Max's Granny Goodness

[moonshadows]

One ring. Two. “Who is this?”

“Hey, Mandy. It’s Max.” She grinned broadly in anticipation of outrage, and she wasn’t disappointed.

“My name is Amanda,” the old woman snarled coldly.

“Unless you want certain people guessing who I’m talking to,” Max said sweetly, “it’s Mandy.”

Angry breath whistled in, out, in. “Fine. Ms. Gibson, I presume.”

“You got it!” Max grinned at the empty playground as she began pumping the swing, reveling in the smooth feeling of power as she defied gravity with nothing but muscles and willpower. “Go ahead and trace the phone; it’s a prepaid disposable, anonymous creds. All you’ll find is that I’m in Gotham, and you already knew that.”

Amanda Waller, head of the Batman Beyond Project, said, “Not very trusting, Maxine.”

“Yeah, Dad’s kinda paranoid. Crotchety, too, but I hear he was like that most of his life. Anyway, the paranoia is something I got from him. But you already knew that, too.”

 “I did tell you that you would have made an excellent Batman,” Waller said mildly.

“Mm-hmm. Dad agrees with you. By the way…” Max grinned toothily, knowing it would seep into her tone. “You really ought to be glad that Dad believes in children getting a clear shot at vengeance; it means he’s promised to not lift a finger against you. He’s really slagged at you.”

“We’ve never exactly seen eye to eye,” she replied dryly.

“Yeah, but this goes beyond that. You hurt kids, Mandy. He hates that. It was actually the first thing we bonded over: how much we both wanted to find you and hurt you for ruining my childhood.”

“Your childhood? Not your family?”

There was an edge in the words that made Max feel a whisper of what it must be like to be Batman and have your prey in your sights, quivering like a mouse staring at a snake.

“The man was never my father. My sister will suffer slowly for her part in things, watching her little cuckoo sister thrive and be amazing instead of dying quietly like a good little family-wrecking parasite.”

Waller wasn’t impressed by her neutrally cheerful tone. “And your mother?”

“She wasn’t family to you,” Max countered sweetly. “Why should she be family to me?”

Silence. The swing went higher, hung in the air, fell, and with fierce exultation she forced it down through its arc and higher still.

“You didn’t think I’d find that, did you?”

“I’m impressed. Very well done, Maxine. Yes, I gave her up for adoption and you are my biological grandchild.”

“Are you proud of me?” Max asked, suddenly so furious that it made her voice deceptively quiet.

“Extremely.” She sounded smug. “Especially after the disappointment your mother was.”

“You were counting on me finding that link,” she said softly, eyes staring blindly, legs pumping mechanically. “You hoped that when I found you, the biological connection would tie me to you.”

“You exceeded all my expectations, Maxine.” Waller probably thought that voice sounded kindly.

“Too bad I found my father first, and the biological connection tied me to him.”

The silence this time was uncertain, afraid.

“I haven’t told Dad what you did to your own daughter. He doesn’t kill, but we all know there’s plenty of fates worse than death.” She paused, channeling her rage into arms, legs, back, the arc of swing and chain. “I’m going into the Justice League after I graduate. Superman already sees me as a foster daughter. You really messed up your analysis of the Justice Lords scenario, you know.”

“Do tell.” The words were clipped and cold.

“What triggered the other Superman going off the deep end was grief. The death of someone he cared personally about. A death that could have been prevented if he hadn’t respected life more than that Luthor did. A death that could have been prevented if he’d just made sure Luthor could never harm anyone else again. The others went along half out of fear, because fighting Superman isn’t something a sane person wants to do, and half out of feeling that he was right because time and time again they stopped the bad guy and handed him over to the government for punishment and safekeeping – and then had to watch as the government failed to do its part and keep the bad guy from hurting people again. You know what turned it around and saved our world?”

“We struck a deal with Luthor,” Waller snapped.

“You did, but that’s not what turned it around.” Legs out, hang, legs back, fall. “It was my father. He made his alternate see that what the Justice Lords were doing was wrong. The two of them freed the rest of the League and brought them back here to fight their counterparts. It was Batman who pointed out they couldn’t win fighting against themselves when the Justice Lords were willing to kill. But instead of trying to recruit Batman, you treated him like the enemy.” Whoosh down, legs straight, arms burning, hang in the air. “Maybe if you’d been polite, he would have told you that he’d planned ways to take each member of the League down in case they turned or were turned against us. Maybe if you had profiled supers and metas like he did instead of just being scared of them, a lot of money and time and lives could have been saved.”

“What’s your point, Maxine?”

She sounded angry. Too bad. “My point is that Batman won, and you lost, and you’re so stuck in your own view of the world that you can’t even see it. You’ll never get me on your side, but you’ll keep trying because you see so much of yourself in me and you don’t see how much more of my dad there is because you couldn’t be bothered to really figure him out. You’ve lost control of the new Batman. If he ever finds out who you are, I’m going to have a heck of a time keeping him off your back. I’m joining the Justice League. Superman’s already started transferring his emotional connection with my father over to me; if anything untimely should happen to me, you better pray Dad’s still alive to keep Superman from snapping like the other one did, ‘cuz I hear Big Blue’s not real fond of you after some of the things you did. Just a friendly warning.”

“How kind of you,” Waller said dryly.

“Oh, and don’t worry about Superman turning or being turned against Earth. Dad always held himself responsible for that if it ever happened, because no one sane wants to fight Superman but it takes a special kind of crazy to be Batman for more than a year and not snap, much less be able to out-maneuver and stare down supers and metas, and that responsibility is another thing I inherited from him.”

“Was there anything else?” The words emerged from between clenched teeth.

“Yeah, one last thing. The other Beyond Project kids? Hands off.”

“Or what?”

“Or I blow your cover.” It really was a beautiful day. “I’ve got everything in place; all I need is a reason. So hands off my siblings, Granny Goodness, or you’ll find out just how much like my father I am.”

Max’s feet skidded in the playground gravel as she slowed herself to a hard but controlled stop and hung up, then unplugged the earpiece from the phone. The card containing the record of the conversation went into one pocket; the phone itself went into the trash.

Whistling, Max left the playground and activated her music player, skip-dancing and scuffing her feet rhythmically as the track resumed.

I will never be what you want, and that’s alright. I’ll play my own damn tune. I’ll shine like the moon. And very soon, I’ll soon fly over you. And what you gonna do, when I fly over you? Tell me – who made you the center of the universe?