Post by Wachter on Jan 1, 2019 11:48:55 GMT
Cassie Cain Hates Spider-Man #1
Boy Meets Sword
Jackrabbit No More Part 1
My name is Ben and I'm absolutely sure you don't know the rest. I certainly don't. What you should know is that after the Green Arrow failed my city, it was time for someone to step up. Someone who wouldn't abandon it during its time of need. That someone was me. I was just a kid when I put on my faceplate with its floppy ears. Always assumed that I was some sort of mutant. That happens during puberty, right? Turns out, I'm not.
Does that matter?
Maybe.
I haven't saved the Star City. I'm not some hero to aspire to. I'm just a kid who understands the responsibility to use my power to help those in need. Yeah, a lot of times it's stopping minor accidents, helping little old ladies cross the street and carry groceries for mothers with three kids. I've gotten laughed at for it. Sometimes though, sometimes it's really cool.
I fought a living, breathing hydra. Not the one with a capital H. I'm talking about the Hercules kind. Cut off one snake head and two more try to swallow you whole. That was my moment from zero to hero. Worked side by side with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the D.E.O.. Earned myself the respect of my peers and some other things.
Not much has changed since then. I still help the old ladies, the mothers, save the occasional balloon and I still –
A bell signaled the end of school. Ben gripped his sling bag and was one of the first people out of the room, slipping through blocks of cliques without so much as a push. Scholarship boy by day, hero by night. Well, more like hero by late afternoon depending on his schedule. With his physical abilities, it'd be a joke if he was on any of the academy's sports teams. Technically, it would also be a violation of his agreement on the ethical use of his superpowers. Dunking? He could jump five stories. Track? He beat Captain America's records. A small part of him missed the photography club, the robotics lab, and working on the yearbook his freshmen year. There just weren't enough hours in the day.
By the time sun shined down on Ben's neck from the sky above and more than ahead of the crowd, he sidled along the edge of the building until he knew he'd reached a blind spot in the security system for Moira Queen's Academy for Tomorrow. Deep breath, slight bend of his knees, and a jump. A twist of his legs, feet pushing back to touch the surface behind him, propelling himself off the wall and suddenly Jackrabbit had escaped his six plus hours a day cage before anyone could guess he was gone.
Ten minutes to cross the city if he wanted to have some time to spare. Obviously, the roofs of Star City were the best route to take. Unfortunately, he did have to rein in some of his skill. Had to hide as a really, really, amazingly spectacular free runner. Hardcore parkour but not so much people would have to suspend their belief that a boy his size, his age would be capable of it. He scrambled up the nearest fire escape, bending and flipping with more style than the finesse of a gymnast, each movement seeming just over the line that would make people scream "Get down from there before you break your neck!"
Sneakers slapped against the roof when he reached the top and kept on running. He knew this route by heart now. His feet carried him to the ledge, a leap of faith and roll carried him farther and to a building slightly below. More running. Another jump, fingers clutched a pipe across from him. A few short pulls had him higher, climbing over the edge to the third. He followed his nose, instinct, and memory until finally reaching Tiny Tokyo almost at the edge of the Glades that he called home.
Here, he paused, perched on the edge of this last roof, looking this way and that across the alley below to see if anyone was watching. Ben slipped over the side, landing in a crouch that had his weight perfectly balanced between a hand and his two feet. So cool. What wasn't cool was the smell. Someone took a leak back here. The urge to wash his hands rose exponentially. It was for that reason he didn't bother to slip unnoticed to the street and use the one hand that did not touch the concrete to open the door to the apartment complex.
Four floors – all stairs, the elevator hadn't been fixed in years – later, Ben flattened himself against the wall as a group of people, many munching on leftover donuts, shuffled past him. They barely gave him a glance. Nice diversity to the group. One man was dressed in a suit worth more than his mother earned in a month, there was a nurse too tired to change out her scrubs, and many were not well off but not exactly poor either. The woman saying her goodbyes at the door waved at him and motioned for him to come inside where he promptly vanished into the public bathroom and washed his hands multiple times.
They didn't talk much as they gathered up the chairs, trash, and anything else that needed to get out of the way before he could set the room up the way it was meant to be. The woman, he never really asked her name given the purposes of these meetings, vanished behind a curtained doorway on the left only to reappear a few moments later with her purse. A final farewell and he was alone.
At least he was alone, laying out the mats, until a yawning young woman entered, clad in a green tanktop and pajama bottoms, hair somewhat frizzy but already tied up from an afternoon nap. She did a double take, pale features twisted in surprise. There were the prerequisite blinks of confusion before the corner of her lips turned up into the small hints of a smile.
"Did you run all the way here?"
"More or less."
"Why aren't you doing track or something for that fancy school of yours? It's free, wouldn't have to clean up after the AA meetings or sweep when class is done. Might even get another scholarship for it."
"The Chikara Dojo provides discipline, structure, and better morals than the future leaders of tomorrow where cheating is secretly approved of," Ben put on his most charming grin as he adjusted another mat. "Besides, hands down, you have the football coach beat. Don't think he could pull off that outfit quite like you can."
Colleen Wing, instructor of various martial arts to various underprivileged kids, scoffed and rolled her eyes in the way any woman who has heard a lame pickup line, especially one from a boy just under ten years her junior, could.
"He's bald. The braid would be the tricky part. Maybe we could make some ropes out of towels, tie it around his forehead, and just let it all hang out."
It was a long suffering look she gave Ben before leaving. It's okay, he understood it. Master and student. Their love could never be… outside of a Lifetime movie, major martial arts' epic, or manga. He'd have to be content at longingly gazing at her somewhat "I will strangle you with the next belt you earn," eyes.
When he was nearly finished setting things up, Wing returned in less relaxing yet still comfortable clothes. She didn't care much for wearing a gi and didn't expect it all that much from her students. That was fine. Ben found them a bit silly to be honest and the rare times he'd have to wear them for tournaments or something, he'd never enter. In the few months he'd been here, she never asked either. He got the feeling she knew he'd refuse. The other students on the other hand…
Ben tilted his head to the side as he straightened the last mat until it was perfect. It just wouldn't stay in place. A breeze whipped past his ear. Leg sweeping out behind him, he caught Wing's ankle and pulled. She landed on her hands, already pushing herself back up quicker than his lazy attempt to stand. There were just some people that you didn't attempt to con or lie to. A wooden blade stabbed at him. Ben twisted away, and it missed him in slow motion. His hand slapped out, smacking her shoulder, sending her a step back.
He mostly retreated, dodged every swing or kick of her own. This was about reading her movements, learning the capabilities, becoming better. His retaliations, counters, he didn't hold back when he found the openings – few and far between that they were – because he'd learned in the past she would not remotely go easy on him if he treated her with kiddie gloves. The bokken came for his abdomen. His body bent in a manner most humans were incapable of. The air of the swing tickled his nose from centimeters away. He could smell it.
His smile was wide as he righted himself. Until it wasn't.
Wing stabbed the bokken straight into the mat and yanked. His failure was agonizingly slow. She was off them. The mat was one of the corners. Her tug freed it, upsetting his unstable footing in a manner that he hadn't expected. From her crouch, her smile was wider. When the world sped back up, his mistake was just agonizing. The back of his head hurt as it made contact with a training dummy.
"Ow."
A two-handed swing from the sword made tears well up in the sides of his eyes. Too much pain to merit a second ow.
"There's no crying in baseball!"
"… what?"
"I mean. There's no fear in this dojo!"
Ben blinked past the not-quite-tears, staring at her in adamant confusion. "Okay. No fear."
"Really?" Wing brushed a stray bang from her forehead, a different kind of pain washing across her face. "Nothing? God, you're making me feel old. Am I old? Wait. Don't answer that. I don't want to know. Just, just tell me why you lost."
"Obviously, I wasn't aware of my surroundings."
"Not only that, you got complacent. You knew that mat was tricky, I saw you adjust it multiple times. You could have used it against me. Instead, you were cocky and overconfident. Showy. Just because you prepared the battlefield doesn't mean you live there. I mean literally live there… Because I do. It's my apartment. I had the time to set it up. To wait."
"And what would you have done had I put this mat in the middle?"
Her shoulders rose in a shrug. "Saved the lesson for another day. But yeah, put it in the middle and go get changed. The others should be here shortly."
The class passed by uneventfully. Wing ran them through the katas. He sparred a bit with the fellow students. Always disliked that bit. Nevertheless, it was good practice at appearing normal. He exercised the muscle control to hit someone just the right way when if he used the wrong amount, skulls would crack. Bones would break. This wasn't about learning how to fight – it helped a little. It was about learning how to fight others. Statistically speaking, most of the people he who ran into would be just like the other kids. Hell, chances were they'd be these kids parents, siblings, or uncles and aunts. They'd be these kids if not for Colleen Wing.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
The actual super criminals or giant monsters were few and far between. The more common threat was something tangible and had been on the rise since Arrow and Speedy abandoned the city. Gangs. Territory war. That sort of thing. Ben not-so-secretly wanted to fight more than that even though he understood at a basic level this was far more important than chasing down some crazy costumed freak with a gimmick. A small voice in the back of his head whispered that all he had to do was accept an offer and he could be a real superhero. He'd be accepted.
No.
This internal refusal was accented with another fall to his back. So lost in his thoughts and focusing on holding back, he hadn't actually been paying attention to the kid half his size who landed a kick to his sternum. This was his reality.
He bowed to the kid. Waited for class to be over. He cleaned up and checked the whiteboard next to the door for when the dojo would be rented out to a ballet class. The teacher, a Ms. Sally, sometimes let him join in, knowing all he did here.
Wing offered him some food. First, he turned it down. Upon further thought, he asked if he could take it with him.
The sun was on the edge of setting as he wandered through the Glades to the abandoned club. A few years ago, it was once the hottest part in Star City. Now… not so much. The reason was evident in the basement below. There was a door that could not be opened through conventional means though he was pretty confident his punch would do the trick. He glanced up to a corner, holding up the bag in his hand.
The door clicked open.
Inside, everything was decked out with a slightly green tint. The bunker once belonged to Green Arrow and as a testament to his irresponsibility, he'd left everything behind for one intelligent young woman to reason out a meaning behind the disappearance of Oliver Queen, the increase in the vigilante's brutality following the hospitalization of Thea Queen, and finally Arrow himself leaving. Wasn't that hard to track the trail back to the source, connect all the dots of the first sighting of an archer with Queen coming back from a shipwreck alive to the last sighting of both.
The little kid inside Ben always felt a little excited when he entered the bunker. Growing up in Star City, the Emerald Archer and Speedy had been his heroes. This was a dream, saving the city based in the same exact place they had fought for it. Bitterness settled in soon after when his gaze fell upon the naked mannequin sealed in a case next to a smaller one clad in red and yellow.
A chair spun like the Flash.
"Foooood!' The bag was snatched out of his hands. The thief groaned in a disappointment. "This isn't your mom's casserole."
"Thursday. Had martial arts."
"Oh god, your totally-knows-your-secret-but-says-nothing-about-it teacher made this? She can't cook. Here. Take it back. Just bring me back a pizza or something after your patrol."
… his costume didn't have pockets in the conventional sense. He couldn't pay for pizza. This information was kept to himself. She'd eat it when she got hungry enough.
Felicity Smoak was not the ally he needed nor the one he deserved. She did, however, come with the bunker and connected him to Watchtower with others his age who refused to bow down before SHIELD or the DEO. Plus, she was a great lady in the chair. Ben was tech savvy in a modern MacGyver sort of way. She was in an entirely different league when it came to computers… True, the satellites and networks she had tapped into already had the openings prerendered. That was still impressive and far more than he could do.
Her attention returned to her computers and he sat the food down on a table behind her. She was his age, a year or two older actually, and was on the route for MIT if she didn't screw up and get caught doing anything too criminal. Cute, a little – no Colleen Wing – yet he kept the relationship entirely professional. Bubbly blonds who rambled, no matter how geeky they were, just did not do it for him. Possibly why he had no issue stripping down to his boxers behind her.
The Jackrabbit costume had been designed with the colors of Star City, her former guardians, and all that represented in mind. Green and red. Brighter though. He didn't hide in the dark. Ben danced in the light. Since Felicity had joined his crusade and by proxy, he gained access to all of Green Arrow's abandoned toys, he'd made a few minor upgrades. Light armor had been commandeered from some of Speedy's original gear. Reinforcements to his arms and legs added some padding and bracing. Their gasmasks were reworked into his faceplate, making his breathing way easier and more comfortable (Felicity also added in a comm systems). His masterpiece though was all in the wrist. That was his crowning achievement.
Everyone knew their grapple arrows they used to zip across skyscrapers. The tensile strength in relation to the size and length of lines were unbelievable. Ben had to have it. What kid wouldn't want to swing around the city? Weeks of trial and error (also blood and sweat) until finally he had two wrist attachments that he could fire with the right amount of pressure to his palm.
"You dressed yet? Really don't want to turn around and see that treasure trail again."
"There's nowhere else to change."
"There's the bathroom."
"All the way in the back! This place was designed for two dudes. Where do you think they suited up? Right here!" Ben slipped his faceplate on, the black hair sown into the cowl hiding his natural color.
"Yeah, well, it's my hideout now. I have standards."
Ben looked at the trash bags piled up in the far corner where the smell already threatened to overwhelm his senses.
"I'll buy a curtain and hang it up. Happy?"
"I'm not unhappy. Stay safe out there."
Tonight was one of those nights where it was incredibly easy to stay safe. Felicity found next to no crime for him to bust up. They were things the SCPD were better equipped to handle. And they responded promptly most of the time. What that meant for Jackrabbit was that he did carry groceries up ten flights of stairs for an old lady who made him a sandwich. He jumped out the window just for the excitement of it and returned minutes later with the newspaper she forgot to get her husband.
He successfully apprehended a lost dog, returning the mongrel to little girl who held an empty leash in her hand. A fight nearly broke out for possession of the sandwich. Jackrabbit showed the mutt who was boss. Same could not be said of a cat that had fallen into a drain. Thankfully, his costume protected him from the worst of the scratches.
Where was a car chase when he needed it? Not that he needed it… Just, cats? He wasn't some shounen protagonist off on his first mission.
A zipline pulled him high up the side of a building and he scrambled the rest of the way over the side. Ben sat legs hanging off, back to a water tower, and ate the sandwich in boredom. If he lived in Gotham, he wagered all he had to do was take a step around a corner and he could find something exciting.
The letters on the side of Queen Consolidated flickered in the distance. Letters were an overstatement. Only the Q remained. The company had been bought out recently. Someone new was moving in and revamping the floundering business. It'd bring back some work to the city or rather his mom hoped that would be the net result. It's what she told people at the shelter who had found themselves out of jobs as more and more of their holdings shut down across Star City.
The greenery of the park sprawled out below him. He used to like going there when he was younger. Tonight, he'd go down there and try to see if he could find anyone who needed a warm place to stay and talk to them into visiting one of the nearby centers in Adam Heights. That was the plan.
It really was.
Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He was being watched. His excellent night vision picked out the sole figure in black and yellow standing in the center of an intersection, observing him. It was a woman. A girl maybe? Hard to tell with the dark hair cut incredibly short to the scalp. A scarf whipped around her in the wind, keeping some of the night chill at bay. Some sort of mask covered her lower face.
"Uh – "
"Still nothing."
"Check the corner of Winnick and Amell."
"I'm looking at a parked car."
There was no car. "That means I'm probably going to fight a ninja ghost. Or a ghost ninja. Wait, wouldn't a ghost be picked up on cameras like the movies? I'll get back to you on that."
"This is why you should let me – "
He tapped his ear, killing the comm, and fell to the sidewalk, his land graceful.
"You lost?"
No reaction. No comprehension. She – definitely a girl – gave no notice of him whatsoever. It was creepy. She was simply standing there. He turned his head just a bit, keeping her in sight, to look down the road. No cars turned this way. Same for those behind her. It was weird. There was something in the air that wasn't quite right. Infectious.
Floppy ears waving behind him, he tilted this way and that comically. "Do you wanna follow the rabbit? Don't know the way to Wonderland but I do know where to find the best subs this side of Avalon Park."
Her first blow – an open palm strike – smashed his faceplate. Ben staggered backwards, nearly tripping over his own feet, blood gushing from pieces of his goggles now embedded in his cheek. He turned his stumble into a flip onto the closest streetlight. The bottom half of his mask fell to the ground after he ripped it off. His one good eye was still protected behind the lens on his left side. She was quick. Not inhumanly quick. Just… quick.
There'd been zero tells. One moment she was standing there. The next, she would have knocked his lights out if he was normal. No inbetween. And here the girl was, back in her nonthreatening stance, watching him. A simplified design covered chest, a swirling yellow tail just above her stomach, wings outstretched, swiping down in matching stripes down her arms. Bird? Maybe? What was that at her waist?
Swords? Knives? No, the size meant daggers.
Jackrabbit bent his thumbs, felt the telltale clicks. The zipline shot out of his wrists, aiming for the hilts to disarm her with the smaller hooks he switched to designed exactly with that in mind. His foe simply turned sideways, letting the lines pass harmlessly by her. No. She didn't turn to the side. Her movement was the definition of minimal. She understood exactly how much she needed to change her stance down the last millimeter.
The lines retracted even as he leapt off to plant both feet where her head had been a second before. She had moved as expected. To where he expected. With ease, he spun in midair and felt the breath leave his lungs as her second blow predicted his prediction. Precognition? That was Ben's only thought as he tasted blood on his lips. Okay, he could work with that. She was fast but he was faster. Keep moving. All he needed to do was fight where she was, where she could be, and where she would be. He could do it.
Complete and utter lie. The girl was always a step ahead, always just barely out of his attacks, his feints, and the complete random nonsense he threw in to catch her off guard. By her sixth (incredibly painful) strike, he realized she had punched him in the same spot every, single time. His realization of that came from somewhere far off but it brought luck into his clutches.
Her scarf that had flapped back and forth stuck to his hand and with every intention in his body, he refused to let go. And when Ben decided to keep a grip on something, he kept a grip on it. Sometimes at the cost of property damage. Didn't usually factor into his Jackrabbit persona given that it was mostly about the fact he could jump high and run fast. What he did next didn't fit either after he pulled her towards him.
He timed his scream perfectly with the slice of her blade. It was as if they corresponded to each other. He barely registered that the edge glowed gold in a shimmering aura. His attention was on his trump card, his one hit kill (read: paralyze) move. The stinger that popped out of the bottom of his wrist and through his costume leaked residual venom from what remained. Ben wasn't aware pain could reach that level. He wasn't aware he had any nerves connected to the claws in the first place.
Self-preservation kept the second one sheathed. His mind blanked entirely.
They fought. They must have. His next memory was stabbing the broken piece of his stinger in her thigh and spin kicking her into the trees of Avalon Park. He was only aware of that much because the honking horn of a driver yelling at him to get out of the middle of the road brought him back to focus. He crawled, jumped, sometimes swung with his non-injured arm – well, the one that hadn't lost a weird bone or whatever it was – back through the city. Back to the Glades.
He left a trail. There was no preventing that. Blood didn't stop flowing on its own until there was nothing left to bleed. Ben was sure he'd been stabbed. He knew that the glowing dagger had cut him more than once. His costume hung in tatters around his body. Everything was black on his right side. The eye was useless.
There was the clatter of garbage cans. Correction, the loud thud of the giant bins for trash and recycling because even in the faraway land of no blood in his body, Ben accounted for the modern world. They just didn't make the same sound as the classics. He found himself laying there when a back-porch light turned on, illuminating a figure in the doorway holding a bat.
No crying in baseball… Ha. I get it now. League of Their Own. Colleen swung the sword like a bat instead of the way she normally does. How'd… how'd I… miss… One of mom's favorite's…
"Ben?" the figure in the light ask warily. "Oh god, Ben! May, come down here. It's Ben. He's, uh, he's…"
I'm … in garbage… Why'd I have to… remember… trash … this morning?
Boy Meets Sword
Jackrabbit No More Part 1
My name is Ben and I'm absolutely sure you don't know the rest. I certainly don't. What you should know is that after the Green Arrow failed my city, it was time for someone to step up. Someone who wouldn't abandon it during its time of need. That someone was me. I was just a kid when I put on my faceplate with its floppy ears. Always assumed that I was some sort of mutant. That happens during puberty, right? Turns out, I'm not.
Does that matter?
Maybe.
I haven't saved the Star City. I'm not some hero to aspire to. I'm just a kid who understands the responsibility to use my power to help those in need. Yeah, a lot of times it's stopping minor accidents, helping little old ladies cross the street and carry groceries for mothers with three kids. I've gotten laughed at for it. Sometimes though, sometimes it's really cool.
I fought a living, breathing hydra. Not the one with a capital H. I'm talking about the Hercules kind. Cut off one snake head and two more try to swallow you whole. That was my moment from zero to hero. Worked side by side with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the D.E.O.. Earned myself the respect of my peers and some other things.
Not much has changed since then. I still help the old ladies, the mothers, save the occasional balloon and I still –
A bell signaled the end of school. Ben gripped his sling bag and was one of the first people out of the room, slipping through blocks of cliques without so much as a push. Scholarship boy by day, hero by night. Well, more like hero by late afternoon depending on his schedule. With his physical abilities, it'd be a joke if he was on any of the academy's sports teams. Technically, it would also be a violation of his agreement on the ethical use of his superpowers. Dunking? He could jump five stories. Track? He beat Captain America's records. A small part of him missed the photography club, the robotics lab, and working on the yearbook his freshmen year. There just weren't enough hours in the day.
By the time sun shined down on Ben's neck from the sky above and more than ahead of the crowd, he sidled along the edge of the building until he knew he'd reached a blind spot in the security system for Moira Queen's Academy for Tomorrow. Deep breath, slight bend of his knees, and a jump. A twist of his legs, feet pushing back to touch the surface behind him, propelling himself off the wall and suddenly Jackrabbit had escaped his six plus hours a day cage before anyone could guess he was gone.
Ten minutes to cross the city if he wanted to have some time to spare. Obviously, the roofs of Star City were the best route to take. Unfortunately, he did have to rein in some of his skill. Had to hide as a really, really, amazingly spectacular free runner. Hardcore parkour but not so much people would have to suspend their belief that a boy his size, his age would be capable of it. He scrambled up the nearest fire escape, bending and flipping with more style than the finesse of a gymnast, each movement seeming just over the line that would make people scream "Get down from there before you break your neck!"
Sneakers slapped against the roof when he reached the top and kept on running. He knew this route by heart now. His feet carried him to the ledge, a leap of faith and roll carried him farther and to a building slightly below. More running. Another jump, fingers clutched a pipe across from him. A few short pulls had him higher, climbing over the edge to the third. He followed his nose, instinct, and memory until finally reaching Tiny Tokyo almost at the edge of the Glades that he called home.
Here, he paused, perched on the edge of this last roof, looking this way and that across the alley below to see if anyone was watching. Ben slipped over the side, landing in a crouch that had his weight perfectly balanced between a hand and his two feet. So cool. What wasn't cool was the smell. Someone took a leak back here. The urge to wash his hands rose exponentially. It was for that reason he didn't bother to slip unnoticed to the street and use the one hand that did not touch the concrete to open the door to the apartment complex.
Four floors – all stairs, the elevator hadn't been fixed in years – later, Ben flattened himself against the wall as a group of people, many munching on leftover donuts, shuffled past him. They barely gave him a glance. Nice diversity to the group. One man was dressed in a suit worth more than his mother earned in a month, there was a nurse too tired to change out her scrubs, and many were not well off but not exactly poor either. The woman saying her goodbyes at the door waved at him and motioned for him to come inside where he promptly vanished into the public bathroom and washed his hands multiple times.
They didn't talk much as they gathered up the chairs, trash, and anything else that needed to get out of the way before he could set the room up the way it was meant to be. The woman, he never really asked her name given the purposes of these meetings, vanished behind a curtained doorway on the left only to reappear a few moments later with her purse. A final farewell and he was alone.
At least he was alone, laying out the mats, until a yawning young woman entered, clad in a green tanktop and pajama bottoms, hair somewhat frizzy but already tied up from an afternoon nap. She did a double take, pale features twisted in surprise. There were the prerequisite blinks of confusion before the corner of her lips turned up into the small hints of a smile.
"Did you run all the way here?"
"More or less."
"Why aren't you doing track or something for that fancy school of yours? It's free, wouldn't have to clean up after the AA meetings or sweep when class is done. Might even get another scholarship for it."
"The Chikara Dojo provides discipline, structure, and better morals than the future leaders of tomorrow where cheating is secretly approved of," Ben put on his most charming grin as he adjusted another mat. "Besides, hands down, you have the football coach beat. Don't think he could pull off that outfit quite like you can."
Colleen Wing, instructor of various martial arts to various underprivileged kids, scoffed and rolled her eyes in the way any woman who has heard a lame pickup line, especially one from a boy just under ten years her junior, could.
"He's bald. The braid would be the tricky part. Maybe we could make some ropes out of towels, tie it around his forehead, and just let it all hang out."
It was a long suffering look she gave Ben before leaving. It's okay, he understood it. Master and student. Their love could never be… outside of a Lifetime movie, major martial arts' epic, or manga. He'd have to be content at longingly gazing at her somewhat "I will strangle you with the next belt you earn," eyes.
When he was nearly finished setting things up, Wing returned in less relaxing yet still comfortable clothes. She didn't care much for wearing a gi and didn't expect it all that much from her students. That was fine. Ben found them a bit silly to be honest and the rare times he'd have to wear them for tournaments or something, he'd never enter. In the few months he'd been here, she never asked either. He got the feeling she knew he'd refuse. The other students on the other hand…
Ben tilted his head to the side as he straightened the last mat until it was perfect. It just wouldn't stay in place. A breeze whipped past his ear. Leg sweeping out behind him, he caught Wing's ankle and pulled. She landed on her hands, already pushing herself back up quicker than his lazy attempt to stand. There were just some people that you didn't attempt to con or lie to. A wooden blade stabbed at him. Ben twisted away, and it missed him in slow motion. His hand slapped out, smacking her shoulder, sending her a step back.
He mostly retreated, dodged every swing or kick of her own. This was about reading her movements, learning the capabilities, becoming better. His retaliations, counters, he didn't hold back when he found the openings – few and far between that they were – because he'd learned in the past she would not remotely go easy on him if he treated her with kiddie gloves. The bokken came for his abdomen. His body bent in a manner most humans were incapable of. The air of the swing tickled his nose from centimeters away. He could smell it.
His smile was wide as he righted himself. Until it wasn't.
Wing stabbed the bokken straight into the mat and yanked. His failure was agonizingly slow. She was off them. The mat was one of the corners. Her tug freed it, upsetting his unstable footing in a manner that he hadn't expected. From her crouch, her smile was wider. When the world sped back up, his mistake was just agonizing. The back of his head hurt as it made contact with a training dummy.
"Ow."
A two-handed swing from the sword made tears well up in the sides of his eyes. Too much pain to merit a second ow.
"There's no crying in baseball!"
"… what?"
"I mean. There's no fear in this dojo!"
Ben blinked past the not-quite-tears, staring at her in adamant confusion. "Okay. No fear."
"Really?" Wing brushed a stray bang from her forehead, a different kind of pain washing across her face. "Nothing? God, you're making me feel old. Am I old? Wait. Don't answer that. I don't want to know. Just, just tell me why you lost."
"Obviously, I wasn't aware of my surroundings."
"Not only that, you got complacent. You knew that mat was tricky, I saw you adjust it multiple times. You could have used it against me. Instead, you were cocky and overconfident. Showy. Just because you prepared the battlefield doesn't mean you live there. I mean literally live there… Because I do. It's my apartment. I had the time to set it up. To wait."
"And what would you have done had I put this mat in the middle?"
Her shoulders rose in a shrug. "Saved the lesson for another day. But yeah, put it in the middle and go get changed. The others should be here shortly."
The class passed by uneventfully. Wing ran them through the katas. He sparred a bit with the fellow students. Always disliked that bit. Nevertheless, it was good practice at appearing normal. He exercised the muscle control to hit someone just the right way when if he used the wrong amount, skulls would crack. Bones would break. This wasn't about learning how to fight – it helped a little. It was about learning how to fight others. Statistically speaking, most of the people he who ran into would be just like the other kids. Hell, chances were they'd be these kids parents, siblings, or uncles and aunts. They'd be these kids if not for Colleen Wing.
Practice. Practice. Practice.
The actual super criminals or giant monsters were few and far between. The more common threat was something tangible and had been on the rise since Arrow and Speedy abandoned the city. Gangs. Territory war. That sort of thing. Ben not-so-secretly wanted to fight more than that even though he understood at a basic level this was far more important than chasing down some crazy costumed freak with a gimmick. A small voice in the back of his head whispered that all he had to do was accept an offer and he could be a real superhero. He'd be accepted.
No.
This internal refusal was accented with another fall to his back. So lost in his thoughts and focusing on holding back, he hadn't actually been paying attention to the kid half his size who landed a kick to his sternum. This was his reality.
He bowed to the kid. Waited for class to be over. He cleaned up and checked the whiteboard next to the door for when the dojo would be rented out to a ballet class. The teacher, a Ms. Sally, sometimes let him join in, knowing all he did here.
Wing offered him some food. First, he turned it down. Upon further thought, he asked if he could take it with him.
The sun was on the edge of setting as he wandered through the Glades to the abandoned club. A few years ago, it was once the hottest part in Star City. Now… not so much. The reason was evident in the basement below. There was a door that could not be opened through conventional means though he was pretty confident his punch would do the trick. He glanced up to a corner, holding up the bag in his hand.
The door clicked open.
Inside, everything was decked out with a slightly green tint. The bunker once belonged to Green Arrow and as a testament to his irresponsibility, he'd left everything behind for one intelligent young woman to reason out a meaning behind the disappearance of Oliver Queen, the increase in the vigilante's brutality following the hospitalization of Thea Queen, and finally Arrow himself leaving. Wasn't that hard to track the trail back to the source, connect all the dots of the first sighting of an archer with Queen coming back from a shipwreck alive to the last sighting of both.
The little kid inside Ben always felt a little excited when he entered the bunker. Growing up in Star City, the Emerald Archer and Speedy had been his heroes. This was a dream, saving the city based in the same exact place they had fought for it. Bitterness settled in soon after when his gaze fell upon the naked mannequin sealed in a case next to a smaller one clad in red and yellow.
A chair spun like the Flash.
"Foooood!' The bag was snatched out of his hands. The thief groaned in a disappointment. "This isn't your mom's casserole."
"Thursday. Had martial arts."
"Oh god, your totally-knows-your-secret-but-says-nothing-about-it teacher made this? She can't cook. Here. Take it back. Just bring me back a pizza or something after your patrol."
… his costume didn't have pockets in the conventional sense. He couldn't pay for pizza. This information was kept to himself. She'd eat it when she got hungry enough.
Felicity Smoak was not the ally he needed nor the one he deserved. She did, however, come with the bunker and connected him to Watchtower with others his age who refused to bow down before SHIELD or the DEO. Plus, she was a great lady in the chair. Ben was tech savvy in a modern MacGyver sort of way. She was in an entirely different league when it came to computers… True, the satellites and networks she had tapped into already had the openings prerendered. That was still impressive and far more than he could do.
Her attention returned to her computers and he sat the food down on a table behind her. She was his age, a year or two older actually, and was on the route for MIT if she didn't screw up and get caught doing anything too criminal. Cute, a little – no Colleen Wing – yet he kept the relationship entirely professional. Bubbly blonds who rambled, no matter how geeky they were, just did not do it for him. Possibly why he had no issue stripping down to his boxers behind her.
The Jackrabbit costume had been designed with the colors of Star City, her former guardians, and all that represented in mind. Green and red. Brighter though. He didn't hide in the dark. Ben danced in the light. Since Felicity had joined his crusade and by proxy, he gained access to all of Green Arrow's abandoned toys, he'd made a few minor upgrades. Light armor had been commandeered from some of Speedy's original gear. Reinforcements to his arms and legs added some padding and bracing. Their gasmasks were reworked into his faceplate, making his breathing way easier and more comfortable (Felicity also added in a comm systems). His masterpiece though was all in the wrist. That was his crowning achievement.
Everyone knew their grapple arrows they used to zip across skyscrapers. The tensile strength in relation to the size and length of lines were unbelievable. Ben had to have it. What kid wouldn't want to swing around the city? Weeks of trial and error (also blood and sweat) until finally he had two wrist attachments that he could fire with the right amount of pressure to his palm.
"You dressed yet? Really don't want to turn around and see that treasure trail again."
"There's nowhere else to change."
"There's the bathroom."
"All the way in the back! This place was designed for two dudes. Where do you think they suited up? Right here!" Ben slipped his faceplate on, the black hair sown into the cowl hiding his natural color.
"Yeah, well, it's my hideout now. I have standards."
Ben looked at the trash bags piled up in the far corner where the smell already threatened to overwhelm his senses.
"I'll buy a curtain and hang it up. Happy?"
"I'm not unhappy. Stay safe out there."
Tonight was one of those nights where it was incredibly easy to stay safe. Felicity found next to no crime for him to bust up. They were things the SCPD were better equipped to handle. And they responded promptly most of the time. What that meant for Jackrabbit was that he did carry groceries up ten flights of stairs for an old lady who made him a sandwich. He jumped out the window just for the excitement of it and returned minutes later with the newspaper she forgot to get her husband.
He successfully apprehended a lost dog, returning the mongrel to little girl who held an empty leash in her hand. A fight nearly broke out for possession of the sandwich. Jackrabbit showed the mutt who was boss. Same could not be said of a cat that had fallen into a drain. Thankfully, his costume protected him from the worst of the scratches.
Where was a car chase when he needed it? Not that he needed it… Just, cats? He wasn't some shounen protagonist off on his first mission.
A zipline pulled him high up the side of a building and he scrambled the rest of the way over the side. Ben sat legs hanging off, back to a water tower, and ate the sandwich in boredom. If he lived in Gotham, he wagered all he had to do was take a step around a corner and he could find something exciting.
The letters on the side of Queen Consolidated flickered in the distance. Letters were an overstatement. Only the Q remained. The company had been bought out recently. Someone new was moving in and revamping the floundering business. It'd bring back some work to the city or rather his mom hoped that would be the net result. It's what she told people at the shelter who had found themselves out of jobs as more and more of their holdings shut down across Star City.
The greenery of the park sprawled out below him. He used to like going there when he was younger. Tonight, he'd go down there and try to see if he could find anyone who needed a warm place to stay and talk to them into visiting one of the nearby centers in Adam Heights. That was the plan.
It really was.
Hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He was being watched. His excellent night vision picked out the sole figure in black and yellow standing in the center of an intersection, observing him. It was a woman. A girl maybe? Hard to tell with the dark hair cut incredibly short to the scalp. A scarf whipped around her in the wind, keeping some of the night chill at bay. Some sort of mask covered her lower face.
"Uh – "
"Still nothing."
"Check the corner of Winnick and Amell."
"I'm looking at a parked car."
There was no car. "That means I'm probably going to fight a ninja ghost. Or a ghost ninja. Wait, wouldn't a ghost be picked up on cameras like the movies? I'll get back to you on that."
"This is why you should let me – "
He tapped his ear, killing the comm, and fell to the sidewalk, his land graceful.
"You lost?"
No reaction. No comprehension. She – definitely a girl – gave no notice of him whatsoever. It was creepy. She was simply standing there. He turned his head just a bit, keeping her in sight, to look down the road. No cars turned this way. Same for those behind her. It was weird. There was something in the air that wasn't quite right. Infectious.
Floppy ears waving behind him, he tilted this way and that comically. "Do you wanna follow the rabbit? Don't know the way to Wonderland but I do know where to find the best subs this side of Avalon Park."
Her first blow – an open palm strike – smashed his faceplate. Ben staggered backwards, nearly tripping over his own feet, blood gushing from pieces of his goggles now embedded in his cheek. He turned his stumble into a flip onto the closest streetlight. The bottom half of his mask fell to the ground after he ripped it off. His one good eye was still protected behind the lens on his left side. She was quick. Not inhumanly quick. Just… quick.
There'd been zero tells. One moment she was standing there. The next, she would have knocked his lights out if he was normal. No inbetween. And here the girl was, back in her nonthreatening stance, watching him. A simplified design covered chest, a swirling yellow tail just above her stomach, wings outstretched, swiping down in matching stripes down her arms. Bird? Maybe? What was that at her waist?
Swords? Knives? No, the size meant daggers.
Jackrabbit bent his thumbs, felt the telltale clicks. The zipline shot out of his wrists, aiming for the hilts to disarm her with the smaller hooks he switched to designed exactly with that in mind. His foe simply turned sideways, letting the lines pass harmlessly by her. No. She didn't turn to the side. Her movement was the definition of minimal. She understood exactly how much she needed to change her stance down the last millimeter.
The lines retracted even as he leapt off to plant both feet where her head had been a second before. She had moved as expected. To where he expected. With ease, he spun in midair and felt the breath leave his lungs as her second blow predicted his prediction. Precognition? That was Ben's only thought as he tasted blood on his lips. Okay, he could work with that. She was fast but he was faster. Keep moving. All he needed to do was fight where she was, where she could be, and where she would be. He could do it.
Complete and utter lie. The girl was always a step ahead, always just barely out of his attacks, his feints, and the complete random nonsense he threw in to catch her off guard. By her sixth (incredibly painful) strike, he realized she had punched him in the same spot every, single time. His realization of that came from somewhere far off but it brought luck into his clutches.
Her scarf that had flapped back and forth stuck to his hand and with every intention in his body, he refused to let go. And when Ben decided to keep a grip on something, he kept a grip on it. Sometimes at the cost of property damage. Didn't usually factor into his Jackrabbit persona given that it was mostly about the fact he could jump high and run fast. What he did next didn't fit either after he pulled her towards him.
He timed his scream perfectly with the slice of her blade. It was as if they corresponded to each other. He barely registered that the edge glowed gold in a shimmering aura. His attention was on his trump card, his one hit kill (read: paralyze) move. The stinger that popped out of the bottom of his wrist and through his costume leaked residual venom from what remained. Ben wasn't aware pain could reach that level. He wasn't aware he had any nerves connected to the claws in the first place.
Self-preservation kept the second one sheathed. His mind blanked entirely.
They fought. They must have. His next memory was stabbing the broken piece of his stinger in her thigh and spin kicking her into the trees of Avalon Park. He was only aware of that much because the honking horn of a driver yelling at him to get out of the middle of the road brought him back to focus. He crawled, jumped, sometimes swung with his non-injured arm – well, the one that hadn't lost a weird bone or whatever it was – back through the city. Back to the Glades.
He left a trail. There was no preventing that. Blood didn't stop flowing on its own until there was nothing left to bleed. Ben was sure he'd been stabbed. He knew that the glowing dagger had cut him more than once. His costume hung in tatters around his body. Everything was black on his right side. The eye was useless.
There was the clatter of garbage cans. Correction, the loud thud of the giant bins for trash and recycling because even in the faraway land of no blood in his body, Ben accounted for the modern world. They just didn't make the same sound as the classics. He found himself laying there when a back-porch light turned on, illuminating a figure in the doorway holding a bat.
No crying in baseball… Ha. I get it now. League of Their Own. Colleen swung the sword like a bat instead of the way she normally does. How'd… how'd I… miss… One of mom's favorite's…
"Ben?" the figure in the light ask warily. "Oh god, Ben! May, come down here. It's Ben. He's, uh, he's…"
I'm … in garbage… Why'd I have to… remember… trash … this morning?