Tonnage

Co-Op Mode Enabled.

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It's a black void. She doesn't know what's going on, but given that she's asleep, knows she's asleep, and is in a black void?

With the wackiness where she lives, that is a whole lot of excitement and terror. The voice she hears is rough. Female.

Extremely pissed off.

“I spend half my life living in a hole in the ground, and the other half trying to stay out of one. And all that effort and pain is undone by a purple asshole with a mitten and a finger snap? Seriously!? I didn't have any faith left in God but I had some fucking hope for karma. Just unreal, I mean for crying out loud, how is this fair?! How is this... Damnit...”

The pause here is deafening, and then there is a sound that can only be a frustrated grumble of pure irritation.

“Well, I guess it's my turn, I can feel the pull. Look, I don't know what you did to get stuck with my crap but plan on hiding yourself and a severe learning curve. It's controllable after a while, but you won't be going to any dances for the foreseeable future. It never gets to the point that you can hide the stuff indefinitely, even if you put every ounce of effort into it you still have to sleep sometime. Depending on what's going on around you and how keyed up you are, sometimes even that is impossible. But you can form it. Manipulate it. Use it for protection. Break it off and hit people with it. Real effort can help you make it stronger or sharper. If nature can make it, it should be possible with effort and practice. Layering works good. Think shellfish. But... at any given time, your body will want around thirty percent of it more than you can carry inside. So passing as a normie isn't really a thing you can maintain for long no matter what you do."

There is a pause, then a hiccup. As though she is choking on a memory.

"Plan on a lot of pain.”

She hears a sigh. One of a person that is, not accepting, but willing to fake it for a moment.

“Your life is about to be defined by pain. Every time you use it, it hurts. But you'll heal. You'll heal faster than almost anybody. Doesn't stop the pain. But at least it makes it go away fast. I hope you don't mind a six-thousand-calorie diet though. The metabolism this comes with is completely stupid. Almost got me thrown out when I was young. If I'd been any less useful, or if the wrong person ended up in charge...”

Hearing this, she is slowly becoming terrified. This sounds visceral. Scary. She doesn't seem to be able to speak, and she can't make herself wake up.

All she can do is listen. Listen and wait. For the end of this, whatever it is.

“Unbelievable, it's such bullshit. If it can be taken away this easily, then what was the point of living it in the first place!?”

This is followed by an inarticulate scream of fury, and then mostly silence.

The pause here is more substantial, and she can hear this person going through the kind of deep, emotional moment that makes it difficult to speak. When she does, her voice is diminished. Like she's running down her batteries.

“My name... My name wouldn't mean anything to you anyway, and I haven't used it for anything besides taxes for years. But I went by Marrow. You'll...”

“You'll figure out why on your own.”

“For what it's worth? I'm sorry.”

There is a last, strangled, enraged laugh that would have made the Joker clap with glee. A final thought from a woman who knows she's about to be lost to the void, and despite or perhaps because of the life she's led and the trials she's faced, can't help but flip off the universe and end on a joke. Even if it's a bad one.

“Got Milk?”

>>

She wakes up late. It's nearly noon, which is at least three hours after her mother has left to work the ten to six shift. She awakens slowly. She feels odd. Like her skin doesn't fit quite right anymore. Like something has changed. She gets up, scratching her butt and yawning. Makes her way to the bathroom. Sits to handle her business.

She'd unconsciously shied away from looking in the mirror on her way there, and now she can't help but let her eyes twitch in that direction. That dream was so vivid. But then, nightmares based on strange things happening aren't exactly new to her.

She closes her eyes as she finishes and flushes. Then stands in front of the mirror. And opens them.

Blonde hair? Check.

Height and weight? Check.

Anything weird that she could break off and hit people with? That's a big negative.

She sighs in relief as she heads to the kitchen and gets a bowl of cereal. Probably just a dream. Nightmare, more like. She checks the magnets on the fridge for a note and doesn't see anything new. It's nice that Mom lets her sleep in like this, it had been a long night. Finishing her cereal, she gets up to get a second bowl. She's a busy girl. Works hard.

Nothing wrong with a second bowl, she's done that before. Lots of times. She shakes her head in disbelief at the thought of a third and puts the bowl and spoon in the dishwasher while still a little hungry.

Then she gets dressed. She has a few things she needs to do today before she can wander off and do what she wants. A trip to the store, for one. And her mom asked if she could drop the mail off at the box by the supermarket before four in a message on her phone. There are apparently bills involved and post dates and such.

She isn't looking forward to having to mess with it. But she is getting close these days. Just turned seventeen a few months ago. Another year and she should be out on her own.

She heads out, getting into her car. Nothing fancy, just an older Prius. It's to the point now where she'll need a new car or to come up with the money to replace the battery soon.

It's annoying, being the one that has to deal with this for the sake of appearances. But there are worse things to have to deal with. Like that dream. Or the fact that dear old dad was one of the assholes that escaped the other night. She shudders in her seat as she pulls out of the drive. Like she needs that in her life. Especially after what she'd heard listening in last night. Stressing on stuff like that is probably why she is having stupid dreams.

After dumping off the mail, she finds the store is fairly busy. It being a Sunday that is normal. But the list isn't long. Just the essentials. Milk, eggs, cheese. Bread, some stuff for sandwiches along with an assortment of other things that can go in lunches.

She decides on kiwi for the fruit. She likes them, and her mom sent her to do the shopping. If Mother dearest wants her strawberries she can come down and...

She sighs and adds the strawberries to the cart. Bananas. A bag of oranges. A pound of jerky. She hits the deli case on the way to checkout for a ten-piece of poppers before she really even thinks about what she's doing, and has half of them eaten by the time she gets to the car.

It was just a dream. It had to be a dream. What the woman in that... That vision had alluded to isn't happening. Well, most of it isn't.

Seriously, why is she so damned hungry?!

A burger on the way home, along with chocolate milk. She doesn't really know why, she was simply craving milk.

Her stomach drops when she remembers the last bit of the dream. But, it was in the dream. A dream. By definition, dreams can affect us, but they do it by making us respond to them. If she doesn't, the dream shouldn't be able to bother her.

Right? Unless it really was... No. Bad thoughts. Bad.

She's feeling more and more uncomfortable as the minutes wear on. Like she's full. But not, because she still feels like she could eat.

The worry is doubling and tripling in her stomach as she pulls into the drive and snags the three grocery bags. Manages to paste a smile on her face when the neighbor waves.

She sets down a bag and gets her keys out. The door is already unlocked, though.

She stops. She's been distracted all morning from this feeling and that damn dream that had the placebo effect of making her want to eat half of Gotham. But she is pretty sure she remembers locking the door, and Mom's car isn't here.

She sets down the rest of the groceries and makes her way inside with a small can of mace in one hand and a snap-out baton in the other. It's Gotham. Not carrying something for self-defense is insanity, no matter who you are.

She steps into the living room and then closes her eyes in self-disgust for a second when she hears the closet door open behind her with a gentle click. Spinning around she can see her father. Blonde. Nearly six feet. A genius, and a decent fighter. Not anywhere near the higher tiers here, but this is Gotham.

Things are different in Gotham.

“Hi, dad. Come to turn yourself in?”

He laughs. “No, pumpkin. Not here to turn myself in.” He holds up a pistol. The hammer is back. “I'm here to find out why my little girl felt the need to run me down in another city. I left for you. I left so I wouldn't have to do this. But you can't leave it alone, you just hounded me there and...”

She's already hit the panic button. Oracle can hear everything he's saying. But her dad is smart. Scary smart. He either already knows this and has a plan for it, or his plan involves not staying long. And if it's the second...

She uses the mace while lunging to the right. Three shots ring out. One misses. One gets her in the arm. The last in the stomach. She falls to the ground in a heap while her father screams obscenities and slams into walls on the way to the door.

Her skin is stretching. Pierced. Pushed through from the inside. All over the place. But the worst pain is on her head, where spurs of her bone exit on her face. Locking together, smoothly, into an overbuilt caricature of a domino mask. Her hands grow a mean set of short spikes that stick a few inches past her knuckles, and her back is spontaneously extruding a set of four. She feels like a stegosaurus lost its thagomizer in her back somehow.

Under her skin, thankfully not visibly, she is instinctively growing a set of scutes. Sub-dermal armor bits, like she is a damn crocodile.

The irony floors her as she screams. She can feel the bullets being expelled as it all becomes too much for Stephanie Brown, and Spoiler falls unconscious where she is found by her allies not ten minutes later.

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Author's note:

I'm not against more Merry Mutants sending their power matrix across the dimensions. But I really don't like my cast lists getting too long.

Thankfully, in this instance, I can enable co-op mode without needing any more original characters.

Thanks for reading!