Barbara had plenty she could say about Bruce's mentoring skills, but at the very least, overruling someone's personal interests had never been one of his flaws. He had always been good at recognizing a person's talents. Dick's leadership, Tim's talent for detective work, and even her own technical skills back when she'd just been starting.
He could be a helicopter teacher more often than not, but even from the moment he took in Dick, he rarely tried to override what they were drawn toward. He would critique it and comment on it, but when it came to the less dangerous parts of the job, Bruce was fairly lenient.
Still, learning from someone inevitably meant picking up pieces of them along the way.
And well... you didn't spend years at Batman's feet without developing a healthy amount of paranoia.
So no words needed to be exchanged between the three of them,
Stephanie and Cassandra were already silently preparing to make a move.
How else were they supposed to take a remark like that? He had just stumbled onto the three of them and claimed he "knew how it was."
That couldn't really just be dumb luck, could it? That he had run into them and said exactly that, right on cue.
Unless...
Barbara remembered Bruce's theory about Jean Valjean's power, and, well, maybe it was not so crazy after all.
"Yeah, classes have been rough." She sent him a small smile as she fed him the line, while she signalled Cassandra and Stephanie to relax.
"It would've been a terrible kind of irony if they attacked because they thought he knew who they were, only for that attack to be the thing that gave them away.
With complete sincerity, Jean Valjean simply nodded. "I bet college must be rough."
Barbara wasn't as good at cold reading as Bruce, so a masterful liar might have slipped past her. Thankfully, they had someone even better than Bruce at reading body language sitting right there.
She shot Cassandra a glance, and the other girl gave her a small nod.
Safe...
Barbara held back a sigh of relief as Stephanie kept the conversation going.
She was going to have to add this to his already growing file in support of the luck theory. Jason's reports and the rumors had already made the damn thing a mile long.
Still, maybe she was overthinking it.
It could have just been a normal coincidence, right?
Jean chuckled. "Yeah, the Bowery is—"
A quartet of vans screamed across the park.
Several parkgoers shrieked as the vehicles tore over the grass. Doors flew open before the vans had even fully stopped, and armed men poured out with guns already in hand.
It wasn't the gunmen who worried her, though.
From the four vans stepped a few faces she recognized.
"Freeze! Don't move an inch if you don't want to be filled with lead!" a deep, mobster-like voice shouted from a puppet. The attempted intimidation would have landed a lot better without the shaky squeal of Arnold Wesker behind it. "Now we'll be nice and quick about this. Hand over your valuables and we'll be on our way."
The henchmen and four Arkham escapees began making the rounds, collecting wallets, watches, and jewelry from the park goers.
It was a strangely calm robbery, even with several dozen civilians currently being mugged. Gothamites, unfortunately, had a higher tolerance for this kind of thing, though it also helped that the escapees weren't exactly the city's most notorious threats.
The three in question were Condiment King, Crazy Quilt, and Kite Man. Frankly, all three were more of a nuisance than a real danger. They weren't harmless, but compared to someone like the Joker, they weren't the type to massacre a crowd.
The Ventriloquist, though...
Barbara grimaced as she took in the situation. A dozen men in suits stood out in broad daylight with tommy guns in hand. There wasn't a building in sight, no real cover to work with, plenty of hostages, and a villain unhinged enough to actually pull the trigger.
Not a great combination.
She could already see Cassandra and Stephanie tensing beside her, so Barbara set a hand on each of them. "Don't do anything stupid."
She had already sent out a communicator message. Someone from the family, or a League member, would be here within minutes.
"But—" Stephanie started.
"She's right, don't worry." Jean Valjean flashed them a smile.
Before Barbara could say anything, he pushed himself up from his seat and strode toward the four villains.
"Help him?" Cassandra whispered.
"Someone should be on their way soon, but if you can slip off and suit up, that works too. Ventriloquist is the coin toss here. We can't have him hurting the hostages, so play it by ear..."
The two nodded and could only watch as Jean crossed the park toward the villains without a care in the world
At the very least, she could get some intel out of this. From what Jason had told them, he had some sort of potions and a few magical summons. He must have some kind of plan. He wouldn't just walk up to them and—
"Hey!"
The four villains and their gunmen all turned to look at him.
Oh God. He really just walked right up to them.
"You're breaking the rules." He crossed his arms and stared them down. "If you don't want your asses kicked, return everyone's stuff and fuck off."
"Who the hell do you think you are, kid?" Scarface shouted.
"Jean Valjean. And about ten seconds away from kicking all your asses."
Barbara saw more than a few of the gunmen flinch when the name landed. Was he seriously planning to lean on his reputation alone?
"The stupid brat messing with my business?" the puppet snapped, practically shaking with rage. "Perfect timing. Scarface doesn't bow down to anyone. Fill him with lead, boys!"
"Er, boss, you sure about that...?" one of the gunmen asked nervously.
"Yeah... Goonion's pretty big. I don't wanna get blacklisted."
"My brother recommended me for a gig next week, so could we not..."
More mutters spread through the henchmen, the reluctance to attack Jean seeming to become the dominant opinion by the second.
Jean just looked smugly at The Ventriloquist.
"I don't pay you to backtalk. Shut up and kill him!" Barbara could see Wesker shaking the puppet furiously now.
"Do you even pay them at all?" Jean snorted, then smiled over at the henchmen. "I'll overlook this once if you guys beat up old puppet-crazy here."
Much to her surprise, there was an actual debate.
"Oh, for the love of God." Condiment King stomped forward and raised his sauce gun. "Cool off with some mustard—"
Right in his path, half-hidden in the grass, sat a baseball.
Barbara watched it happen almost in slow motion. Condiment King stepped on it, his foot shot out from under him, and he crashed onto his back with a yelp. The giant condiment tanks strapped to him slammed down a second later, hit something hard, and burst open. Sauce sprayed everywhere in a foul-smelling wave.
"AHHH, my eyes!"
A beam of multicolored light suddenly lanced across the clearing and hit Jean square in the face.
"Ha, you're under my control!"
Crazy Quilt came striding forward. For a second, she was actually worried Jean had gotten caught.
Jean blinked once.
Then he walked up and kicked Crazy Quilt in the balls.
Crazy Quilt made a strangled sound and stumbled backward with watering eyes. His boots hit the spreading lake of mustard and ketchup, and he lost his footing instantly. He toppled hard into the same slippery mess Condiment King was still flailing in, the two of them tangling together in a mess of limbs and sauce.
"Get off me!"
"You got mustard in my mask!"
Kite Man took one look at that disaster and ran away.
He jumped back, his kite rig snapping open as he took off to make a getaway.
Then thunder cracked across the open field.
Lightning came down in a blinding white bolt and hit Kite Man dead-on.
Barbara jerked at the sheer noise of it. The smell of ozone filled the air almost instantly. Kite Man gave a startled scream as electricity danced over the frame of his suit.
The gunmen stared.
So did Barbara.
Then one of the henchmen slowly raised both hands. "Yeah, okay, I'm definitely not fighting that guy."
How!?
It was a clear day. Was his luck that crazy?
"Did he die...?" Stephanie muttered.
Somehow, against all reason, Kite Man's smoking body drifted back down instead of dropping flat. He floated in a lazy arc and landed right in the giant pile of sauce, which had somehow turned into a prison. Between Crazy Quilt's costume and all that condiment sludge, the mess had become sticky enough to trap anyone unlucky enough to touch it
Kite Man hit the pile with a wet smack.
"AHHH, damn it, Mitch, why did you use hot sauce?!" he screamed.
Was that on purpose, leaving him alive… or just luck?
"Damn it all, die!" Scarface shouted as the puppet raised its own Tommy gun.
Click. Click. Click.
"...Huh." Scarface turned toward Wesker. "Wesker, did you forget to load it?!"
"Kick his ass," Jean said.
The rest of the henchmen glanced at each other, apparently reached the same conclusion, and turned the butts of their rifles on Wesker and the puppet. They surged forward in a messy wave, beating The Ventriloquist down.
"Everybody, my apologies!" Jean scooped up the bag of stolen goods and raised it high. "Please, take back your belongings. Know that the Union will never let this sort of thing happen to you all."
"AHHH!"
The henchmen had grabbed the Ventriloquist and hurled him straight into the growing prison pile of sauce and villains.
As if the whole scene still needed something extra, an ice cream truck pulled up to the edge of the park.
Jean threw his arms wide. "Who wants free ice cream!?"
"...Weird," Cassandra giggled.
Barbara couldn't really disagree.
Ugh... Bruce was going to be insufferably smug about this.
***
Comments and Thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Likes are like a drug to me and boost my creative juices.
I have advanced chapters on my Pa tre on/daisyberry if you wanna read ahead.