She was only half my size, but somehow it still felt like she somehow managed to tower over me as she looked up to me and asked, “Oy, you okay, old man?”
“Yes...I guess?” I replied mechanically, my mind still trying to process what had just happened.
“Good. You should return to your lodgings then. Before those goons show up with reinforcements. Cause I won’t be sticking around to save your bacon again.”
“Um…” I started, my mind still moving like someone had poured glue into the clockworks, when a voice within me suddenly screamed at me, “Don’t be an idiot and at least ask her name!”
Thinking back, I believe ‘the voice’ was my mind’s way of coping with this whole madness. At least I want to believe that. At least believing that is more favorable than believing that I had developed schizophrenia...though I guess that’s exactly how schizophrenia gets born. You face a situation you cannot handle and your mind just ‘splits’, so it doesn’t have to deal with it all by itself. For the record, I did hear it a few times from them, always in times of great distress, but it never stayed for tea, so I really want to believe that it was just a defense mechanism.
Though one thing is to be said, once I’m home, I’m so gonna file for PSTD therapy.
But I am getting ahead of myself again.

I eventually manage to formulate a full sentence, following the voices’ advice and asking for the young woman’s name.
She turned around and only now I started to realize that her torn clothes exposed far more skin than I considered comfortable, though she didn’t seem to mind at all.
“Selina,” she merely stated, turned around and disappeared into the night.

Selina. Of course. If I had needed any proof that this whole situation was absolutely ridiculous, this one would have done nicely. It was also the moment I decided to lay down the moniker of ‘Batman’. I was no Batman. No hero. Heck, the woman I tried to save just ended up saving me instead!
Ah yes, in case you’re not familiar with the Batman franchise, and why her mention of the name ‘Selina’ rattled me that much, I should probably mention, that ‘Selina Kyle’ is a rather prominent character in the franchise, as it is the given name of ‘Catwoman’, an attractive young thief who was obsessed with cats. And, just like this Selina here, ‘messing with her’ would fetch you a nice set of new stripes all over your face.

I took her advice and the next time the ‘league’ met, I followed up on my resolve, and introduced myself to the group more properly. The responses were mixed and some were even angry, that I gave them a wrong name to begin with. It was almost as if they couldn’t tell from the get go, that ‘Batman’ was not my real name. And nobody bothered to ask either.
When I told them what I had witnessed, Pete walked up to me, put his heavy hands on my shoulder and said, “Damn, dude. I knew you weren’t the brightest, but this really takes the cake.”
A little bewildered I asked, what he meant by that. I mean, okay, I really am not the brightest in interpersonal affairs, but it still stings getting told to the face.
“I mean okay, you’re new, but even you must know that these people never work alone, right? That there’s always a group of goons behind them, right? And from your description, you picked a fight with the largest of them all.”
“This ‘Selina’ you mentioned...” Rose, one of the few women in our group, suddenly spoke up, “What did she look like? Did she have any identifying features?”
The picture of the half-naked girl with the torn clothes flashes before my mind’s eye and I think my face flushed bright red as a direct response. At least Rose’s look of disapproval said as much. Nevertheless I shoved it back and described her the best I could, without going into to much detail.
Eventually Rose nodded and said, “She lied to you. Her name isn’t Selina.”
“It isn’t? But…” I start, when I remembered that I had only just given up a fake name myself.
Rose doesn’t wait for me to untangle my thoughts and goes on, “Her real name is ‘Martha’ and she’s the boss of ‘the sisterhood’, a women only group. They proclaim, that the men in here are filth and that the women need to stand together, so they would not be buried under all this filth. And, from what I know, she’s also an otherworld champion, just like you.”
With this additional information, it suddenly started making sense. Not only her impressive ability to fight people twice her size, but also her calling herself ‘Selina’. She must have figured that only ‘the new guy’ would be so stupid to try to help her. And word travels fast within these walls. She must have heard that I call myself ‘Batman’ and remembered the Batman stories from her own world. However this realization was followed up by another one, which gave raise to a bunch of questions I’d rather not think about. But you know how it is with these questions...the less you want to think about something, the more you end up thinking about it. Either way, at that point it was obvious that she knew who ‘Batman’ was and who was associated with him. But at the same time, she must have also known about Batman and Catwoman’s rather ‘interesting’ relationship. And yet, and even if it was just on the spur of the moment, she chose to call herself ‘Selina’. I decided to not to jump to conclusions and simply ask her the next time I would meet her. It was a small town after all, as such the chances of meeting again were rather good.
Or so I thought.

A bunch of days passed, but I never found neither hair nor hide of Selina/Martha and Rose refused to help me establish contact as well. She explained, that it was for my own good. Many men had already tried to get a hold of her, but they all ended up getting burned.
Nevertheless, I still had a job to do. I learned that the inspector would be arriving for his monthly evaluation soon and if the league wanted to be successful, I needed to figure out how to get at least the majority of those slackers and lowlifes into any condition to fight ‘for the glory of the kingdom’. At least until we got out of here.

At first I tried it with talking, but the responses was sobering.
‘Why bother? We’ve got everything we need right here.’
9/10 people whom I talked to had such responses and when I told them, that there’s an entire world waiting for all of us out there, they’d simply shrug and turn away.
It was only later that I got to realize that it was not ‘laziness’ or ‘derangement’ that kept them in this sorry state of self-pity and despair. It was something else entirely.

When the inspector came, the league waited at the entrance to our little corner of paradise to at least try to give him a good impression. Though, to be honest, the impression did not last very long. As we walked through the streets, most of the people lazed around, apparently not giving a damn. The interesting thing about it was though, that I had gotten to know most of these people already. And most were quite the busybodies, going about their daily business the best they could. But today, during the inspector’s visit, they just lounged around, putting on a display of utter decadence.
Clearly this was not an army to fight against the demon lord and the inspector did not leave a doubt about his impression after his round was done.
When the inspector was about to leave, I took my chances and asked, “My apologies, Sir. I really don’t know what got into them today. They were so lively just yesterday.”
The inspector gave me a sorry look and replied, “You’re the new guy, aren’t you? Don’t worry. You’ll get it soon, I’m sure.”
“Look, if you’d just give us a chance, we could prove to you that we are willing and ready to fight for the people of this kingdom. That’s what we are here for, right? To prepare for the war against the demon lord, right? So if they don’t want to leave, why not just take us?”
The inspector gauged me and the desperation to get out must have shown on my face.
Still, he merely shook his head and said, “We have enough soldiers, old man. What we need are heroes who can make a difference. And today, I have not seen a single hero, worth of being sent to the front line. But keep that attitude. Who knows, this town may make you a hero yet.”

And with that, he was gone, the portcullis rushing down, sealing off my path to freedom once again.
I turned around to the others of the league and asked the question that had been brewing in my mind ever since I had seen the shift in behavior of the people of this town, “What the hell is going on here?!”