Duck Tales (Batgirl + Spider-Girl, G)

Apr 12, 2011 20:05

Title: Duck Tales
Author: harmonyangel
Word Count: 2,500
Fandom: DC/Marvel crossover
Characters: Batgirl (Stephanie Brown) and Spider-Girl (Anya Sofia Corazon) gen
Rating: G
Summary: Spider-Girl visits Gotham University, where Batgirl fights crime. Shenanigans ensue.
Notes: Written for poisonivory on the joyous occasion of her birthday. Set at some nebulous point early in Batgirl and right before the current Spider-Girl series (Young Allies era). No spoilers. Many thanks to second_batgirl and likeadeuce for helpful betas.



I know it sounds corny and obvious, but the second I saw Gotham University I couldn’t get over how gothic it looked. All these towers and spires and gargoyles and the kind of windows with a million panes that are still lined with lead despite all the health warnings. I could see why Dad wanted me to check it out. I’m only at the beginning of my junior year in high school, but Dad likes to say, “Anya Sofia Corazon, it’s never too early to start considering college options.” So when he had to take a trip out of town to do some interviews in Gotham, he decided to take me along.

To be honest, I probably won’t leave New York for college. It’s my city, my home, and I’m not one of those kids who spends her whole life making plans to escape the place she grew up. I already live in the best city in the world - why would I want to leave? And that city has plenty of good schools: NYU if I’m lucky, Columbia if I’m really lucky, and Empire as a safety school. Either way, I’ll get to keep living in the city I love - and protecting it, too. College classes aren’t going to stop me from keeping the streets clean, and I know Dad’ll understand that when I tell him. He wouldn’t let me keep being Spider-Girl if he didn’t know how important it is to me.

But even though I never plan to be a Gotham resident, this trip was a chance to spend some time with my dad and skip school for a day. How could I say no to that? The least I could do in return was pretend to be interested in Gotham U.

And it was pretty. Gotham itself is a lot like New York, as far as architecture goes, with tons of steel and glass, but the university campus is all grassy courtyards and archways and ivy-covered walls. It’s the kind of place that probably looks really spooky at night, but during the day it’s mostly just impressive. While Dad caught the train downtown to his interview, I wandered around the campus, trying to get the hang of it without looking like a total noob and pulling out the map I’d gotten from the welcome center. I wasn’t exactly pretending to be a student, but I didn’t want to be wearing a huge blinking “high schooler” sign on my forehead, either.

The lady at the welcome center said I should check out a class if I got the chance, but the first one I managed to sneak into was a philosophy lecture where the teacher was droning on and on about Nietzsche. After five minutes I could feel my brains dribbling out of my ears. It’s not that I was lost - I may be 16, but I’m pretty smart and I at least sort of got what was going on. I just couldn’t bring myself to care. I’m a take-charge, action-y kind of girl, and there’s no bigger waste of time I can imagine than sitting around philosophizing.

Back outside, I pulled out my map discreetly and tried to figure out where the biology building was, figuring I could learn something a little more useful there. The map was kind of a mess, though, with tiny letters and color-coding that didn’t seem to have any logic behind it. It didn’t help that about half the buildings on the campus were all called “Wayne” something - apparently this Wayne guy had a lot of cash to spare. As did somebody named “Kane,” whose name was on most of the non-Wayne buildings. Maybe Dr. Seuss was the secret benefactor.

After studying the map for a few minutes I still couldn’t find anything that looked particularly science-y, and I was about to give up when I spotted a girl sitting by herself against a tree, reading a book.

“Hey!” I said, jogging up to her and giving a little wave.

She looked up from her book, a psychology text, and raised an eyebrow, looking weirdly defensive. “Hey?”

“Hi! I’m visiting here and this map is totally a mess and I was wondering where the biology building was?”

The girl was still giving me this look like maybe I was going to pull out a knife and attack her. Weird. “It’s… over there,” she said, waving her hand vaguely to her right.

How helpful and specific. “Not a science person?” I asked, smiling to soften the sarcasm. Just because she wasn’t being friendly didn’t mean I had to be rude.

She held up her psychology textbook with a raised eyebrow. Oh. Duh. “Um, sorry. Not a biology person, I meant.” I stuck out a hand. “I’m Anya. I guess you’re a student here, right? Do you like Gotham U? What’s your major? Are the other students cool?”

The girl ignored my hand and ran her own through her blonde hair, letting out an aggravated breath. “Look, I know this school has tour guides who can help you. The welcome center is behind that building over there. But I’ve had about three hours of sleep in the last four days combined and I have a psych test in an hour and I really don’t have time to deal with over-eager high school kids, ok?”

I wasn’t sure whether I should be offended or just embarrassed, and I was about to stammer an apology when I started hearing this weird sound - sort of like quacking, but way louder than any duck has ever quacked.

I turned my head in the direction of the sound, squinting my eyes into the distance, but a second later the source of the sound became really, really clear: three giant white ducks, taller than me, running past with 5-foot wings flapping and webbed feet the size of tennis rackets slapping at the ground.

The blonde girl looked at me. I looked back at her.

“Did three man-sized ducks just run by?” she asked.

“Um, yeah. Yeah, they did.”

I was already wondering how I could get away to change into my Spider-Girl costume when the other girl solved the problem for me. “I have to go… get the campus police,” she said, and disappeared past a huddle of confused college students standing in the square, gesturing wildly in the direction of the ducks.

A few minutes later, I was running across the gothic rooftops I’d been admiring all morning, chasing the flock of ducks. They weren’t exactly the costumed idiots and secret organizations I was used to taking down, but ducks don’t get that big without some meddling. Where there are giant ducks, odds are mad scientists will follow. And from what I’d heard through the superhero grapevine, Gotham wasn’t short on mad scientists.

The edges of the stone roofs were a little rough, but I managed to leap over them pretty well until I reached the building closest to the ducks, who were standing in a circle in a courtyard between two big archways, squawking at each other.

Ok, Anya, I thought. Time to think of a plan. But before I could do anything, a flash of purple swung down from the building on the other side of the courtyard and kicked into the first duck with both feet.

The duck let out an angry quack and started nipping at the boots of the girl who had materialized in front of him. He didn’t look fazed at all. “Owowow!” the girl yelled as the duck chomped down on her ankle, and her blond hair flew out behind her as she let her grappling cord pull her back up to the roof.

“Hey, don’t hurt them!” I yelled.

The girl looked up at me from across the square. “Excuse me? Who are you?”

“Spider-Girl!” I shouted, as I bounded across the rooftops of the buildings surrounding the courtyard to join her on hers. “And I’m guessing you’re Batgirl,” I added, gesturing to the yellow bat outline on her chest.

She looked skeptical from behind her cowl. “Spider-Girl? Shouldn’t you be in New York?” She narrowed her eyes. “Are you responsible for Huey, Dewey, and Louie down there?”

“What? Of course not. I’m here to help, same as you.”

“Well, I appreciate that,” she said, reaching for a gadget in her belt, “But I’ve got this covered. And I’m not really in the market for a sidekick.”

“Who said I was a sidekick?” I exclaimed, feeling totally indignant, but Batgirl was too busy leaping off the roof to hear me.

“Take that!” Batgirl yelled.

“Watch out!” I yelled.

“QUACK!” the duck yelled.

Batgirl swung back up onto the roof, cradling her left arm. “Stupid ducks.”

“I told you not to hurt them. They’re probably as terrified that they’re this size as anyone else is. We need to find a way to round them up without freaking them out even more.”

Batgirl stopped cradling her arm and pressed a button on her wrist. “Hey, O? Any updates?” she asked. Whoever “O” was, they must have replied through a private communicator, because Batgirl nodded and kept talking. “So they’re just ducks of unusual size. Got it. I’ll… figure something out.”

She turned back to me. “Ok, since you’re the one with the bright ideas, what’s your suggestion?”

I shrugged. I hadn’t really come up with a plan yet, and she wasn’t exactly inspiring me to be nice. “I don’t know, don’t you have, like, some Bat-Duck-Repellent in your utility belt?”

She scoffed. “You watch too much TV.”

“I’m not the one covered in tiny pouches,” I pointed out. “How do you even get to the ones on the back of your leg?”

“They’re functional!”

“My best friend is from an alternate universe where people wore nothing but pouches, and even she thinks they’re dumb.” Rikki had even been the one to suggest that I ditch the last of the pouches I used to wear. Not that Batgirl needed to know that.

“Look, you wanted to help, didn’t you?” Batgirl said, tapping her foot on the rooftop. “Why don’t you stop snarking and help me come up with a real plan?”

“Sorry. I’m just a little tired of blonde white girls being rude to me today, whether I’m asking for help or offering it.”

Batgirl looked surprised for a second, then switched to biting her lip and looking guilty. “I’m sorry. Really. I may possibly have some trust issues. And some sidekick issues.” She held out a hand. “Truce?”

I’d never been good at holding a grudge, and Batgirl seemed genuinely sorry. “Truce,” I agreed, shaking her hand and shooting her a smile. “So if you don’t have Bat-Duck-Repellent, what do you have?”

“Well, the reason I was kicking the ducks is that I’ve got some Bat-Tranquilizers I can use on them,” Batgirl said. “But I don’t have a lot, and I can’t fire them from far away. We need to find a way get close enough to the ducks to inject them without getting trampled under a sea of feathers.”

“Hmm,” I said, looking around at the surrounding buildings. “I think I might have an idea. Do you know if there’s a dining hall around here?”

“A dining hall? Yeah, right over there. Why?”

“You’ll see.”

A minute later, we were running through the kitchen of the Wayne-Kane dining hall, pushing confused students aside and snatching up loaves of bread from the breakfast bar. “Excuse us, superheroines on a mission coming through!” I shouted.

“We’ll put everything back after we stop the giant duck attack!” Batgirl added.

Back in the courtyard we found the ducks chasing each other in circles, flapping their wings and fluttering a few inches from the ground. It was obvious that they couldn’t fly at this mass, but they were still trying.

“On three?” I asked.

Batgirl grinned. “One, two… THREE!”

Arms loaded with loaves of bread, we both leapt off the roof into the courtyard, swinging down on grappling and web lines. “Here you go, Donald!” I yelled, tossing an unwrapped loaf at the closest duck. He immediately lifted his head and ran toward the loaf, happily tearing into it with his giant beak.

“It’s working!” I called, as Batgirl beckoned the second duck toward her with her own loaf.

Pretty soon, all three ducks were happily munching on bread, ignoring us entirely in favor of the meal. Batgirl reached into one of her pouches and took out three syringes of tranquilizers, handing one to me and keeping the other two for herself. Within seconds, all three ducks had fallen sleepily to the ground, their feathery heads cushioned by uneaten bread slices.

The cops burst onto the scene a moment later, guns drawn, hauling a disgruntled-looking man in a lab coat behind them. But the second they saw the sleeping ducks they lowered their weapons. “Good job, girls. We’ve got an antidote here. These ducks will be living a normal life again by tomorrow.”

“Which is more than I can say for this guy,” a second cop said, nudging the scientist. “Trying to take over the world with giant ducks. That one’s new, even for Gotham.”

I smiled. “Thank you, officers,” I said. Then I turned to Batgirl. “See? Aren’t teamups awesome?”

She smiled back. “I’m beginning to reconsider my position on them,” she agreed. She gave a little wave. “It was great to meet you, Spider-Girl.” And then she swung off onto a roof and out of sight.

The cops seemed to have the scene in hand, so I said my farewells to the ducks and went back to the spot where I’d ditched my regular clothes. Once I was back to being ordinary Anya Sofia Corazon, all-American teenager, I wandered back out onto the grounds of the campus, wondering how I could possibly kill the next few hours after the bizarre excitement of the afternoon.

Before I had time to make a decision, though, the girl with the psych textbook from earlier suddenly reappeared, walking up to me and looking a little embarrassed.

“Hey. Anya, right? I wanted to apologize for being such a jerk earlier. I was really just totally stressed about my psych test. Now that it’s, um, over, can I make it up to you? Give you a tour or something?” She held out her hand. “My name’s Stephanie.”

~*~

Later that evening, as we were driving home over the George Washington Bridge, Dad turned to me from the driver’s seat. “So, did you have a good time? No problems, I hope.”

“Nope, none at all. The campus is great, and so are the people. I just don’t think I’ll be able to eat duck l’orange for awhile.”

Dad raised an eyebrow. “I’m better off not asking, aren’t I?”

I laughed. “Well. Let’s just say the day started out a little fowl.”

fic, dc, marvel, comics

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