
Bruce stared at them. He was not a fan of Bat Burger. But as the two children stared back, begging with their eyes, he sighed. "Alfred?"
"Already pulling in, Master Bruce."
-----------------------
The meeting to evaluate the properties and possible uses of powdered midnight with a very put out John Constantine didn't take that long; after three hours they had figured out how to incorporate it as a substitute for environmental conditions and had brainstormed enough alternate uses that can be explored at their leisure during business days.
Most notably, a way to turn the powder into a paintable pigment was developed, and John magically coated his obsidian mirror with it after removing the previous carbon black paint. It was somehow even darker than the vantablack.
Afterwards, Tanya had to bid her employees (and John) goodbye, as she teleported back to the Batcave. Being openly known as a practitioner of strength was so useful… Now, to review the data from last night.
Fortunately, data storage technology is just barely advanced enough for a flash drive to store a whole night's worth of video from the tiny camera affixed to Robin's mask. It was a measure Tanya proposed for evidence gathering purposes, and it had already proven useful.
"...It's Barbie." Tanya said immediately after reviewing the footage.
Batman hummed. "Yes, Miss Gordon is my top suspect." After a pause, he added, in a tone that made it clear he was just playing Devil's advocate: "It could just be a coincidence, though."
"I suppose there could be another athletic brunette with-" Robin put his hand over her mouth as Tanya continued her description, using hand gestures to represent body parts as she recited the girl's exact measurements as the computer program outlined from the compiled data. Eventually, Robin removed the hand. "-with the combat and athletic skills to hand Robin his own butt on a silver platter." After a moment, she added: "She also has enough computer skills that it's plausible that she broke into the cache on her own." Barbie had programming awards. Tanya vaguely recalled winning similar awards, lifetimes ago, but she had long forgotten those skills.
"Stranger things have happened." Selina said, clearly amused. She didn't tend to attend these meetings much, but she always dressed up in her catsuit when she did.
"Couldn't be that hard to confirm." Tanya said, "I'll go to her house and check for Bat gadgetry." Or signs of an outside safehouse, maybe read her diary…
"After you finish your schedule." Batman insisted in his usual hypocritical manner. For him, Batman's work was the highest priority. For them, training, practice, and education was. Which wasn't fair, but it was also the right and proper way of things between parent and child.
Selina spoke up, casually examining her nails. "You haven't done your workout, then it'll be dinner, then your piano practice."
Tanya sighed and muttered a rhyme: "Strength is not free, train with a gi." This magically shifted her clothes into a martial arts gi. "I had to deal with Constantine today, I'm in the mood for combat training for my workout." While it wasn't as potent as her full devil form, she had more developed muscles in her teenage form, and could channel more magic into reinforcement and reflex enhancement wordlessly than she could as a child. More importantly, she might at some point have to fight in this form, so it was smart to do the training in this form.
The same mystical process that prevents her from needing to eat for each body she has (and suspends those needs when in devil form) also made exercise translate between them as long as she exercised at an intensity appropriate to the body she was using. She sometimes wondered how her first body was impacted… but still couldn't muster up the nerve to actually shift back into it to check.
"Alright." Batman said, removing his cloak, gauntlets, and utility belt as he walked (which provoked a catcall from Selina) to the sparring ring, before taking a combat stance of his own, broken up only by him miming a cigarette pull. "Come on, luv." He said, in a very accurate John Constantine impression. "Let's have a scrap." He said, flicking the pretend cigarette away.
He only barely dodged Tanya's fist to his face, a thin coating of magic cushioning her punches. The battle was on.
-----------------------
Barbie lived in one of the few places in the city that had actual houses. Commissioner Gordon may have a lot of problems in his job from the general state of corruption he has to clean up, but at least his efforts were rewarded with a sizable wage.
She had to hide her materials from someone who was a highly trained detective, so that limited her options. She would need to keep them in places that Jim wouldn't even try to search, as there was little hope of him overlooking something if he searched a closet on the hunt for an old eight track player or bowling ball or whatever.
Which is why Rhine's first place to search is the girl's bedroom, probably concealed behind something that would disincentivize Jim from searching an area thoroughly. Unfortunately, Barbie appeared to still be there, working… on refilling Batgirl's utility belt. Convenient. They knew coming just before sunset was a good idea.
"Preparing for the end of day? What will old Jim Gordon say?" Rhine said warningly, slipping through the crack in the window in shadow form before turning solid, crouched on Barbie's bedpost like a gargoyle.
Barbie, to her credit, grabbed one of the stolen batarangs she had piled next to her and threw it in her direction, precisely in the right way to hit them center mass. A distraction instead of something dangerous, but that was something of the idea when using batarangs. Batman would approve.
"Naughty, Naughty, little girl. That's not a toy that you've just hurled." Rhine said chidingly, catching it with ease. Reflex acceleration was as easy as breathing in this form, activated the instant her senses registered a potentially hostile action from her.
"Who are you?" Barbie said, clearly terrified but putting on a brave front. "And what's with the rhyming?"
Rhine slumped their shoulders, as they had no mouth to frown. "I know my fame is not that great, but surely a big fan would know my state?" With a flick of the wrist, the batarang went into its compressed form, and they stashed it in a pool of darkness that flickered into existence on their left wing. "I am known as Rhine, agent of Batman, some of the time."
Barbie calmed, but was still wary. "...Better question: What are you? How did you find me?"
"This body is nothing but my naked soul, and a compass is simple, your hair a pole." Rhine did make a tracking spell ahead of time to cover for them just recognizing her, using a hair taken from a brush that was in the bathroom for the room designated for her use in the manor. They brandished it, an actual compass needle bereft of its normal container with a brown hair visibly wrapped around it. Robin was very embarrassed that he didn't snatch a hair during their fight.
"Naked is right…" Barbie muttered, eyes drifting before looking more at Rhine's wings. "So what now?"
"A meeting is needed, for how you'll be treated." Rhine replied, "Can't allow you to steal our brand, reflects badly on us, this cannot stand."
Barbie's face twisted in confusion. "Wait, you're mad because of… branding?"
"Ditch the cowl or join our prowl." Rhine said simply, "Batman decides, between those sides." They extended a hand. "Meet my master, answer faster."
"...I suppose I don't have much of a choice." Barbie said, resigned. "My dad's staying late at work, let me set my decoy."
Rhine focused their energies. "First you must dress, Batman you'll impress." A ring of magic appeared above Barbie and went down, replacing her clothing with the Batgirl costume that was on the bed, leaving the other clothes to deposit themselves into her laundry hamper. Incidentally, the materials she had yet to load into the utility belt also teleported into place. "Then the supplies, reclaimed with no lies." Every single bat-item that wasn't on Batgirl's person vanished into wherever items go when she puts them away. Professor Blood said it was an innate power of demons and other spiritual beings to store things in a personal dimension within their soul, and demon magic can emulate this property. "Leave here a shade, to provide a facade." Mispronouncing words that were close weakened her rhyme magic, but she doesn't need something like this to be at full power. A pool of darkness created an admittedly dead-looking facsimile of Barbie in the bed, properly shaped and everything.
Batgirl turned off the light; the weakened spell didn't do supplementary actions like that, and crept out of the window. Rhine turned to shadow, flowed through the window, and solidified, picking up Batgirl with magic and flying towards the meeting. "Is this how Batman gets around so fast?" She asked, a sense of awe creeping into her voice.
"Too obvious for him, his methods are dim." Wait, that made it sound like they thought Batman's methods were stupid. "Many are they are, depending near or far." They elaborated.
"...You're really committed to the rhyming thing, huh?" Batgirl commented.
"It is a devil's compulsion, despite the revulsion." They actually didn't mind rhymes and puns, but they disliked the limitations it imposed on principle.
"...Oh." Batgirl said, a pitying tone in her voice. "I'll stop talking about it." After a moment she asked: "Does it still happen with sign language?"
Rhine immediately signed: "Absolutely yes," Their hand stilled, trembled, then immediately signed at a blistering pace, the pause being no longer than a single second: "which causes much stress."
"...How did I understand that?" Batgirl asked. "I can barely see your hand."
"The rhymes are tragic, but they're also magic." Rhine said drolly. It was the pseudo-telepathic ability that lets both demons and angels communicate with all mortal languages. It also meant that everyone they flipped off could automatically understand the 'Fuck you, God too' that was represented by the exact upward angle they held their middle finger. Which the rhyming compulsion forced them to maintain. There were upsides to being a demon, after all.
-----------------------
It took only five minutes, as the devil flies, to reach Union Station. Specifically, right behind the gigantic clock that was at the top of the building. Batman had been slowly converting the place into a backup to the Batcave, in case it became compromised, but there wasn't anything obvious here yet, just a space that had floors but nothing else. Once he finished getting the secret infrastructure, electrical lines, plumbing, etc., they'll put in computer systems and such.
There were, however, several dozen bats here at this time of day, about half an hour before the sun sets. "Why here?" Batgirl asked in a whisper, looking around.
"Bats shelter in places people don't go." Batman replied simply. "We won't be disturbed here." He was crouched on a box, only his cowl and cape visible. Rhine transformed into darkness slipped into his shadow dramatically.
Batgirl took a moment to digest that blunt statement. "Okay." She said, smiling. "I halfway expected you to start rhyming, too." Batman grunted, the disapproval in his tone reminding Batgirl that he was evaluating her. "Uh… So I'm Batgirl." She said, sticking her hand out for a handshake.
"Barbara Gordon, daughter of Police Commissioner Jim Gordon. Age sixteen." Batman rattled off clinically, causing the girl to wince. "Black belt in two styles, accolades in gymnastics and programming. Trained in the use of the tonfa. Awarded seven bounties from the Waynetech security vulnerability bounty program." Huh. Rhine didn't know about some of those. "Attends Otisburg high school as a junior, on track to graduate this year. Ex-cheerleader captain. Expected to receive a full ride scholarship to Gotham University, computer science and criminology double-major anticipated."
Batgirl seemed thoroughly intimidated at Batman's list, before blushing at the last one. "Only for one semester...the coach begged Dad when Wendy broke her leg." She murmured, looking away. "Everyone else was too scared of her to take the captain slot."
"I know." Batman said ominously. "You have an excellent life ahead of you, Miss Gordon." He continued, still acting like a gargoyle. "You have much to lose, meting out beatings to the criminal element. Have you ever considered what impact your vigilante actions would have on Commissioner Gordon's reputation? His integrity?"
The girl paled, not prepared for this line of argumentation. "What? This city is falling apart. You can't be everywhere, I can help."
"This job is dangerous." Batman said gravely.
"You let a kid help you." Batgirl said, insulted. "What does he have that I don't? I kicked his butt."
"Conviction." Batman replied, "Specialized training. Rhine's magical support."
"I'd be way more effective than he is." Batgirl argued, "What is he, ten?"
Batman stared her down. "Six hours." He said suddenly, glancing at the sunset. This time of year, the sun sets at 6PM.
"...Six hours of what?" Batgirl asked.
"Rhine will supervise you for the next six hours." Batman elaborated, "Do as you will in that time. I have a case to pursue."
"Yeah, the Clay burglaries." Batgirl said, because of course she knew about the case Jim passed onto Batman. "I have a tap in the GCPD database, and there's a fresh scene I was going to check out."
"I already know about it." Batman said curtly. "Rhine, take her back to her home base. Do not assist her except if she's in danger. Put her to bed at midnight, then do so yourself."
"The beginning of your test, your home is where we start our quest." Dramatically, Rhine enveloped Batgirl with magic and teleported back to her house. "I will follow out of your gaze, proceed with your normal ways." They went into the girl's shadow and focused on keeping an eye out for danger.
"Well, first we go to the shed for my bike." Batgirl muttered as she unlocked the fence gate at the side of her house. It took about two minutes for her to run her checks on the motorcycle and walk it outside, eventually turning the thing on and driving off.
Let's hope this would be more interesting than following Robin, at least.
-----------------------
Batgirl's methods were, surprisingly, even more tech-focused than Batman's. She had a tap on the GCPD database, as she mentioned, but also at the local 911 call center, and had programmed a computer to automatically search for locations on Lexicon and, after determining which ones were within her response radius, notified her about incidents.
This was on top of her working on the Clay case. Batgirl had arrived at the latest crime scene right on time to see Batman leaving it, having already gathered evidence, collected samples, etcetera. Grumbling at losing the informal race, she proceeded to follow normal police procedure for gathering evidence, logging it just as the private companies who do such a thing would. Rhine knew of these procedures because Batman does the same thing.
This particular burglary was one of the strangest yet: it was a specialty clothing store, working with elaborate dresses that aren't really fashionable in mainstream society. Rhine's child body has a very cute black dress from here, gifted by Selina. Went well with her pale-as-death complexion.
"Stolen porcelain, expensive furniture, assorted costumes, jewelry, candles, and now… dresses." Batgirl murmured as she stared at the crime scene. "It doesn't make sense. What's the connection?"
Rhine actually had a rough idea. Unlike Batgirl, they already knew about the Clay of Life, and it was clearly someone who managed to create a golem-like servant out of it, managing to control it sloppily to steal things they want. Not a career criminal, with access to fences and money laundering, but someone who is new to theft and how to avoid getting caught. An experienced criminal would steal money or things that can be quickly turned into money, and then buy such distinctive items with the stolen money.
The question was in the specifics: It was clearly someone who had a taste for seeming refined, given the fact that the stolen goods were luxuries. That didn't exactly narrow it down much. But the dresses narrowed it down a little; there was a girl involved, although the dresses on display were on the large side with the design intended to be adjusted to the customer. So the size didn't necessarily mean anything.
Nevertheless, Rhine merely observed, assessing Batgirl's methods and noting where she required further education. Case studies on metahuman psychology as it relates to criminology seem to be at the top of that list.
She did, however, have three more minor cases she was documenting, two domestic violence cases and one drug dealer. Once her casework was finished, with no ability to do anything further, Batgirl moved on to what she started with; patrolling and stopping muggings and other minor crimes.
Midnight approached, and there was the sound of breaking glass. Batgirl maneuvered herself to a good vantage and cursed. It was a robbery of a gas station, with four burly men, two of which had guns. The robbers were, at a glance, associated with the Carnival, a street gang of teenagers that look up to the Joker's infamy and use his imagery to terrorize the populace. Batman had noted that the Joker seems to deliberately ignore them, which he suspected was setting up some kind of long con. "...I can't take that many." Batgirl admitted to herself. "Take down one gun and the other'll shoot me."
"Wise to admit, few would submit." Rhine commented, causing Batgirl to almost scream, but she slapped her hands over her own mouth.
"You're still here?" She asked, surprised.
"Stay here where it's safe, I know it will chafe." Rhine warned, "Soon is our check-in, I'll be just a second." It took less than a second to move to the entrance to the gas station, and with a thought both firearms floated out of their hands, suddenly coated in a frictionless field of energy while also locking the trigger in place. Their wings turned into flame, drawing the attention of everyone.
"What the?" The lead ganger, who was the one allowed to wear purple, said.
"It's Batman's demon!" Another shouted, terrified. Ah, their reputation precedes them.
"Look who's in town? A bundle of clowns. Wrapped up in fashion, you won't get to cash in." Two rhymes allowed a large amount of magical power to be unleashed, the clothes of the gangers turning into colorful straightjackets, including restraints on their legs. Rhine picked them up and took them outside. "This store's in disarray, let's make some headway." The overturned shelving righted itself and the shopping cart they brought to carry the snacks and sodas they were stealing along with the money back to where they belong. Only the largest and most inconvenient messes were reversed, however: it wouldn't do to clean the crime scene completely.
The cashier, a young red-haired man, was too busy praying to do anything productive, clutching a tiny crucifix, so Rhine just left. Shortly thereafter, a GCPD car showed up, a surprisingly short response time. Must have gotten an alarm off before Batgirl noticed the robbery.
The cop was one that Rhine knew the name of: Renee Montoya. A woman of firm convictions, one of Jim's most reliable beat cops. She was expected to be promoted to Detective soon, after she finished the necessary education on the side. "Oh great, where's Batman?"
"I was on a task, when intervention was asked." Rhine replied, "These thugs sought to rob the store and the swab."
Montoya sighed, "Ugh. Okay. Steve? Book em." She said to her partner, a much larger man whose exit from the squad car caused it to visibly rock in place. "You can leave, I'll confirm everything with the cashier, I don't have enough caffeine to take yours."
Rhine bowed and withdrew, going back to Batgirl. "Our work is done, you've done a ton. I must report back, to speak of your knack."
Batgirl looked nervous, but nodded. "...Okay, yeah. I'll call it a night here." They went back on her motorcycle, and once she was back in her room, she changed out of the Batsuit, and Rhine put it away in their shadow. "...How did I do?"
"Your skillset has gaps, too many? Perhaps." Rhine replied. Barbie winced. "But Robin was worse, if you'll pardon my verse." She looked hopeful at the admission. "Batman's the judge, there will be no grudge."
"I think I'm beginning to get used to you…" Barbie mused. "So, Batman doesn't hate me, so you think he'll be fair? What do you think will happen?"
Hm, how to put this? "You need training for patrols, he'll want some control." They waved vaguely towards the window. "If you atone what you stole, you'll get resources and goals. Obey and comply, do not work on the sly."
Barbie frowned. "If I don't?"
"He'll bother your father." Rhine said bluntly.
She opened her mouth to retort, then paused. "...I don't have any response to that." She admitted.
"Just wait for us now, for instructions on how."