Very rough; I wrote this on the ferry.

Being hit in the head and living ten years on Earth is a very convenient explanation for why this Summer Rose is so different from whatever canon Summer Rose might be like. Then again, this Summer Rose doesn't even match what I think Summer Rose was like. I imagine her as very kind, caring, and quiet, though she'll speak up for what she believes in. This Summer Rose is dark, cynical, snarky, and loud. I don't really like this characterization, but it flows so naturally I decided to just write it anyway.

Tabula Rasa

The ones who thought they could flirt or fight their way out of it because she was a woman were the ones that pissed her off the most.

"Hey, it's real nice of them to order a stripper. Alright, let's get the show on." Ah, the classic stripper cop confusion. Too bad the guy had a good lawyer and got off under some bullshit entrapment.

"You are way too hot to be a cop." Then he grabbed her ass. Breaking his collarbone was probably a mistake, since she ended up reprimanded and the deparment had to issue an apology. She didn't understand the problem. He'd groped, she didn't like it, she responded, he paid for it.

"You think you can take me! Drop the fucking gun and fight like a man! Oh, wait, you can't, because you're a hundred twenty pound cunt. Bet you'd be real tough without your gun." She'd really, really wanted to take him up on it and show him what a fully trained Huntress- okay, that had come out of nowhere- could do, but had to settle for cinching the handcuffs extra tight.

It confused her to no end what they saw. Sure, she was attractive, but not that attractive, and there were plenty of guys that didn't like girls, liked both, or didn't know at all. Maybe she didn't look too tough, but she sure as hell was tough, and they should have known better not to judge by looks. Maybe she was overthinking it. Criminals are stupid.

She just didn't understand why they treated her differently at all, and the treatment of women throughout history confused and angered her. How half the fucking population end up universally in a position below the other half? Why did they take it?

It was a singularly odd attitude to have. She wondered if she'd been some kind of feminist crusader or something before. Or maybe she was just missing pieces from being hit in the side of the head- well, she imagined it being the side of her head, but to be fair it could have been any part of her head. It wasn't the only odd attitude she had. She believed strongly in an armed populace, and was actually surprised by New York's gun laws at first. Maybe she'd been a libertarian, too.

Or maybe not. Most things she had a sort of innate understanding of. She figured out computers quickly, for example, and knew how to use the first gun she'd been handed. She ascribed this to suppressed fragments of her previous life. It even extended to more abstract things- she knew how credits cards worked, for example.

But politics was a complete mystery. She had vague notions of loose constitutional monarchies, but there were few of those left in the world. Then again, American politics were complicated, and even people who hadn't been hit in the head barely understood them.

She was, in a way, a lot like Raven. She didn't know who the hell Raven was or what she (definitely a she) did, but she know she was like her and she hated herself for it.

The two kids in the picture, technically speaking, had a sister. Oh yeah, that had been a real fucking mess. Classic story. She was down, she was lost, she was alone. Some guy decided to be white knight, she thought they had something, she ended up pregnant, he fucked right off. To be fair, she'd been awfully complicit in it while it was going on, but it still ended up a fucking mess in the end.

Abortion had been too horrible to comprehend for her- maybe she'd been some right-wing Christian crusader before- so she carried the baby to term and then put her up for adoption. The poor girl would probably never even know who her mother was. Some piece of trash, they'd tell her. Maybe some whore from LA. Maybe they'd lie and tell her that her adopted mother was her real mother. It worked for Yang.

Abruptly, she halted her train of thought. She fished a small, worn notebook out of her desk drawer. It was where she recorded tidbitss that she could remember, if she remembered to write them down. Grabbing a pencil, she scribbled: Yang thinks her adopted mother is her real mother. Which one am I?

That was one thing that reminded her of Raven. The other was abandoning her kids after explictly promising not to. She did search for them- in fact, that had led her to the bar where she met that asshole- but never could find them. Three hundred million people in the US. They were pretty unique looking, with the red-tipped hair and the purple eyes, but those weren't natural. Well, she thought it was natural, was told it could not possibly be natural, and who the hell was she to argue? Still, nobody had ever been able to give her a straight answer about her candy-cane hair.

So, after three years down the drain, she decided to try to help people instead of chasing broken dreams and ruining lives that had barely even begun. Not even a year later, she was one of New York's finest. Well, one of New York's adequate, anyway. Even back then, they were hated, and part of her said that there was more than one good reason for it.