Disrupting Friendsgiving

Tim Drake has read every single one of Batman’s files. It’s something he prides himself on. He knows the ins and outs of all the cases Batman has ever saved on the Batcomputer. So he feels slightly embarrassed when a woman appears out of nowhere in the Cave and he didn’t immediately connect the dots to one of Batman’s old reports. 

It’s one of the ones that dates back to before Tim but after Dick. The Jason period. It’s the only file on dimensional travel Batman has and it’s the one that all of Batman’s dimensional contingencies are based on. Though, the contingencies are essentially: don’t fuck with other dimensions. Tim can barely remember what’s in the file. Something about a woman appearing with Jason thirty miles away from where Jason was just with Bruce. How Bruce initially assumed it was teleportation until a woman wearing a white suit with a large red spider across the back started to lecture him. So when the woman starts to pile knives onto the kitchen counter he turns to his phone and quickly retrieves the file. 

The report is surprisingly bare. Maybe Bruce didn’t think information from another dimension was pertinent or maybe Jason was reluctant to share his experience. Tim isn’t really sure why there is so little. Bruce is typically very thorough. 

Tim thinks the best summary for the report is this: Jason fell through the cracks of reality and landed in a different universe, while he was there he encountered a superhero named Spider-Woman, she took Jason under her wing for a about five months before she was able to build a device to take him back to his own world, when they arrived she told Bruce cross-dimensional travel was a messy, unethical business, that she would be back to visit soon, and her name was Petra. 

Tim doesn’t inform the Team of his discovery yet. He wants to make sure he’s right. Bats don’t make assumptions they make certain. 

Do you think Batman keeps condoms in his utility belt?  Wally asks in the mindlink. Artemis pushes him off the counter and Tim decides he should start moving things along. 

He walks back to the counter. The Team is engrossed in the mindlink arguing about superheroes most likely to have sex while in their suits. Their attention is only partly on the woman until she pulls her mask off. The mindlink silences as the Team instinctively looks away from the bare face. They all know how important it is to keep a secret identity. None of them would ever unmask in an unknown environment yet this woman did it without hesitation. Tim knows it’s probably because she doesn’t even exist in this world but with all his training he can’t help but find it discomforting. 

Tim notices his teammates get over their initial nervousness and start staring at her. He also notices that she’s waiting for somebody to frisk her down and everyone else is too busy committing the details of her face to memory to do it. He pats her down but, honestly, with the amount of shit on the counter and the design of the suit, Tim is pretty sure she could have a nuclear bomb in that thing and he wouldn’t even notice. He decides if she turns out to be cool to ask if she can get him a suit by the same designer. Though, he still wants to see how well the material can hold up in a fight. 

Tim sends confirmation to Kaldur that she is clean. He looks at the pile. On second thought, he decides to directly ask the woman. 

The daggers in the shoes were unexpected. 

Tim wonders if he should have just scanned her. If she is who he thinks she is, it doesn’t matter. But if she isn’t… 

There are seven of them. They can take one freaky teleporting woman in their home base. 

Who fights in heels? Artemis asks. You’d think with all those pockets she’d at least be a sensible woman. But no. She fights in five inch heels. 

What’s so bad about that? And just like that Wally starts Zatanna and Artemis off on a long tangent about women’s clothing and the pain that it brings. 

We don’t even know if she has to run in them though. She might be able to fly. M’gann states. 

Yeah, but if she can fly, why wear heels for the added height? Which, Tim thinks, is a surprisingly good point for Conner to bring up. 

The woman interrupts their silent conversation and Wally practically flinches at the mention of torture. 

Conner reaches into her belongings on the counter and takes out her wallet. “Petra Stark?” 

Tim feels relieved at the sound of the name. Sure enough it was Jason’s friend from a different dimension. Tim decides to figure out how to feel about that fact later. 

Tim takes a badge from the pile and reads the information out loud for Team. Wally snatches it out of his hands with a mutter of Agent of the multiverse? Cool! in the mindlink. There is no doubt in Tim’s mind that the badge is real. He already knows that she can travel dimensions, working across parallel universes isn’t really a stretch after that. 

Conner places her ID into his hands. Her birthdate read 2001. She is not ten years old. Tim asks her the year. 

She says she isn’t a time traveller. Tim realizes that she thinks that he thinks she’s from the future of this world. Wally makes the same assumption when he sees the ID too. 

Tim doesn’t miss Petra’s frown at the mention of purposeful time travel but doesn’t comment on it. 

Tim feels certain that this Petra is the same as the one from Bruce’s old file, but he still wants her to confirm it for him. He makes it seem as though he thinks she is just doing her job in their world and asks if she’s from another universe. 

“Close. Try a whole other dimension.”

And just like that, Tim has all the information he needs.

Tim begins to pull up the file on his wrist computer but Artemis’s comment and the change in the woman’s posture stops him. 

Petra has shifted her stance just enough to make Tim feel on edge. She seems a bit frustrated. 

She points out how the situation feels from her point of view, something Tim hadn’t even thought about, and offers them her phone in return for information about their world. 

It’s completely unnecessary. Tim has files that can confirm her identity and the fact that she is friendly. 

Kaldur responds before Tim can say anything. 

Then again, Tim would love to see whatever is on her phone. Would her phone even work in this dimension? 

Would it be safe for her to use your laptop?  

Tim nods, deciding that getting information from her world is worth waiting to let the team know she’s met Batman before. 

After Artemis grabs the smartphone off the counter, Kaldur gestures for Petra to follow him.  

They make it to the lounge Tim’s laptop is in and Tim quickly sets it up for her. He taps the cushion next to him for her to sit down. She takes his laptop and starts her search. Tim doesn’t even look to see what she decides to look up, instead he immediately reaches out for her phone. It has a sleek design and is incredibly thin. Tim runs his finger across the sides looking for the ‘on’ button but doesn’t find one. 

After Petra turns the phone on for him, tells her version of Siri not to let him see any pornography, and Wally makes an inopropriate comment in the mindline which gets him a punch from Artemis, Tim opens up her downloads. 

There’s a surprising number of scientific journal articles, mostly of them are about chemistry but there are also a number of engineering and clean energy articles. 

Then a random newspaper article, “Tony Stark Seen at Local Park With Daughter”. A blurry photo of Petra and an older man in a hoodie laying in the grass is under the title. Tim finds himself reading the article, “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist Tony Stark took time off to spend an afternoon with his daughter this Saturday”. Tim can’t help but laugh. Of course Jason would make friends with a hero who is the daughter of a famous, rich dude. 

“How long ago was this?” He turns the phone so she can see the article. 

She doesn’t answer right away. A small frown is on her face. “Time is-” She stretches her arm and twists her hand like it explains everything that time is. She seems like she’s trying to answer an impossible question. “It’s March 2019 where I left. That was late October 2018.” 

“Wait, how old are you?” Wally’s head snaps up from where he was reading over Tim’s shoulder to look at Petra. 

“Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”

There isn’t any heat in it. She goes back to reading whatever she has on the laptop. 

Tim recalls the birthdate on her ID. That makes her seventeen. Still older than every member of the Team but definitely younger than Tim guessed when she appeared. He knows from experience not to say he thought she was older so he keeps his mouth shut. 

Wally takes the phone out of his hands and scans the article. “So your dad is pretty rich?”

“Tony Stark has a net worth of $12.4 billion.” 

Wally drops the phone in surprise, but Tim catches it. 

“Siri, what the fuck?”

“Her name is Karen.” Petra replies. Tim thinks it’s a conditioned correction because she didn’t even seem to notice she had spoken. 

“Karen?”

“What can I do for you?” 

“Woah,” Tim accidentally whispers, “I’m not sure what you can do, actually.”

The voice apologizes for not introducing herself then explains that she is an advanced artificial intelligence system created by Tony Stark and can assist ‘Petra’s guests’ in navigating her phone as well as answer any questions they might have. 

Tim asks Karen to pull up all articles concerning Tony Stark. Tim scrolls through them. There are about thirty ranging from scientific journal articles written by him to gossip columns about him. Tim clicks into a few. Tim starts to understand the title ‘Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist’ very quickly. 

Tim gets a little engrossed in the articles. He doesn’t even realize he’s mumbling praises about Tony Stark’s mind until he hears Petra give a light chuckle.

He finds one article and two photos about the heroes of Petra’s world. There is little information in the article. It’s mostly an argument about the ethics of heroics. He learns they’re called the Avengers, that Tony Stark is Iron Man, and Spider-Woman is not a member of their team. The article clearly labels her as a vigilante mostly in Queens. 

Tim drags the settings down. The battery life hasn’t dropped at all. 

“What type of charger does this take?”

“It’s Stark Tech.” 

Tim doesn’t get why she says that like it should explain everything until he remembers that he literally just read an article about how her dad literally built a suit out of scraps while being held hostage in a cave and the freaking arc reactor. 

Artemis eventually snatches the phone out of Tim’s hand and starts going through the pictures. 

They’re good pictures. Really good. A few of them are shots of Spider-Woman in her white suit with the large red spider on her back curling over her shoulders and around her waist. None of them had her wearing the dark outfit she’s currently in. 

Zatanna gets a hold of it next and starts going through text messages. 

Eventually, they’ve gone through nearly everything on the phone. 

She takes longer to finish. She places the laptop onto the table and then gives them all an analytical once over that Tim usually associated with Barbara. Sometimes Bruce, but only when he wanted you to know he was doing it. 

They finally give out introductions. Something Tim hadn’t even noticed they’d forgone. It’s strange. 

Tim knows there isn’t any information he could have gotten that would lead him to believe that she is Spider-Woman, but the suit change is bothering him. It’s the only thing that doesn’t match up. 

Her answer to it makes sense. Her title is Petra Stark. Bail Enforcement Agent not Spider-Woman. Bail Enforcement Agent. 

Tim knows she’s previously been to this world before but he still asks her how she got here. 

He thought it was on purpose.

The file did say she promised to visit. 

Tim thought she just didn’t end up in New Jersey like she thought she would. Then again, if she can get Jason within a thirty mile radius of where he slipped through reality and back at the same moment he disappeared, he should have realized that her arriving confused in the Cave five years after dropping Jason off with Bruce was hastily planned. 

And by hastily planned, Tim means that she literally built an inter-dimensional transport, in the middle of a fight, out of some dude’s death machine. 

Tim figures that it should be easy for her to leave.

Tim is wrong. 

She explains that she doesn’t want to shatter reality, that the machine she used to get here seriously damaged the structure of reality of both of their dimensions, how it needs to heal before she can leave, and a few other things Tim hopes Wally understands. 

She doesn’t ask to stay. 

She doesn’t ask for materials. 

Kaldur addresses the mindlink, How much of this do we believe? 

She’s telling the truth. Tim uses the mindlink to tell them about the small file she is mentioned in.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we should trust her, Artemis argues. 

She hasn’t done anything to make us believe otherwise.

Yeah, she’s been very cooperative, Wally adds. 

I know we said we were only going to inform the League if we had to, but how about we let her stay and we inform Batman. He’s already ran into her once. I’d rather not throw out a girl from an alternate dimension who swings through Queens and has New Yorkers give her churros. 

They’d all seen a screenshot of a selfie of Spider-Woman and an elderly lady captioned “Thanks for the Churro” posted to Instagram that one of Petra’s friends had sent her. The friend had also messaged, “Spider-Woman is only in the vigilante business for the free food”. 

There is another small round of debate within the mindlink. 

Then a decision. 

We let her stay but we tell Batman. 

Kaldur informs her that she’s welcome to stay in the Cave. 

Tim wonders if this means Friendsgiving is over for the day.