Chapter 19: Batgirl

On a Wednesday in January, Beta, Kasumi, Kara and I took the afternoon off to look at real estate.

When I had first started on this adventure to recreate fictional women for my own pleasure and company, I had built a rather large house to accommodate everyone. I hate the word mansion, but that's basically what it was. Three above-ground floors plus a large (and secure) basement. It had fourteen bedrooms and was currently laid out to comfortably hold up to 22 people. (It was originally arranged for 21, but we converted one twin bedroom to a triple when we added the Powerpuff Girls.) Since Jasmine and Elisa had moved out and She-Hulk, Storm and Kitty Pryde had moved in a few months ago, it currently held 18 people (if you don't include Alpha or Alphadroid Dorothy), soon to be 19.

The house still had enough room, but it was starting to feel a bit cramped and full. While we had enough land to expand the house a bit, it seemed like it might be nice to expand more than just 'a bit'.

Fortunately, a number of AARD projects were starting to pay off significantly. Our movie had just premiered at Sundance, so the funds from that had not started to come in, but the hair replacement formula had finally been approved for sale (prescription-only for now). That plus a couple dozen other projects and patents reaching the public led us to anticipate at least $100 million in net income for the upcoming fiscal year. (Heck, the hair replacement formula by itself should conservatively give us that much in a year and a half. No surgery and quick, guaranteed, easily seen results ... It was selling like hotcakes.)

So here we were, looking at Alpha's top three choices for new locations. This particular site looked the worst in its current state but was easily the largest and had the most potential. It felt like an absolutely huge spread at roughly four square miles located about twenty minutes outside the DFW Metroplex with the land fenced in for cattle and horses. The house and barn were in terrible condition, but we would just tear them down to build our own structures anyway. It had multiple wells and a couple small streams, but the water table by the house was low enough to allow for a basement. The power lines were not entirely sufficient for our needs, but we had our own ways to supplement that.

"So what are the plans if we build here?" asked Kara.

Alpha had created rough layouts for each of the three locations, and I consulted my digital tablet.

"Well, with this one, we could end up with an actual ranch. I don't think anyone is actually interested in raising cattle, but we could easily build some nice stables for horses."

I don't know what it is about horses, but four out of five women I know go nuts for them -- women under 30, at least. Not that my women turned into squealing teeny-boppers at the idea, but Kara and Kasumi both approved the idea. Actually, thinking it over, it was entirely possible that Daria and the cyborgs were the only ones who might not care for horses, and I wasn't entirely sure that Daria couldn't be swayed. Me? I liked them well enough and could ride, or at least I had been able to ride back when I was a teenager. Absolutely hated taking care of them though. I'm not technically allergic to them, but brushing them down always sent me into sneezing fits.

I shared Alpha's layout and we walked around from one location to the next, leaving the real estate agent to walk behind us in confused silence. I'm sure we were her strangest prospective buyers so far, given that Alpha had thoroughly researched everything beforehand. We had no questions for her at all. We only needed her to provide the keys.

We toured the living area for half an hour, drove around some of the rest of the property for another half hour, then thanked our guide and went home.

Since that day happened to be Wednesday, we stopped off at the comic book store on the way for the weekly releases. Since we had eight women in residence who believed they were comic book characters (eleven if you include the PowerPuffs, who used to have their own comic), we picked up somewhere around 75% of all Marvel and DC comics so that they could keep track of things. True, their perceived timelines didn't entirely match up with the comics -- Kara alone had been 'missing' from her world for a least a couple years, yet her comic book appearances continued unabated -- but they were close enough that everyone wanted to stay up to date, even if Diana and Zatanna were the only two who actually thought they were going back and forth between the real world and their comic book world.

Recently there had been rumors of an upcoming major event in the DC Universe called Flashpoint. At that point in time, it looked like it was just going to be a standard story where time travel changes things into a strange, unfamiliar world, the heroes stop the time travel changes from happening and things return to normal. If you're familiar with the actual story, you know that's not quite true. If you're not, just hold on for a few minutes/pages.

Wonder Woman's costume had gotten a lot more discussion than Flashpoint at that time. Her official outfit had gained pants and a jacket, which had set off a fanboy war online.

Diana's opinion was that she was fine with the updates, but didn't see how they would last. Literally last, as in 'survive'.

"My clothes are both symbolic and blessed by the gods," she explained. "The only reason they survive my battles is because of that blessing. If I were to just wear normal human clothes in battle, they wouldn't last a day."

Jennifer laughed a little and offered an alternate explanation. "Blessed by the comics code is what really works. The code is the only reason most of my books avoided a Mature Readers label."

Jennifer often caused a little friction with her more 'real world' explanations of comic book happenings, but she was such a friendly, easy-going person most of the time that it never caused any real problems.

That evening, we laid everything about the possible properties out for the household and gave everyone a couple days to discuss things. Alpha sent Elisa and Jasmine to check the surrounding land for each location in a little more detail, but found no significant problems with any of them.

We eventually agreed on the horse ranch location and we bought the property a week later. Alpha provided a detailed schedule and blueprints, although Jane and I both made a few changes to Alpha's planned mansion, for both aesthetic and practical reasons.

The new house would have over three times more footage than our current house, including plans for a two-lane bowling alley, a small theater room for movies, and, of course, somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 bedrooms. It was gonna be BIG. The main house and yard area would be surrounded by a brick or stone privacy wall, and the rest would be fenced in for the horses. We'd have surveillance everywhere, both obvious and hidden.

It would take at least a year, probably two years, to have everything built -- house, garage, barn, fences, pool, generator, water tower ... even a jogging track, tennis court and greenhouse. With so much land available, Alpha and I also had a variety of other ideas too, ranging from our own small fusion reactor to secret underground labs and test facilities.

Alpha had offered possibilities such as building guest houses, turning an area near the main house into a pleasure palace or even building a small amusement park. Guest houses might be a good idea, but while I hadn't denied any of it outright, I didn't really want a Playboy-style mansion ... okay, that sounds kind of ridiculous, coming from someone in my situation. I guess I both hate such extravagance and love the idea of being able to do it. Maybe I just prefer my extravagances to be technological in nature. Too bad holodecks or their equivalents are impossible ... well, maybe not impossible forever, but at least for now.

One of the best benefits of such a large tract of a land was that it left our possibilities wide open. Heck, if I needed to, I could give all of my women their own personal house, garage and yard and still have over 90% of the land left.

Anyway, I'll describe more of the layout as needed.

I talked over the initial plans with Robert Anderson, who runs a construction firm I often use. Given the downturn in the housing market, he could gather enough crews to get it done much faster than we could have a few years earlier. I didn't even want to think about how much it would end up costing, but we actually had enough money coming in to build it without affecting AARD, where we were also planning a building expansion. Having Alpha available to create the blueprints and supervise construction helped a lot cost-wise.

Once completed, it would be relatively cheap to run, given its size. We would eventually start generating all our own electricity. We planned to build our own water tower and had a few preexisting wells to draw from. We wouldn't have much need for staff either, since we could just build Alphadroids to take care of everything.

We reached an agreement with Anderson's firm and they started clearing the land. We were building outside the city limits, so the required approvals were minimal.

(Once she heard demolition was about to begin, Jane enlisted some help and rushed over to strip the old house and barn of any interesting furniture and architectural pieces, many of which we ended up using in some fashion for the new house. Two people in her team needed tetanus shots afterwards.)

This next bit took a lot of careful crafting and manipulation. My next addition to the household had been selected, but the idea had to seem to come from other people in the house, namely my DC comic book women.

As a lead-in, we had involved them in a group discussion of how Alpha's nanites could repair bodily injuries, including severe spinal cord damage. One by one, Diana, Linda, Zatanna then finally Kara were all fed dreams and ideas. And Zatanna had finally been led to believe that she had her spells working correctly to accurately control travel between our two worlds.

That last bit was a little tricky since she was also expected to work toward helping Jennifer, Ororo and Kitty get home. The new Marvel characters had only arrived about four months back, so this next trip would be Zatanna's first 'return trip to her home universe' since their arrival. Everyone was expecting Zatanna to magically pull them from our universe to her own, and then they could be returned to the Marvel universe using the DC universe's superior technology and/or magic.

Of course, I did not want them to leave so soon, so we had decided to deal with it by simply not letting her 'spells' affect the Marvel characters. Alpha was ready to feed them some crap about how Zatanna's magic didn't resonate with either their quantum frequencies or my universe's frequency so she couldn't pull them out remotely.

Regardless, a couple weeks before Zatanna and Diana's next planned trip home, my four DC ladies scheduled a meeting with me.

Diana took the lead this time. "Frank, we'd like to ask you for a big favor."

"Sure thing," I said. Mentally I crossed my fingers. "What's the favor?"

"We'd like to ask you to help out a friend of ours."

"Who and what kind of help?"

"Someone from back home," Kara said without a lot of enthusiasm.

"She was hurt really badly a while back," added Linda. "So we'd like you to use your nanites to fix her up."

"Which also means that we'd need to bring her here for at least a few months," explained Zatanna.

"I'm open to the idea," I said amiably, "but I really want to know who and what happened to her."

"She has a secret identity, but I suppose that doesn't matter much here..." admitted Diana.

"WHO?"

"Batgirl," said Kara simply.

"Barbara Gordon," added Linda.

"Oh, yeah, the Joker shot her, right?" I asked calmly. "Isn't she Oracle now? And a paraplegic?"

"Most of the time," agreed Zatanna. "We think we can convince her to come here with us so you can repair her spine. She deserves better than what happened to her."

"Okay." I pretended to think for a minute. "All right, I'll agree as long you agree to keep visitors limited. We discussed it before, but just to remind you, I don't particularly want to become an interdimensional tourist spot. Okay?"

"Agreed," Diana said.

We shook hands on it to make it official, then I got kisses from all four of them.

I know what you're thinking. Well, some of you anyway. Doesn't Batgirl violate my character selection rules against technical geniuses/detectives? Yes, she does. BUT Alpha and I have a plan.

By the time Diana and the others asked for permission to bring Barbara to me to have her spine repaired, her body and mind were already about two-thirds completed. What's important to this part of the topic is that the construction of her body included a new type of implant. You see, a lot of our original rules were in place because we didn't know how to deal with the problems they might pose. While the rules dealing with character background and social adjustment still hold true, some of the others can now be dealt with through new technologies. She-Hulk was a rule violation that we dealt with rather simply using lies and nanites to remove the green coloring from her skin. The problems posed by Barbara Gordon required a bit more complex approach.

When needed, Alpha should be able to separate Barbara's body and brain. Her brain will receive streaming input so that she'll see and hear what we want her to see and hear. She'll be able to continue to act, but her actions will be part of an extremely realistic personal virtual reality. Her body will be subject to separate remote control by Alpha while her brain is disconnected. In theory, that is ... though Alpha was confident it would work.

We won't be able to do this all the time because it will require serious processing power from Alpha and transmission bandwidth to the implants to keep it going, but when Barbara gets nosy and starts examining Alpha's code, we will be able to show her what we want her to see. When she starts walking again and feels the urge to examine my basement lab, she'll find what we want her to find. If all goes well, we'll be able to lay her suspicions to rest and move on.

If the implants work like we hope they will, we might start using them as standard equipment, and they could allow for other character selections (e.g. Velma Dinkley). If the new implants don't work well enough to fool her, then we'll just shut Barbara down and implant the memories we want more directly. (Even if they fail in other respects, the new updated implants will greatly speed up memory rewrites.)

The other issue to be dealt with was her romantic attachment to Dick Grayson (aka Robin aka Nightwing). In the comics, they were an on-again/off-again couple and were even engaged for a while. He was too entwined in her background to remove, but it was easy to lessen their attachment. Both of them have had other lovers and other fiancees. Heck, the only reason he wasn't married to Starfire was that their wedding was disrupted by supervillain attack (a possessed Raven, if I remember correctly). All we had to do was reignite his relationship with Starfire a few months before Diana and Zatanna approached Barbara to invite her to visit my universe.

As a side note to my comments above, maybe I should point out that my new Marvel women -- Ororo, Jennifer and Kitty -- had put some of their integration plans on hold since they were waiting and hoping for Zatanna to be able to help them return home. Jennifer and Kitty had both let Alpha do the initial work to create passable student identities, but both had decided against enrolling for the spring semester.

Anna had, as she has previously stated more than once, declared that she was staying here regardless. She was happy here living with me and the others where she could finally live her life without the curse of her mutant ability.

The result was simply that the newcomers would have a bit more of a let-down, for which I would comfort them, and would not start taking classes until the fall.

A few weeks later, after the old structures on the property had been torn down but before new construction began, Diana and Zatanna disappeared on schedule and secretly reappeared in the nanopods in the basement. According to Zatanna's schedule, they would be gone for one week (during which time they would spend four months in their home universe), then they would return, bringing Barbara with them.

Their visits home were becoming routine, but little did they know that this would be their last return trip for the foreseeable future. Alpha had been filtering some of the information coming out about the Flashpoint storyline so that limited information was reaching my household. DC would not be resetting things back to normal afterwards. Instead they planned to reboot their comic book universe. (And don't give me that hogwash their editors spewed about it not being a reboot. Just because they might eventually explain why one timeline is being changed into another does not remove the 'reboot' descriptor.)

The DC Flashpoint reboot was the perfect opportunity to stop the trips home. Whatever spells Zatanna set up to pull her back to her own universe would disappear along with that universe. Whatever quantum frequency might eventually bounce Kara and Linda back to that universe would be altered by the new continuity.

I had actually seriously considered using the event as an excuse to 'evacuate' a selection of DC characters to the safety of this universe, but decided it might be a bit much to juggle. Besides, we can always bring more over later with different backstories.

After Diana and Zatanna had been gone for about five days, Kara approached me one morning after I got to work.

"Good morning, cutie," I said in greeting as she entered my office. She claims to hate it when I call her 'cutie' but she also sometimes blushes a little and occasionally has to hide a smile. This time, the serious look on her face stayed in place.

"Morning, honey," she said.

"What's wrong?"

"I tried to catch you before you left this morning, but you left a few minutes early." She stood in front of the desk, refusing my gestured offer for her to sit down.

"True." I waited while gathered her thoughts.

"I got a dream message from Zatanna last night."

Zatanna's 'dream messages' were currently her preferred method of contact across dimensions, since they required the least amount of energy for two-way contact. Or, from another perspective, they were Alpha's preferred method since it was an easily controlled method of faking a message where she didn't have to imitate anyone's voice and could control both sides of the conversation.

"And it's not good news, I take it?"

"No, not really. It's ... well ... She's been trying and she can't do anything to bring Jennifer and them to our universe. Her magic just ... just won't lock on to them for some reason."

"So they're going to be stuck here a bit longer."

"Yup."

"Have you told them yet?"

"No. I was hoping to enlist you to come with me so we could break it to them more easily."

"Of course I'll help. Alpha, are any of them at work today?"

While only Ororo officially worked at AARD, Jennifer and Kitty were known to put in some hours helping out with various projects.

This morning, none of them were at the office. I suppose that wasn't too surprising, since we only had limited work for Ororo at the moment.

At noon, we drove all the way back home for lunch, whereas normally we'd each lunch at or near the office.

As we pulled in, Alpha informed us that Ororo and Kitty were in the back yard and Jennifer was watching The Incredible Hulk (the cartoon, not the live action) in the entertainment room.

"You go grab Jennifer," I told Kara, "I'll go after Ororo and Kitty."

"No problem," she said with a tight smile.

I wandered through the house out to the back yard, where we had a swimming pool (currently closed until it was consistently warmer) and hot tub.

It was still February, but it was a fairly warm winter in Texas at the moment with the temperature up in the upper 70's ... but it was still WINTER, which is why I was surprised to see a completely naked Ororo Munroe stretched out on a deck chair, with a bikini-clad Kitty Pryde next to her. Ororo had sunglasses on and appeared to be dozing, while Kitty was engrossed in a book (if you're interested, it was Soon I Will Be Invincible, possibly the best independent piece of superhero fiction I've read).

I remembered that Storm was, especially in her early X-Men appearances, a casual nudist and thought nothing of walking around outside naked, even in mixed company.

I took a moment to enjoy the sight. Ororo has nicely large breasts which rolled slightly back and forth as she breathed, a fit, trim stomach and thighs, and a neatly trimmed bush of curly white pubic hair to match the flowing white locks that spilled down off the top edges of her reclined chair. A robe and sandals had been tossed on a nearby unoccupied chair.

Kitty wore a somewhat modest blue bikini, which did little to hide her youthful figure. She had much smaller breasts, B-cups at best, with legs slightly better toned and more athletic than Ororo's.

After a few seconds of contemplative enjoyment, I cleared my throat. Kitty jumped a little, almost dropping her book.

"Isn't it a bit cool for sunbathing?" I inquired.

"Why don't you make some noise when you walk," Kitty snapped in irritation.

"I wasn't trying to be sneaky, you were just engrossed in reading."

Without moving, Ororo answered my question, "There's no breeze back here at the moment, we have direct sunlight, and this is a nicely warm day for this time of year. I'd prefer it to be a little warmer, but this is still comfortable."

"Once you let the sun warm you up a bit, it's pretty nice," agreed Kitty.

"Well, if you're happy, I'm happy."

"So why are you here?" asked Kitty with maybe a touch of suspicion.

"Ah, yes. Could you two come inside for a minute? We have news."

"What news?" asked Kitty, not moving.

Ororo lazily sat up and stretched, giving me a nice show before reaching for her robe to cover up. "Come along, Kitty," she said.

Kitty sighed, giving in and pulling on some sweatpants and an X-Men t-shirt.

I noticed my cock had hardened into an uncomfortable position as I turned to lead them back into the house. I held the door open for the two ladies, and quickly readjusted my crotch after they passed me. I thought I had done it unnoticed, but Ororo pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and gave me a quick wink in a hallway mirror that had apparently let her witness my discomfort.

That actually struck me as a little out of character for her. Ororo's naturalism wasn't sexual in nature ... but I suppose that didn't prevent her from teasing a little bit if her nudity led there. Or maybe it was just a difference caused by her implants.

I really should talk to her about casual nudity around the house before Kasumi catches her naked some day, I thought to myself. Especially since Ororo will probably want to help with the gardening and enjoys being naked outdoors. I really should. Buuuttt ... I'm not going to.

We met up with Kara and Jennifer in the kitchen, where we all sat down at the small lunch/serving table.

"Kara," I said, prompting her to explain our mid-day visit.

Kara proceeded to explain about her dream message from Zatanna and what was said. Their reactions were fairly predictable, ranging from 'Are you sure it was a message and not just a normal dream?' to 'Why don't we just wait until they get back so we can talk to them directly?' and 'Even if it is true, it's not our only option.'

When the productive part of the conversation seemed to have finished, I said, "At any rate, that's the news we have. Anything more will have to wait until Diana and Z get back, which should theoretically be in just a couple more days."

"Thank you. We appreciate you passing along the information," said Ororo. She was definitely taking the news better than Kitty, though her thoughts were obviously a bit scattered, as evidenced by the fact that her robe had fallen open to the waist. Neither nipple was actually exposed, but I could easily make out her belly button.

"I'd like to again remind you that your situation is not horribly bad. You have a home here for as long as you need one. Also, remember that how much time you spend here is not necessarily directly correlated to how long you're gone from your Earth."

"But I don't want to be ten years older when I finally get back home, regardless of how much time has passed there," complained Kitty.

Kara and I glanced at each other.

Finally I said, "We ... we can probably help out a bit in that respect."

"How?" she asked curiously.

"Well, does Anna look much older to you? You know, compared to the last time you saw her."

There was a brief, thoughtful silence.

"I didn't really hang out with her very much," said Jennifer apologetically.

"No, she really doesn't," said Kitty.

"If anything, I'd say she looks a bit younger, but I thought that was only because she was so relaxed here," said Ororo.

"Well, she's lived here with me for about six years, and physiologically-speaking, her body is currently about 25 years old."

Which I should point is younger than she was when she arrived ... well if you subscribe to the fiction and ignore the whole artificially created aspect, though of course I didn't say any of that out loud.

"How?" asked Kitty suspiciously.

"Nanites," I said simply.

"Nanites are the equivalent of the fountain of youth?" asked Jennifer with an odd expression on her face.

"Pretty much. Aging is caused by ... well, by a few things. DNA kind of wears down as cells replicate ... do a google search for telomeres if you want details. Plus a lot of dead organic garbage builds up in your system that doesn't quite get cleaned out. Our nanites can inject little targeted chemicals to refresh your chromosomal caps, get rid of dead cells and more. Basically, once a year or so, we can put you in one of our nanopods and ... uhhh... 'freshen up' your cells."

"I tried it myself last year. It itches like crazy, under your skin where you can't get at it," said Kara with a little shiver. "Let Alpha put you to sleep first or you'll have nightmares about it. But it definitely works."

"And you've been keeping this a secret from the rest of the world?" asked Kitty with a touch of anger creeping into her voice.

"Think through the implications and consequences if we were to go public with this," I suggested. "We can talk about it more later, if you'd like."

Kitty, a lovely if obstinate young woman, seemed like she was going to protest, but Ororo put a hand on her shoulder.

I tried to keep my eyes off of Ororo's now-exposed breast as she quietly spoke to Kitty saying, "In the short term, I expect it would cause massive unrest. In the long term, it might destroy the planet from overpopulation. I'm certain there are many more issues it might cause, but I can see that much right away."