random_cantina | (no subject)

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She did not expect to find herself in a cafe. She'd been chasing down a criminal, saw him duck into an alley and through a door, and followed him in. Wherever it had lead, it certainly shouldn't have been someplace like this.

And yet, she sensed that she wasn't really in any kind of danger. She was good at scoping places out, looking for threats, and she just didn't see that that. Slowly, she let her crossbow drop and hooked it to her belt.

"...Second time this kind of thing has happened. Just plain strange," she muttered.

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Brenda frowned. "He passed the mantle on himself where I am now. Charged his kids and wards to keep the legacy alive."

"Dad... never really had a chance to pass it on. He stayed Batman solidly for more than twenty years, and then went into semi-retirement. He finally gave it up when Mom died. And less than a year later... he went into action one last time."

"Here he watched from the Cave and played Oracle. In another I know he kept going till he fell over, then passed the mantle on to the kid who stole the suit... who turned out to be his son."

Helena scowled at the second description. "Must have been some alternate universe."

Brenda shrugged. "He and the boy didn't even know who they were to each other. I've heard of another reality where he retired soon after he married and then passed the mantle on to a son who was born to himself and his wife. The story's different in each place, it seems."

She let her anger drain out. "So I'm learning. Uncle Bruce's--er, the Earth-1 Batman's--story is pretty close to Dad's. It just kicked off twenty years later."

"Closer to what seems to be the mainstream." She sipped coffee, slipping into data collecting and analytical mode as one part of her mind noted that if felt wrong to just let the Bat die. Batman wasn't the person in the suit, Batman was the legend.

-Probably why several Bats have been women, but still have still gone by 'Batman',- she mused.

The ideals Bruce Wayne had passed on to his daughter and ward still lived on. What you dressed them up in didn't really matter. Then again, hers wasn't a Gotham that needed a bat to scare criminals into behavior. Hope, rather than fear, was the word of the day and night.

"Yeah, I think so," she said, taking a few more bites of her food.

Brenda contemplated her coffee in silence for a moment, her mind rapidly going over their conversation thus far.

Then she looked up. "Your Superman has no descendants?"

She knew what Helena had said about he and Lois not having children, but the Clark of her current reality had descendants who weren't he and Lois's.

"Karen--Power Girl--is Clark's cousin. She's carrying on her own traditions, coming not wanting to be in his shadow. But Superman was the first super-hero on my world. He was an inspiration to everyone who came after. In a way, we're all his descendants."

"So when they go that's it." She thinned her lips slightly, not liking the thought though she'd never met Cal or Kara el.

"He set the standard, that's for sure," Helena replied.

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