Veterinarians Meet Vigilante

CHAPTER 5

Gotham City
Narrows
October 2023

Venus and Juniper have a tradition of going to the Narrows the week before and the week after Halloween to help the kids with costumes and candy. So, today was volunteer day for the girls, heading down to 4th St they were very excited. This is their favorite time of the year, the joy that they bring the kids always makes them feel a bit better during the rest of the year. This year a few of the girls wanted to go as Venus and Juniper, although this costume is very hard to achieve because sadly the kids are too small to fit in the girls' clothes. However, Venus and Juniper came up with the best solution. Each little girl would choose one of their shirts along with a belt and Venus along with Juniper would secure the shirt with a belt to make a cute dress for them. Venus is the most like her mom Ivy in the fact that she is totally no bullshit and will dress however she feels at that time, which in the theme of being honest, was mostly just jeans and flannels with some cute t-shirts underneath. Juniper was the same with most things, but if they were going somewhere that required a little more dressy she would put in the effort of being more formal. In all honesty the girls really didn't care, they went for comfort over looking cute or getting attention. "Miss V? Could I use the black belt please? I think it might fit me better than the white one." Venus looked over to see Willow, a little 8 year old girl who had the most gorgeous blue eyes with brown hair. "Of course you can hun! Do you want the thinner one?" Walking over to the table where they were "displaying" all the clothes the girls had brought for the children. As she was walking over though she got the tingles on the back of her neck that would sometimes tell her that she was being watched. After grabbing the belt and helping Willow put it on, she walked over to her sister and told her she was going to scout the area because something felt off. Juniper was worried at first, but let her go anyways while she stayed with the kids because she knew Venus probably had her knives on her somewhere. So Venus started to slowly look around the little circle area they were in that was in the middle of one of the worse off neighborhoods in the narrows. She could see the silhouette of what looked to be one of the bat family members, if she had to guess it was either Robin or Red Robin by the height, on one of the house roofs. So she grabbed onto one of the fire escape ladders in the area and made her way onto the roof, once up there she started scanning the other roofs to see which one exactly he was sitting on. Turns out he was only 2 roofs over, so she decided to show off a little bit and flip her pretty way over to him. "Can I help you little bird?" She asked once she was quietly standing behind him. She almost burst out into a fit of laughter when he jumped because he had no clue that she was there. "U-uhm... No?" "Is that a question, hun? Or are we all good here?" She had to be honest with herself that he resembled Tim in a lot of ways, they were the same height and their social cues were also the same. If she really stopped to think about it, she already knows who the bats are just by analyzing their social ques, but she was way too fucking lazy to care enough to put all the information together. At this point she was 99% sure that her sister had already figured it all out, Aunt Selina definitely knew since she was doing the twisted tango with the big bat himself. "As much as I enjoy being stalked, I don't have time for bullshit today. This is my favorite day of the year birdie and you are not going to ruin it for me or my little sister. Do you understand?" She was almost growling at this point, there was no way in hell she was going to let the stupid bat clan ruin her favorite day, no chance. "Uh... I was just patrolling the area. If you don't mind me asking, why exactly is it your favorite day?" If Venus wasn't so ticked off she may have found the confusion cute, "It's volunteer day dummy. Every year on the day before and the week after Halloween my sister and I come down here to help with costumes and then the week after we come down with a shit ton of candy and make their Halloween much better." She shrugs as she says this, it may be her favorite day of the year, but she was still pissed that one of the damn bats was following her around. "Oh. That's really nice of you." He was almost whispering since he felt so bad for thinking they were up to something nefarious. "Look birdie, if you don't mind, we aren't doing anything illegal and i've got a little girl down there that wants to be exactly like me for Halloween this year. So bye!" As she said goodbye she decided she was too lazy to run across the roofs again so she just jumped off and landed in a flip, then walked back over to the kids to help Juniper again with the costumes. A couple of the boys wanted to go as part of the bat family, surprisingly the largest number wanted to go as Robin or Red Hood. So for most of the Red Hood costumes the girls had gone out and bought dirt bike helmets then spray painted them red. In all honesty the boys looked so cute and happy in their costumes, most of them had black long sleeve t-shirts because those are cheap in the narrows, so all they really needed to worry about was getting the cargo pants. Harley had said she could handle it though, as she had the idea of just getting some black jean type pants and then sewing a bunch of pockets in the side so that the kids could still use them even when Halloween was over. For the Robin costumes the girls had gone to Spirit Halloween and grabbed a bunch of dementor robes from the Harry Potter section and sewed some green fabric to the inside of the robe. The shirts and pants were the same as the Red Hood costumes which made it fairly easy to iron on an R patch to the robes as well. Once they had all of the costumes figured out, the girls gave the costumes to the parents because Halloween was in a day, then they began their journey home. This has to be their favorite tradition of all time, the kids looked forward to it every year and so did the girls. Most times they had basic clothes stocked up to make into costumes way before October just because they were so excited, sometimes they would go over and check in to see if they needed clothes for the year. Most of the kids have been shooting up like rockets, some of them had been 3 or 4 when Juniper and Venus started this tradition and were now 8 or 9. Most of their parents worked their asses off for the basics so the girls always felt that since they had more than others, the best way to help their community is to give back. They tried not to just give cash since it is still the Narrows and there are still addicts even in the best places. But by doing this small thing for them, they were making those kids' lives that much better and it made them feel relieved to know that the next generation would grow up a tiny bit better than the last had.