Random Wren because...
The first time Batman met Annabelle Smith was over the unconscious body of Zsasz. She had knocked the lunitic out, not him. The little slip of a girl had dropped down out of nowhere, hit him in the head, and yelled "TAG." She then carved a fifth tally mark just under his left eye. The other four were barely scabbed over.
She was using a bat-rang to do the carving. Red Robin's missing cape draped over her shoulder like a blanket. When he tried to talk to her, she yelled something about being dead and that this is her world. That she was finally home and in hell.
"You're too old and too fat," was the last thing he heard as the little slip of a girl slipped out of his grasp. She disappeared into the shadows and a crack in a wall that should have been too small for even her to get through. After a night of hunting, he finally found the tracers he planted on the child. One on a feral, starving dog wandering the island. The second on dead bodies. They were in advance stages of decomposition and had been hidden quite well. Batman couldn't feel anything but admiration for the child. She was something special.
The first time NIghtwing met Annabelle Smith, she led him through a marry chase over building, under buildings, through buildings. She moved with a grace and lithe that made his bones and joints ache, remembering his own time as a child learning how to fly about the circus tent. The first few furious minutes had been just about catching her, catching up and helping her. But after that brief run, he figured out she was really kind of playing roof tag. The route seemed familiar, pinging on his senses until he had to take a breathy pause. (She was a fast little devil. And she had some of the abandoned grapple hooks they'd left behind.)
He was laughing too hard to follow. She was taking him on the same route that he had used with Batgirl the week prior. They had all taken turns touring the island since The Attack. Him and Batgirl (Steph, not Barbara) had taken a brake and played roof tag after stopping for a refuel snack.
Annabelle, noticing that he'd stopped, had come back to stare at him with her silver eyes. Her head tilted to the side like a bird watching him, using one eye, not two. He realized that she wasn't going to come quietly and he kind of gave up on the idea of rescuing her. Instead, he would figure her out.
It wasn't easy. She talked in fragmented sentences and vivid imagery. She explained that she was dead here. She had died and she was no longer afraid. While talking, Annabelle Smith did hand stands and flips on the side of the building they had stopped on. She walked the edge of the roof like it wasn't there and she told him that she had wanted to be an Olympic gymnast or a cheerleader like her sisters and cousin but was too afraid of falling and getting hurt but since she was now dead, she wasn't afraid. And yeah, she was dead but she could still be hurt, hurt really bad but everything made sense now that she was dead. She also explained that she could watch how someone moved, how they could jump and curl and fly like he could and she can feel it in her bones. She could fly like them now.
It was spooky to talk to her. She quoted Shakespeare and called the bard a hack before rattling off the "To be or not to be" speech like someone reciting a grocery list. She said something in Chinese that actually translated to "fried rice, mild sauce, crab ran-goon" and "you can spit in his food. He's an idiot and never tips." She also quoted part of his discussion with Batman from a foray into the island about a month ago.
At one point she had stopped, petted his stomach and said she was hungry too. (He had been about to pull out the power bars and offer to share.) They had run off into the night to find food. She stole some pigeon eggs from some nests on their way over to the wild side of the island. There she picked fruit from Poison Ivy's plants. The pre-teen explained that half the fruit was poisonous and would kill you and that the plant would eat the corpse. The other half of the plant's fruits weren't poisonous because if the birds and animals learned the fruit was poisonous, they would stop eating the fruit. She also explained that she picked one fruit and cut it up (using a bat-rang) to leave for the birds. The plant was rather full from eating somebody (a prisoner, she tugged at a piece of orange jump suit peaking out between the vines. If she hadn't pulled it out, you would never have known it was there.) and the birds would eat the cut fruit first. That was her way of apologizing to the plant for eating its fruit. She was teaching the birds to eat the fruit 'cause it was harmless so that when the plant wasn't full, the birds would come back eating the poisoned fruit and feed the plant.
Annabelle Smith then shared her meal with him. Cooking the eggs and fruit and some herbs into a sort of omelet. She had some mustard but she didn't like it very much and she'd already used up all the ketchup. She had cooked the omelet in a metal office drawer over one of the few working florescent bulbs in an abandoned building. They ate the omelets at another location, at her nest she had built in a disintegrating office building. She'd made a little nest in the drop ceiling, pulling up a few boards to make a base over the struts. Using plastic sheeting and old clothing as lining for her little nest. She'd offered him the last fruit, something she had taken a bite of when they had gathered the fruit. She had spit out a piece for the birds. Then they had curled up to sleep, the Red Robin cape tucked around them, keeping them warm.
Nightwing woke up hours later with a cold spot on his chest where the pre-teen had curled up. The cape was also gone. His head felt fuzzy and strange. It wasn't a surprise when he had the fruit core tested that it was poisonous. Apparently there were three types of fruits. One that would kill you, one that was safe to eat, both from the same plant. A neighboring plant that also bore fruit that had a soporific effect. The little minx had poisoned him and slipped away.
The first time Robin, aka Damian Wayne met Annabelle Smith, she hit him in the head. She fired a grappling gun straight between his eyes. He doesn't remember anything after that. The second time he met her, she cut him up using a thin metal wire with glass tied to the length of it. It took 3 bottles of liquid stitch to close all the cuts. The third time they yelled at each other in Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and a few other. It was clear to him that she had no idea what she was saying, just parroting things back at him. When he got close to her, she hit him in the face with a sock full of Poison Ivy pollen then pushed him off the building. He broke both his legs in the fall and had to suffer the indignity of being rescued by Nightwing and Red Robin while extremely horny. He didn't think it could have gotten any worse. That was until Alfred had to set his legs while he had a raging hard-on. Next time he saw Annabelle Smith, she was dead cause he was going to wring her scrawny neck.
The first time Red Robin met Annabelle Smith was hours after The Attack. He was tired and sore and he really wanted to get off that island. They were still in the efforts of rescuing survivors and he'd been sweeping the tunnels, half way through his grid search. She had appeared out of the darkness, pale and quiet. He didn't even know she was there until she'd grabbed his hand, slipping her tiny fingers into his. She didn't respond or give any notion that she knew he was there other then her little hand in his, not wanting to let go. She was soaking wet. He had set her down, wrapped up in his cape as he cleaned her hands and feet which had been torn up moving through the tunnels. The only clothing she wore was a thin hospital gown and a pair of dirty panties. There was blood on her, drying and cloying but too much to wipe away. And there were finger shaped bruises forming around her neck. Not a word or a noise passed her lips, even when he sprayed her wounds with antiseptics. He wrapped her hands and feet, talking to her the whole time. There was no indication that she heard a word he said.
After taking care of her wounds, he tried to give her some food and water from his belt but she ignored it, only pulling the cape tight around her and slipping her tiny hand back into his own. She started leading him somewhere, her footsteps sure in the darkness as he fumbled with the flashlight. He tried stopping her but she kept trying to lead him somewhere. He tried picking her up to move her bodily to the closest rescue point but she'd twisted and turned in his arms like a disgruntled cat until he had to put her down or drop her. Annabelle Smith led him over and around, sure footed until he heard something. It was only a momentary distraction, he could hear some frightened people telling someone. No. Begging someone not to hurt them. The little hand slipped out of his in that moment and when he turned around, the slip of a girl was gone.
The second time Red Robin met Annabelle Smith was about an hour later. He was in that crystal clear moment of injury right before shock set in, before the pain would fuzz everything up. He'd been making a sweep in the area where he'd lost the girl and run across some more prisoner. It was only a couple and he was handling it brilliantly before the floor beneath caved in. He had only a moment after the cave in to realize he was in serious trouble, his left hip immobilized, like it was frozen in place and that the prisoners were still conscious and unharmed. Red Robin hit his distress beacon, mad with hope that someone reached him in time as he watched the orange, jump suited figures loom over him. A flash of something and then there was Annabelle Smith, exactly like before, wraith like in her blood spattered hospital gown. His cape in her grasp but heavy with rocks. She'd used his cape, filling it with rocks then hitting a prisoner in the head so hard it exploded. She yelled at the second prisoner so loudly, so viscously, like her own voice was a weapon. The coward ran.
Shock was settling in as he assessed his injuries. Time became distorted as he figured out that he'd landed on some exposed re-bar which had punctured his suit in three places. His hand came back with warm, wet blood as he explored the puncture sites. He wasn't ever sure but he things he handed the laser cutting torch to the child, telling her to cut the re-bar. Instead she held the torch to the exposed ends until the metal melted and the whole bar glowed like fire. Red Robin screamed but he's pretty sure she screamed right along with him. He must have blacked out from the pain because the next clear thought he had was being dragged along, in fits and starts with his cape under him. It was sheer determination that got him to his feet as she helped him stumble along. He was able to turn on the emergency communicator he kept in his belt, the other lost during the fight or the fall. Everything was a jumble of pain and Oracle whispering in his ear and the small hand stroking his cheek and him bouncing off walls and floor and ceiling and then big, blue arms lifting him into the sky like he was going to heaven.
He woke two days later asking about the slip of a girl. Nobody knew what he was talking about. Damian argued that he'd dreamed her up.
He didn't. Red Robin knew he didn't.
The first time Red Hood met Annabelle Smith on the island, she was throwing bricks at his head. It was his own fault, he was reading "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer out loud. Roy wouldn't stop laughing as she threated to stab Jason. Maybe just a little. Starfire wasn't much help either. He threatened to keep reading the book unless she came with him. He promised to read her something of her choosing if she just went with them now. The girl had given a big, dramatic sigh, set the Twilight book on fire using Red Robin's cutting torch, and slipped her little, fragile, still wrapped in some nasty gauze, hand into his. Starfire had grabbed Jason, bridal style, while he held the child as they flew away. Roy was left behind cussing at them and throwing rocks and threatening to kill them all.
(I have more of this story later. But first.)
The first time Superman met Annabelle Smith, she hit him with a bag of rocks and ran off. He's never quite sure how she was able to hide from him but he couldn't find her no matter how hard he looked.
The first time Wonder Woman met Annabelle Smith... Well. Amazons never talked about nor discussed it. The 'incident' had something to do with clearing out the island before the US Government bombed it out of existence. There had been a couple patrols of US Marines, Seals, and Army Rangers as well as a couple of her Amazon sisters. They had been asked to help with the rescue effort since Batman and his group had yet to find the child. The slip of a girl had yelled something about breaking guns before they were doused in ketchup. It didn't end there. Next she had thrown a couple of Poison Ivy pods at them, the golden dust filling the air like glitter in a snow globe. The POINTEDLY did not nor ever talked about what happened next. Ketchup had been banned from Paradise island forever and no matter how many times Diana washed her clothes, they still smelled like the condiment. They later found a pit of guns covered in the sticky remains of 6 gallons tins of ketchup laying over the top. Not all the weapons found were from that day. Some of them were the tranc guns and fire arms of the guards and also what looked like a shipment smuggled onto the island. Their swords bent and useless in the mess too. They weren't sure how she'd done it and had consulted Hephaestus. The lame god had laughed and refused to tell them how, only saying that it took a special kind of creativity to even think of bending their swords using that method.
When Martian Manhunter tried scanning the island for the child, all he'd gotten was a big headache. Scanning for her mind was like opening his mind at a Rave, all color and impressions in a cacophony of sound.
The Green Lanterns weren't scared. They were just cautious, which is understandable considering what happened to the Birds of Prey, the Flashes, and Green Arrow. Sure, they had apprehended some major psychos but they never did catch up with the child. They were about to go en-force when Red Hood and his Outlaws found the child.
She was using a bat-rang to do the carving. Red Robin's missing cape draped over her shoulder like a blanket. When he tried to talk to her, she yelled something about being dead and that this is her world. That she was finally home and in hell.
"You're too old and too fat," was the last thing he heard as the little slip of a girl slipped out of his grasp. She disappeared into the shadows and a crack in a wall that should have been too small for even her to get through. After a night of hunting, he finally found the tracers he planted on the child. One on a feral, starving dog wandering the island. The second on dead bodies. They were in advance stages of decomposition and had been hidden quite well. Batman couldn't feel anything but admiration for the child. She was something special.
The first time NIghtwing met Annabelle Smith, she led him through a marry chase over building, under buildings, through buildings. She moved with a grace and lithe that made his bones and joints ache, remembering his own time as a child learning how to fly about the circus tent. The first few furious minutes had been just about catching her, catching up and helping her. But after that brief run, he figured out she was really kind of playing roof tag. The route seemed familiar, pinging on his senses until he had to take a breathy pause. (She was a fast little devil. And she had some of the abandoned grapple hooks they'd left behind.)
He was laughing too hard to follow. She was taking him on the same route that he had used with Batgirl the week prior. They had all taken turns touring the island since The Attack. Him and Batgirl (Steph, not Barbara) had taken a brake and played roof tag after stopping for a refuel snack.
Annabelle, noticing that he'd stopped, had come back to stare at him with her silver eyes. Her head tilted to the side like a bird watching him, using one eye, not two. He realized that she wasn't going to come quietly and he kind of gave up on the idea of rescuing her. Instead, he would figure her out.
It wasn't easy. She talked in fragmented sentences and vivid imagery. She explained that she was dead here. She had died and she was no longer afraid. While talking, Annabelle Smith did hand stands and flips on the side of the building they had stopped on. She walked the edge of the roof like it wasn't there and she told him that she had wanted to be an Olympic gymnast or a cheerleader like her sisters and cousin but was too afraid of falling and getting hurt but since she was now dead, she wasn't afraid. And yeah, she was dead but she could still be hurt, hurt really bad but everything made sense now that she was dead. She also explained that she could watch how someone moved, how they could jump and curl and fly like he could and she can feel it in her bones. She could fly like them now.
It was spooky to talk to her. She quoted Shakespeare and called the bard a hack before rattling off the "To be or not to be" speech like someone reciting a grocery list. She said something in Chinese that actually translated to "fried rice, mild sauce, crab ran-goon" and "you can spit in his food. He's an idiot and never tips." She also quoted part of his discussion with Batman from a foray into the island about a month ago.
At one point she had stopped, petted his stomach and said she was hungry too. (He had been about to pull out the power bars and offer to share.) They had run off into the night to find food. She stole some pigeon eggs from some nests on their way over to the wild side of the island. There she picked fruit from Poison Ivy's plants. The pre-teen explained that half the fruit was poisonous and would kill you and that the plant would eat the corpse. The other half of the plant's fruits weren't poisonous because if the birds and animals learned the fruit was poisonous, they would stop eating the fruit. She also explained that she picked one fruit and cut it up (using a bat-rang) to leave for the birds. The plant was rather full from eating somebody (a prisoner, she tugged at a piece of orange jump suit peaking out between the vines. If she hadn't pulled it out, you would never have known it was there.) and the birds would eat the cut fruit first. That was her way of apologizing to the plant for eating its fruit. She was teaching the birds to eat the fruit 'cause it was harmless so that when the plant wasn't full, the birds would come back eating the poisoned fruit and feed the plant.
Annabelle Smith then shared her meal with him. Cooking the eggs and fruit and some herbs into a sort of omelet. She had some mustard but she didn't like it very much and she'd already used up all the ketchup. She had cooked the omelet in a metal office drawer over one of the few working florescent bulbs in an abandoned building. They ate the omelets at another location, at her nest she had built in a disintegrating office building. She'd made a little nest in the drop ceiling, pulling up a few boards to make a base over the struts. Using plastic sheeting and old clothing as lining for her little nest. She'd offered him the last fruit, something she had taken a bite of when they had gathered the fruit. She had spit out a piece for the birds. Then they had curled up to sleep, the Red Robin cape tucked around them, keeping them warm.
Nightwing woke up hours later with a cold spot on his chest where the pre-teen had curled up. The cape was also gone. His head felt fuzzy and strange. It wasn't a surprise when he had the fruit core tested that it was poisonous. Apparently there were three types of fruits. One that would kill you, one that was safe to eat, both from the same plant. A neighboring plant that also bore fruit that had a soporific effect. The little minx had poisoned him and slipped away.
The first time Robin, aka Damian Wayne met Annabelle Smith, she hit him in the head. She fired a grappling gun straight between his eyes. He doesn't remember anything after that. The second time he met her, she cut him up using a thin metal wire with glass tied to the length of it. It took 3 bottles of liquid stitch to close all the cuts. The third time they yelled at each other in Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, and a few other. It was clear to him that she had no idea what she was saying, just parroting things back at him. When he got close to her, she hit him in the face with a sock full of Poison Ivy pollen then pushed him off the building. He broke both his legs in the fall and had to suffer the indignity of being rescued by Nightwing and Red Robin while extremely horny. He didn't think it could have gotten any worse. That was until Alfred had to set his legs while he had a raging hard-on. Next time he saw Annabelle Smith, she was dead cause he was going to wring her scrawny neck.
The first time Red Robin met Annabelle Smith was hours after The Attack. He was tired and sore and he really wanted to get off that island. They were still in the efforts of rescuing survivors and he'd been sweeping the tunnels, half way through his grid search. She had appeared out of the darkness, pale and quiet. He didn't even know she was there until she'd grabbed his hand, slipping her tiny fingers into his. She didn't respond or give any notion that she knew he was there other then her little hand in his, not wanting to let go. She was soaking wet. He had set her down, wrapped up in his cape as he cleaned her hands and feet which had been torn up moving through the tunnels. The only clothing she wore was a thin hospital gown and a pair of dirty panties. There was blood on her, drying and cloying but too much to wipe away. And there were finger shaped bruises forming around her neck. Not a word or a noise passed her lips, even when he sprayed her wounds with antiseptics. He wrapped her hands and feet, talking to her the whole time. There was no indication that she heard a word he said.
After taking care of her wounds, he tried to give her some food and water from his belt but she ignored it, only pulling the cape tight around her and slipping her tiny hand back into his own. She started leading him somewhere, her footsteps sure in the darkness as he fumbled with the flashlight. He tried stopping her but she kept trying to lead him somewhere. He tried picking her up to move her bodily to the closest rescue point but she'd twisted and turned in his arms like a disgruntled cat until he had to put her down or drop her. Annabelle Smith led him over and around, sure footed until he heard something. It was only a momentary distraction, he could hear some frightened people telling someone. No. Begging someone not to hurt them. The little hand slipped out of his in that moment and when he turned around, the slip of a girl was gone.
The second time Red Robin met Annabelle Smith was about an hour later. He was in that crystal clear moment of injury right before shock set in, before the pain would fuzz everything up. He'd been making a sweep in the area where he'd lost the girl and run across some more prisoner. It was only a couple and he was handling it brilliantly before the floor beneath caved in. He had only a moment after the cave in to realize he was in serious trouble, his left hip immobilized, like it was frozen in place and that the prisoners were still conscious and unharmed. Red Robin hit his distress beacon, mad with hope that someone reached him in time as he watched the orange, jump suited figures loom over him. A flash of something and then there was Annabelle Smith, exactly like before, wraith like in her blood spattered hospital gown. His cape in her grasp but heavy with rocks. She'd used his cape, filling it with rocks then hitting a prisoner in the head so hard it exploded. She yelled at the second prisoner so loudly, so viscously, like her own voice was a weapon. The coward ran.
Shock was settling in as he assessed his injuries. Time became distorted as he figured out that he'd landed on some exposed re-bar which had punctured his suit in three places. His hand came back with warm, wet blood as he explored the puncture sites. He wasn't ever sure but he things he handed the laser cutting torch to the child, telling her to cut the re-bar. Instead she held the torch to the exposed ends until the metal melted and the whole bar glowed like fire. Red Robin screamed but he's pretty sure she screamed right along with him. He must have blacked out from the pain because the next clear thought he had was being dragged along, in fits and starts with his cape under him. It was sheer determination that got him to his feet as she helped him stumble along. He was able to turn on the emergency communicator he kept in his belt, the other lost during the fight or the fall. Everything was a jumble of pain and Oracle whispering in his ear and the small hand stroking his cheek and him bouncing off walls and floor and ceiling and then big, blue arms lifting him into the sky like he was going to heaven.
He woke two days later asking about the slip of a girl. Nobody knew what he was talking about. Damian argued that he'd dreamed her up.
He didn't. Red Robin knew he didn't.
The first time Red Hood met Annabelle Smith on the island, she was throwing bricks at his head. It was his own fault, he was reading "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer out loud. Roy wouldn't stop laughing as she threated to stab Jason. Maybe just a little. Starfire wasn't much help either. He threatened to keep reading the book unless she came with him. He promised to read her something of her choosing if she just went with them now. The girl had given a big, dramatic sigh, set the Twilight book on fire using Red Robin's cutting torch, and slipped her little, fragile, still wrapped in some nasty gauze, hand into his. Starfire had grabbed Jason, bridal style, while he held the child as they flew away. Roy was left behind cussing at them and throwing rocks and threatening to kill them all.
(I have more of this story later. But first.)
The first time Superman met Annabelle Smith, she hit him with a bag of rocks and ran off. He's never quite sure how she was able to hide from him but he couldn't find her no matter how hard he looked.
The first time Wonder Woman met Annabelle Smith... Well. Amazons never talked about nor discussed it. The 'incident' had something to do with clearing out the island before the US Government bombed it out of existence. There had been a couple patrols of US Marines, Seals, and Army Rangers as well as a couple of her Amazon sisters. They had been asked to help with the rescue effort since Batman and his group had yet to find the child. The slip of a girl had yelled something about breaking guns before they were doused in ketchup. It didn't end there. Next she had thrown a couple of Poison Ivy pods at them, the golden dust filling the air like glitter in a snow globe. The POINTEDLY did not nor ever talked about what happened next. Ketchup had been banned from Paradise island forever and no matter how many times Diana washed her clothes, they still smelled like the condiment. They later found a pit of guns covered in the sticky remains of 6 gallons tins of ketchup laying over the top. Not all the weapons found were from that day. Some of them were the tranc guns and fire arms of the guards and also what looked like a shipment smuggled onto the island. Their swords bent and useless in the mess too. They weren't sure how she'd done it and had consulted Hephaestus. The lame god had laughed and refused to tell them how, only saying that it took a special kind of creativity to even think of bending their swords using that method.
When Martian Manhunter tried scanning the island for the child, all he'd gotten was a big headache. Scanning for her mind was like opening his mind at a Rave, all color and impressions in a cacophony of sound.
The Green Lanterns weren't scared. They were just cautious, which is understandable considering what happened to the Birds of Prey, the Flashes, and Green Arrow. Sure, they had apprehended some major psychos but they never did catch up with the child. They were about to go en-force when Red Hood and his Outlaws found the child.