Legendary

"Who were we supposed to be meeting here?" I hissed at Selena.

"Roscoe Arbuckle," she said. "That's him." She gestured to the Joker. I shook my head.

"Roscoe Arbuckle was a silent film star in the 1920s," I said quietly to her. "That's the Joker."

"What?" she said sharply, and the Joker grinned. "We are here on business," she told him calmly. "If you're not interested in the stated purpose of the business, which is the conversion of this warehouse into lofts, we're leaving."

"No, you're not," the Joker said calmly. "Or, more specifically, you're coming along as an incitement for Pretty here to behave herself. I've been patient, I've been good. Well, fairly good. For me. But Pretty owes me for not throwing her spawn to the dogs, and I'm tired of waiting around for my payment."

"I owe you nothing," I said evenly. "I didn't ask for any favors. Your actions are your own." The smile slid greasily off his face and his eyes narrowed. The expression on his face was exactly as it had been in the caves on New Years all those years ago, and I had to forcibly remind myself that I wasn't that girl anymore.

Joker gestured with his cane and his goons started to surround us. I recognized a few of them, even. Two time losers, hooking up with the Joker again. "I saw that movie," he said. "But you're no longer freaks with wings, you don't have any weapons, and you're outnumbered. So come along, Pretty, and I won't have to hurt Captain America there. Not that she looks like a threat anymore. She's a little soft."

"No wonder you think he's an asshole," she said to me conversationally. Admittedly, she'd put on a few pounds since the return, but part of that was that she was working about ten hours a day, full steam, and wasn't taking the time to eat right. She still worked out, though, and she was still quite strong. And you simply can't discount the experience she had.

"Last chance, Joker," I said. "Back off now, leave me alone forever, and you and your little thugs here can leave." He snarled at me. "Well, the Joker's mine," I said to Serena, and she nodded.

"I haven't had a good fight in quite awhile," she said confidently, and I felt her shift her balance and knew she was ready. "Any time you're ready."

"Let's go," I said, and she threw her briefcase, taking out one of the goons, I left her to it and headed for the Joker, pouncing on him before he could get away.

"I have tried to be reasonable," I said, wrinkling my nose. That peculiar odor still lingered, even after the Return. If I was in the mood to be philosophical, I'd say it was the corruption of his soul, but I didn't care about the condition of that. "Once upon a time, you had your goons kidnap me. I broke my shoulder, you threatened to make me a brain-damaged sex slave, you remember?" I tightened my grip on his collar, twisting it tighter around his throat and shaking. "You seem to forget that I literally beat the shit out of you with one hand behind my back. But since then, I've done a lot of work on my form and what your surveillance has failed to pick up is that I've kept up with my hand-to-hand. Malia, the new Avengers' trainer, is a marvel, and of course, my uncle keeps me sharp."

"Alex!" I turned to see Serena engaged with three of the goons, one getting up off the ground.

"Here!" I barked, and wrenched the Jokers's cane away and tossed it to her. She caught it, smiled, and went to work.

"I'm not the only one who carries grudges," he blurted when I turned back to the Joker. "Your precious uncle hasn't been forgotten."

"Who?" I demanded, and he smiled a little.

"Let me go and I'll tell you," he said.

"You're in no position to bargain. I'm putting you down, no matter what. The only question is not whether I can be stopped, but how many bones I break. I told you once that if you didn't leave me alone, I'd break every bone in your body. I didn't quite achieve that last time." I was interrupted by a blow from behind. It cut my scalp, and immediately I could feel the flow of blood. I turned and flung the Joker into his goon. I joined the main fight; Serena was having some trouble, but then there were eleven goons, one of her, and this wasn't a comic book. I used Joker as a human battering ram, picking him up whenever he looked to crawl away, and I took my share of hits before Serena and I were the only ones left standing.

"Damn," she said, pulling out her communicator, which was broken. "I'm going to find one to borrow, and I'm going to step outside to make the call. Reception's probably better out there."

I waited until the door closed behind her before I went to work.

When she came back inside, the Joker was down on the ground with his goons, barely making squeaks. "I talked to a Captain Gordon," she said, looking at me curiously. "He's apparently in charge of cases involving these old-style villains. He's on his way." She leaned over to look at the Joker a little more carefully. "Alex, it doesn't look like you broke all his bones."

"No time," I said, adrenaline receding. "Besides, with the cops on the way, I had to make it look like injuries that were received during a fight."

"Didn't think about that," she said. "Sorry."

I waved it off. "I think I did enough damage, though." I nudged the Joker's hand. A faint keening emerged from his throat. I leaned over him. "If I so much as see you again, I'll hunt you down myself and there won't be the promise of the police to save you from the rest of your life, which I can promise you will be miserable and painful. My brother tells me there are still things that can't be healed, especially nerve damage, and there are laws against regrowing sex organs for convicted rapists. Which you are. And legal painkillers, the kind you'd get from the medical profession, only block pain receptors. So you won't even have the haze of opiods to help you pass your days. Nothing to help you if I decide that I haven't done enough and find you to finish you. There are still unbroken bones, after all." I nudged his thigh; I hadn't managed to break it. We stepped away as we heard the sirens approaching.

"Don't you have that tracker Tony made for you?" Serena said, making a face as one of her cuts bled through the tissue she'd stuck to it.

"Apparently I wasn't afraid this time," I said. I pulled out my communicator--unbroken--and tried to call Damian. I couldn't get through, so I called Alfred to let him know I probably wouldn't make it to dinner and why.

"You do have the most interesting encounters with the criminal element of any of the family, Miss Alex," Alfred said after a moment. "Are you all right beyond the superficial injuries?"

"Yeah, I think a session with the accelerator will fix me right up. Thanks, Alfred, the police are here." I hung up and went with Serena to meet Captain Gordon.

His eyes roamed the damage, and he asked what had happened. Serena told him how we had come to be in the warehouse, and I explained that I'd objected to the Joker's plans for my person. "I see," he said, eyes moving over the thugs on the floor who were being looked over by the paramedics. One of his officers came over, and at his request I showed my knife. He raised his eyebrows.

"Usually I use it on job sites or to open envelopes," I shrugged. "But the Joker is why I'm never unarmed." Serena scowled.

"I've gotten soft," she said. "I don't carry a weapon these days."

"You did all right," Gordon reassured her. I had to surrender my knife, but Gordon assured me I'd get it back. "Just out of curiosity, do you have other weapons on you?" he asked, and I produced a few shuriken that I hadn't seen fit to use and the bigger knife in my bag.

"I did throw a couple of shuriken, so you should find them in the goons," I said helpfully. "We were outnumbered and not really prepared for a fight. We didn't want to kill anybody, but I didn't want to go and Serena wasn't going to let them take me without a fight."

"I see," Gordon said again, and summoned two officers to take our statements. When I got done, I took a call from Damian, explaining--very briefly--what had happened and where I was. Then, as Gordon came over to release us, I recalled something the Joker said.

"He said that my uncle hadn't been forgotten."

"Who's your uncle?"

"Bucky Barnes." Gordon's eyes sharpened.

"I remember now. When we question the Joker, I'll see what I can get out of him."

After I thanked him, Serena and I walked toward the door.

"I hate to say it, but that fool was right. I have gotten soft," Serena grumbled. "Unprepared."

"You can work out at the tower," I said. "We don't need to be as sharp as we were for Ragnarok, and it would be frankly dangerous for us to go around as hair triggered as we were, but we could both do better. The Joker's not the only scum out there."

Damian raced up as we exited the warehouse and Serena looked with a certain amusement as he hugged me to him, smushing my face in his shirtfront and squeezing me a little too tight. "Breathe!" I gasped, turning my head, and he reluctantly loosened his grip.

"We were in a meeting," he explained. "Why didn't your tracker go off? Is it broken?"

"I wasn't afraid," I told him, and he stepped back to look me in the eye. "For the first time, I wasn't anxious, scared, terrified, anything. It was just another fight, with somebody who needed extra persuasion." He looked as the paramedics transported the semiconscious Joker to the back of the ambulance. Other patched up thugs, less tenderized, were being escorted to the patrol cars. Damian's eyes found Captain Gordon, and he nodded thoughtfully.

"Can we drop you anywhere, Serena?" Damian asked, and she had us take her to the tower, where, as a former Captain America, she could get patched up and a change of clothes. We lifted and headed for home.

I wasn't surprised to see a welcoming committee, but I did insist on getting fixed and cleaned up first. Damian went down to the bat cave with me and Alfred, swearing as Alfred deftly sectioned my hair to hold the laceration on my scalp, still bleeding sluggishly, so the accelerator could take care of it. He gave me a treatment, and with this stronger accelerator, I'd only need one treatment instead of the two I'd had to have the first time around. Then I jumped into the shower and put on a pair of the clothes the cave denizens routinely used when they came home battered and bloody, black t shirt, workout pants, and socks. We returned to the house and I studied the group waiting for me. Bruce, of course, Xander, and Daniel as our currently serving Batmen, Martha, because she'd heard from her brother, and my uncle. Dick hustled in just as I sat down and Damian leaned on the couch behind me.

"The library is fantastic," Dick said, looking around.

"It's wonderful, isn't it?" I smiled at him, then the smile went away when I looked at my uncle. "So the Joker engineered a meeting at a warehouse, using the pretext that he was going to renovate the warehouse into lofts."

"Really?" Daniel asked alertly, and I looked at him fondly.

"I have no idea, but it's a great location for it." I gave him the address, knowing he'd check and see if he could move on it. "I went with Serena to talk about the wiring and soundproofing. He used the name 'Roscoe Arbuckle.'" Xander and Martha groaned. My dad loved silent movies, and first J and I, then my kids had been exposed to his love for them. I'm not sure how, but Damian usually managed to avoid the movie marathons. Some of them were silly and really dated, but others still held up. Lon Chaney's performance in Phantom of the Opera, for one.

"What's the significance of the name?" Daniel wanted to know.

"You should spend more time with Alex's dad," Bucky said on a sigh. "Roscoe Arbuckle was a comedian known onscreen as Fatty Arbuckle. He was a huge star for Paramount, making like a million dollars back in the 1920s. To celebrate his new contract, even more lucrative, I think, and the release of a new movie, he had a party in the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco over Labor Day. It was kind of wild, booze despite Prohibition, and at the end of it, a starlet was dead and Arbuckle was accused of manslaughter, that his rape had ruptured her bladder and killed her. It was a huge scandal, all over the papers, led to the institution of the movie censors, the Hays office. He was eventually acquitted after two hung juries, but his career and life were ruined, he was broke from the lawyers' fees, and he died several years later."

"Ew," Daniel said. We nodded.

"To get back to the story....?" Bruce prodded.

"So the Joker says he's lost patience with me, that I owe him for not exposing Xander, and I was going to be coming along with him. I chose not to, and Serena and I beat up his thugs. And him. But the thing is, Uncle Bucky, is that he said you haven't been forgotten. I'm worried about that. Captain Gordon said he'd press the Joker on that when he was in a position to talk again."

"Where'd they take him this time?" Bucky said on a sigh.

"New Atlantic," I told him. "They have those rooms where you can't get out if you have a patient wristband, which are impossible to get off without a special key."

He smirked at me. "Any restrictions on getting in?"

I smirked back. "Nope, they don't even have to guard the rooms because of the security. But the Joker's both nuts and possessed of a certain genius for escape. You might want to drop by sooner rather than later."

"Ok, sweetie," he stood and came over to kiss my forehead. "You're sure you're ok?"

"Yeah." I exchanged a look with him. "I really got him this time." A moment more, and his gorgeous smile broke out.

"That's my girl," he said affectionately, and made his goodbyes to the others. Alfred gave him a boxed dinner as he left the room, I noted.

"Did you just really sic your uncle on the Joker?" Daniel asked after a moment.

"Yep," I said, unconcerned. "Well, no. I didn't tell Bucky to go to the hospital. The Captain has limits to what he can do to get information, but Bucky is not so constrained. If the Joker knows more, he'll tell him."

"I'll talk to Gordon tonight," Bruce said.

"The Joker's been keeping a low profile," Xander said. "I'm going to shake down a few crooks in the know and see what I can find out. Maybe get some intel on who might be after Uncle Bucky."

"If you're sure you're ok, Grandma, I'm going to go out myself," Daniel said, and the three of them took the stairs down to the tunnel.

"You want to go out tonight?" Dick asked his brother, and Damian hesitated.

"You can go if you want," I said. "I really am ok, darling."

"Then yes, we can do our own intelligence gathering," he said. "But I'll try not to be late. I just want to do something myself." I smiled at him.

"After dinner, then. Dick, are you staying for dinner? Martha, honey?" Both of them agreed, and Alfred took himself off to the kitchen.

"Babs is visiting her mom tonight," Dick said as he sat down at the table. "It's always nice to have one of Alfred's meals."

"Thank you, Master Dick," Alfred said as he served. "Miss Martha, would you care for more green beans?" As my daughter accepted with pleasure, I was grateful to have this life, with these people. Eira, a little miffed she didn't get in on the action, brushed by pointedly on her way to her own dinner. Oops. I'd have to suck up later.

The next day I took Eira to work with me; she usually preferred to stay at the estate, where she could run around at her leisure and investigate the goings-on at both our house and the mansion, which had been fitted with a special access door for her. Alan seemed quite fond of her. I think she was hoping for more crooks to try to assault me. Everybody in the office was glad to see her and she wandered around the occupied offices for tummy rubs and ear skritches. She went with me to the home of a prospective client, one of the board of directors for the Westminster Dog Show. Eira was happy to stand and be examined by both dog experts, although I felt a rather shocked amazement from her when they checked her teeth.

"She's gorgeous," Pete McArthur said. Eira preened at the praise, making us all smile.

"But I understand she's not really a dog?" Angela said.

"No; it's more accurate to say she's a person in a dog-shaped body. All her kind are fully intelligent. Their outlook is different from a human's, as you'd expect, and she communicates mostly through mental images and feelings. And an astonishing array of vocalizations, of course."

"Of course," Angela said, and we laughed. Eira shook vigorously. At that point, a Newfoundland wandered in to see what the fuss was. Since Eira wasn't grown yet, this dog was still bigger than she was, and she had a couple of puppies romping in after her. I thought the big black dog looked tired. We watched as Eira ambled over for greetings; she was curious about the puppies.

"All the other puppies have gone on to other homes," Pete said "We're keeping little Stephanie, but Charlie there needs an especially good home, and we haven't found the right one." As he spoke I notice the other puppy had a bit of a limp.

"We'd taken them out to the park," Angela said. "Charlie got excited and ran into traffic." She pressed her hand to her mouth. "I'll never forget it." We watched as Betty, the mother, flopped down and Eira frisked around the large room to play with the puppies. "They saved his life and did a great job with reconstructing the bone and muscles and all, but he'll always have the limp, they say, and there might be additional issues as he gets older." She sighed. "But as you can see, the house is in need of some work. It amazes me that the plaster lasted so long, but it's beginning to crack."

"And the wiring needs to be brought up to speed," Pete added. "That long winter really showed how inadequate the house was in many ways, but we love it." I nodded, and we started discussing their needs. The dogs stayed together as we toured the premises and I heard their particular concerns. When we went back to the main room, the dogs were curled up together and I smiled. I gave them some idea about costs, and they were still interested in a formal proposal, being very interested in the SmartBoard. When it was time to go, I looked at Eira and sighed and dug around in my bag.

"I'd like to talk with you about possibly adopting Charlie," I said, handing over our vet's card. "We have two young cats and Eira, and we have a house out on the Wayne estate, so there's lots of room for dogs to run around. There's a pond, which Eira loves when it's warm. Neufies are water dogs, aren't they? We've got one of those Dog HomeGroom setups, so I can guarantee that Charlie would have lots to do and be well taken care of and loved. I can give you personal references as well." I was pleased to answer questions about the home and my dog-caring abilities, and they'd forgotten that Damian was my husband; he was very well-known in dog circles for his support of shelters and rescue groups. When we left, we had a sweet little black puppy in tow.

Damian was over the moon when we dropped by the new building to say hi, and insisted on keeping the puppy. Eira didn't want to be parted from her new friend, and she stayed too. I was a little out of sorts when I went back to my office. I'd anticipated showing off the new puppy to my friends. But my day was considerably brightened by the inspection reports on my desk, the last ones the Valkyrie needed before we could let our tenants in and move in ourselves. I whooped in joy and sent out a company-wide communication that we needed to move. Then I called my dad and arranged for the delivery of the furniture he'd crafted. At the end of the day, we all met to plan the launch of the Valkyrie building. It wouldn't be hard to arrange to move our offices; none of us had much here, and the office furniture had been supplied by the landlord, so it was a matter of us boxing up our stuff, which we agreed to do over the weekend, and taking it over to the new offices. I gave Martha the plum assignment of planning a party for the official opening of the building, and Aslyn had already notified our tenants that they could move in. In order to assure quality and compliance with our restrictions, we had put in kitchen fixtures for the ice cream parlor and Mom's coffeeshop, for example, and met or exceeded the specifications for permanent modifications for all the businesses. It all had to be done to conserve the look of the building, so it fit in with the Art Deco style. The office spaces were a lot less trouble than the retail in that respect.

Alfred and Alan catered a move-in lunch for us that Saturday; Aslyn brought coffee and bagels for breakfast as we got furniture deliveries through the freight elevator. We had to help Dad and his movers carry the heavy furniture up to the conference room, though. And that was some work, but so worth it in the end. "We could really use Uncle Bucky about now," I puffed as we maneuvered the table up the stairs. Dad grunted a laugh.

We'd gotten it positioned perfectly in line with the credenza at the end of the room that we'd brought up first, and we all stopped to admire the beauty of the wood. "Wow, Mr Barnes, that is spectacular," Aslyn said. Dad ran a rag over a smudge and nodded.

"That should hold up," he said with satisfaction, and I gave him a hug.

"It better, Grandpa, my back's killing me," Martha said, half-joking.

"You should do a little more strength training then, kidlet," my dad said, laughing. She snorted, and we all gathered around downstairs as his crew brought up the equally magnificent reception desk and positioned it under the name of our company, elegant brass letters against the paneling.

"This building is really impressive, honey," Dad told me as my desk was brought in. Unlike the butterfly desk in the library at home, this one was a curved rectangle, modern in shape but with Art Deco elements. He'd also made a sturdy low platform with a carved edge that I could place an emerald green dog bed on for Eira. It fit nicely into the weird round corner by the French doors.

"It better be, what with all this gorgeous furniture," I said, and he smiled.

"You're done a great job, and I'm very proud of you," he said, giving me a sideways hug. We took the lift down; the elegant conveyance had a green velvet bench like it would have originally, and the detail restored. I showed him where Mom's coffeeshop was, and we lucked out; her manager and staff for this location were there, the manager conferring with her.

"Pet," Mom said, coming over for hugs from both of us. "This is lovely. It's a real change from the other two locations, but I think I might like this the best." I smiled at her praise. Who doesn't like their parents telling them they did good work? She introduced me to the manager. "Although I might be here more than I planned," she admitted with a smile, and I took both parents on a little tour of the building, telling them who the other retail stores were, showing them the security office on the fourth floor so they'd know Martha and I were safe. Then back to the office so Mom could see the magnificence with Dad's furniture. Everybody from Valkyrie was eager to meet my mom, purveyor of coffee, and Martha floated the idea of a cart going through the building. Mom was interested and promised to look into the idea. They left, and we all got back to work, everybody reconvening when the office chairs were delivered and the computing system was set up. We took a break for the delicious lunch up in the pretty magnificent conference room--Alan's cooking classes were really paying off. The group was a little bemused by the tablecloth, cloth napkins, china and silver that Alfred summoned up, but there was no doubt that it added quite a lot to the ambience, and they were very enthusiastic about the meal itself. After the lunch, I took both family butlers down to my office; I'd snagged one of the rear-facing offices on a corner with a balcony and view of the garden.

"Master Damian will be jealous of the magnificence of your office space," Alfred said jokingly, then presented me with a new cookie jar. This one was a large ceramic owl. I took off its head to find gingerbread cookies and peanut butter cookies with chocolate drops in the middle.

"Wow," I sighed. "They look delicious, but I'm stuffed from lunch." I immediately hid it behind the door of the bottom shelf of the bookcase. "There will be raiders of the cookie jar," I told Alan matter-of-factly, and he burst out laughing. He'd done all the cookies and the baked goods for the lunch.

"I forgot that we'd need dishes for our kitchen," Aslyn said, popping in.

"There are several partial sets up at the mansion," Alfred said instantly. "I can assemble a collection, and in case of any breakage, replacements can be obtained without concern for pattern."

"That would be fantastic," Aslyn said.

"Certainly, Miss Aslyn," he replied. "Either Alan or I will return on Monday with the items. May I offer my congratulations on your new enterprise?" he said, looking at us both. "You always had promise, even as young ladies, but this exceeds expectations."

"Thanks, Alfred," Aslyn replied. "Alex is a force of nature." She grinned at me.

"We all contribute," I said sternly. "Without one of us, the whole enterprise would falter."

"It's an extraordinary building," Alan said, looking around. "Quite posh."

"Maybe we need a butler ourselves, Alex," Aslyn said, smiling at Alan. Was that flirtation? I smiled. "Any chance we could hire you away from the Waynes?"

"Afraid not, Miss Aslyn," Alan said with a perfectly determined amount of regret and a charming smile.

"Seriously, though, Alex," Aslyn said suddenly. "There are seven of us principals, plus Martha, the receptionist, the possibility--well, probability--of additional support staff. We've got meetings and clients. Plus we've all gotten high end office furniture and that agreement with the Guggenheim to borrow artwork. We could use a specialized caretaker. We should have a butler. Or majordomo, whatever." I looked at her, she was serious. "Maybe part time, but it would be really nice. And it would add to our legend." I rubbed my face.

"Look at the budget," I instructed with a sigh, and she grinned. Alfred's eyes twinkled.

"If I may be of assistance in finding a suitable individual, I would be happy to help," Alan said to me, but he was looking side eye at Aslyn.

"Do you have a moment so I could get your contact information? If you could just step down to my office..." Aslyn said, and they walked out together. I looked skyward and shook my head, grinning. Alfred waited until they were out of earshot before chuckling.

"Master Damian will definitely be jealous," he said. "He dislikes having to make his own tea."