Well now I want a sexy spy thriller starring Talia and Selina. Why do I do these things to myself?
Batman and related characters © DC Comics
story © RenaRoo
The Assassin and the Thief
Selina had been in precarious situations more than once — more times than she cared to note, really — but even she had to admit that this was her first time at the wrong end of a sword. Especially one so finely crafted and lovingly sharpened.
Her fingers rapped against the glass, her suit's claws clinking with each motion as she did so. She kept a coy smile, even though she didn't dare turn her head over her shoulder more than she already had. The sword was curved, but its tip most certainly was not, as was evidenced by the way that it pressed in warning against the small of her back.
Part of Selina wondered how much of that fine poke was intimidation and how much of it was as simple as testing the kevlar of her signature costume.
Given the party on the other end, she had to believe it was a bit of both.
"I wouldn't think you would be in business with someone as amoral as the Black Mask, but I suppose some of your daddy's decisions are outside of your control." Selina commented steadily, her heart rate as calm and normal as it would be during a walk in the breeze.
"Ra's al Ghul is not alive, Miss Kyle," Talia answered steadily. "And my father died long before him."
"That's the shame with fathers," Selina replied candidly. "The bad ones never seem to expire by the same date as the men they turn out to be. I'm still waiting on mine to more formally kick the bucket. Who knows what name it'll be under when it's all over and done with."
"I don't hold much regard for those who see no value in family, Miss Kyle," Talia continued, unmoving, sword unyielding.
"Good for me that my family is the only reason I'm here," Selina answered. "If you're not working with Black Mask I'll overlook the coincidence of you being here. But if you are working for Black Mask and you don't tell me where Antonia Calabrese, Eiko Hasigawa, and Kitrina Falcone are inside of this mess of a vanity building Black Mask built here, we might have issues with each other."
To Selina's great shock, and relief, the sword was withdrawn from her back — slowly, but surely, and she instead was able to finally turn and face the al Ghul entirely. She was in work attire, a sleek and shadowy black garb with plenty of holsters for weapons. Something Selina's own attire lacked.
"I take it these are family," Talia surmised.
"it's complicated, but more or less. Family. In any way that actually counts," Selina answered, turning more. "I suppose you are here for loftier ambitions?"
"There's nothing loftier than family," Talia assured her. "My sister, Nyssa Raatko."
"So we have a common goal, Black Mask has people who matter to us, and to the head Families in the Gotham Underground," Selina continued, sounding a bit more hopeful than she perhaps should have been.
"Only if by saving these Families it involves killing my sister, then yes we would have the same ambitions," Talia answered, glancing around the area suspiciously. "Nyssa has gone in league with the Black Mask. And she has shown an interest in taking out any and all competition to the inheritance of our father. Who she killed. And that would include myself and my son."
"Wow, that's more complicated than a love child between the Calabrese and Falcone family being raised in the system. Which is impressive, since that one took me most of my life to untangle," Selina joked, adjusting her goggles. "I don't believe that we entered this situation with the exact same objective, but we most likely could truly benefit from each other's achievements, I think."
Talia's eyebrow slightly raised itself. "You were engaged to my Beloved?"
Selina offered a small smile and a hapless shrug. "From my understanding, you were married to him."
"That is not exactly the best grounds for an alliance," Talia continued.
"It's better than most. And, I would argue, we don't have to be friends to be useful to each other," Selina said, narrowing the space between them slowly enough that she didn't seem to get Talia's guard up. Then, the moment she could, she used her claws to grip the scimitar that Talia had been using and flung the blade out of the equation by twisting it from Talia's hand.
The next moment was a blur of motion as Selina held her bare claws against Talia's throat and Talia held a gun to Selina's temple. Everything went silent and still once more as they assessed the situation and their own mortal danger. It had been a while since Selina's heart rate jumped the way it did in those moments. She couldn't help the genuine smile that grew on her face as a result.
"We do each other no good as enemies while also sharing the same cause," Talia offered. "There are similarities to us beyond compare. I see no reason to not use our combined skills to our advantage."
"An assassin and a thief, never really imagined before that those could be sides of the same coin," Selina joked.
"They aren't," Talia remarked. "Perhaps though…. an activist and a vigilante could possibly be." There was a glint to her eyes. "Surely there is some common attraction my Beloved finds in us both. I, for one, am not above discovering it for myself."
Selina's smile could not have split larger. "Do me a favor, Talia, while we test out this partnership, let's forget the whole beloved thing. The Bat's not here. We are. And I, for one, am excited to flip this particular coin."
Talia, almost despite herself, smiled back. "As you wish," she granted.
"Meow," Selina offered back.
Thieves and assassins are, inherently, liars. It's the principle of the sin they engage in. Yet Talia had meant her every word just before following Catwoman's way through Black Mask's domain.
Their objectives were so entirely intertwined for the one instance that it was only fitting that they united and took down both of their threats. For the sake of their families and for the sake of their futures.
But the entire time they were engaged in stealth and subterfuge, Talia reminded herself that the task before them was not the only entanglement they had. What they had beyond that was a simple connection. One that had defined their interactions to that point. And it was perhaps one of the most insufferable connections that Talia had ever endured.
"You realize that my Beloved's engagement was meaningless when our union was already recognized by all the ancestors of the al Ghuls and more," she noted as they dropped into the security room. "I an hack these computers. It will take me a matter of moments."
"Good, moments we can not be discussing whose ring was bigger," Selina countered, putting a hand on her hip as she glanced toward the door.
"I am capable of multitasking," Talia assured her, opening the operating system of the security cameras.
"I thought we agreed to not talk about the big bad Bat in the room, it was my wish, and I was having fun when you tricked me into thinking it was granted," Catwoman said, stretching.
"The Bat is not my Beloved. I did not marry him. I married the Detective," Talia clarified, eyes scanning over the information the computer gave her. "And we… no longer get along."
"Yeah, well, neither do we, it seems to be a thing with the Big Bad Bat Detective," Selina sighed. "I told him before… he has a lot of strings… strings trip you up. Guess he took the advice the wrong way."
"And you're certain it was not your fear of strings that led to the disengagement?" Talia asked, looking back to Selina. "That the destruction was not mutual?"
"Was yours?" Selina asked, tilting her head.
"Of course it was," Talia remarked offhandedly. "We are both stubborn people with strong visions of what we wish for the future… the future of ourselves… our family… the world."
"I just stopped a shipment of lions from being bought by my father's work associates to be used and abused once the zoo found them a bit too wild to manage," Selina revealed.
A bit shocked, Talia stepped closer to Selina. "I have a hard time believing that my Beloved would oppose humanitarian efforts. It was one of the few aspects of my father he respected, and the only part of my current work that he allows my son to continue."
"Oh, he was fine with that, just not with my idea of educating gangsters in a way that they would never forget," Selina smirked, showing off her claws.
"Would the lions have wanted any different?" Talia remarked, a faint smile on her own face.
"Not in the least," Selina remarked, shrugging. "I asked them myself." She paused as Talia placed a key into her hand and blinked a few times. "What's this?"
"When I opened the security's operating system it was not connected to the main systems of the building, but it shared an operating system with the power grid," Talia explained. "There are two floors receiving seventy-five percent of the building's energy between them — a top penthouse where Roman Sionis lives and an unnamed fifteenth floor where there are exactly four eight-by-eight rooms beside each other. No doubt this information is where we shall part ways for our objectives."
There was a flash of disappointment on Selina's face as she accepted the key. "Who's in the fourth cell?"
"I don't suppose anyone if you are only after three to be rescued and I am only after my sister, who has been partners with the top man himself," Talia deduced. "It has been a rare pleasure, Miss Kyle. Perhaps our objectives will cross once again."
"You could have fooled me into thinking you weren't having a good time, honestly," Selina replied in turn. "But yeah. Good luck with your sisters."
"Rescue your lions," Talia suggested, taking the opportunity to leave first. "I have no doubt that you and your company shall be gone before I reach the top floor, of course."
"Of course," Selina said in turn before heading her own way.
A bit of Talia was taken aback that there was no argument, that things went no further, but she ultimately couldn't consider herself surprised. After all, what else did they have between them? And what was between them was not even a factor for either of them anymore.
She supposed a love of nature and of lions. But what good was that in a time where families needed to be saved and families needed to be destroyed?
She concentrated on moving forward and upward, toward the penthouse where she was certain her sister and the Black Mask would be.
Being Catwoman for as long as she had taught Selina to be very good at smelling when things were particularly fishy, and something stunk about the current moves being made in Gotham's own Underworld.
Kidnapping significant members and heads of families, particularly heads of families connected to the alliances Selina had personally made during her time as the leader of the Calabrese household, was a move that was bold enough to have the Black Mask at the helm, but the execution didn't seem smart enough for the sort of crafty bastard that had nearly held Selina's feet to the fire.
That, at least, would be true if it was Black Mask's ambitions alone that were being negotiated for.
And the closer Selina got to the hallway that she had been directed to, the more she questioned how much she really trusted the word of an assassin. An assassin who was basically the princess of assassins as it were.
But she did. She trusted Talia al Ghul's word.
What she didn't trust was what she didn't know. And what she didn't know was what this Nyssa Raatko could possibly be wanting in exchange for these services or what Roman was willing to trad for the sake of finally having the fate of three families in his hand at once.
Which, again, made that fourth cell ominously stand out in her mind. Surely the cells were not created just for this occasion, which would be why there wasn't an exact number. But there was also the fact that it seemed to have enough power going to it to warrant Talia mentioning it from the schematics.
Which meant those rooms had electric locks. And all four of those rooms had their electric locks activated.
Silently, Selina approached the hall, easily taking out the one guard by knocking him out, dropping down from the ceiling onto him and choking him out with her legs.
She then splayed out on the floor, cautiously looking around before nearing the first door and leaning in against it. At first her intention was to see if the key that Talia gave her would fit but one look made it certain that was not the case. It wasn't those types of locks.
"The hell," Selina muttered to herself. She then narrowed her eyes and leaned against the door, listening carefully.
Restlessness met her ear, the sounds of tapping feet and fiddling with furniture. Kicking at the wall. Boredom. A child. Kitrina.
At the next door was a sound of continuous tapping, a thick heavy sole. Still feminine. Butch. Selina felt relieved almost immediately. Antonia.
Another door, near silence. But long enough and Selina could hear the ominous hum of concentration, of meditation. It was a sound that on her loneliest nights she still missed. Eiko.
Finally, Selina turned to look at the last door, her eyes narrowing. "And then there was one," she whispered to herself before slowly stepping toward it. There was something wrong — devastatingly wrong — with everything, and when she finally listened to the last door it didn't take long to see what it was. A storm of cursing and kicking and punching and foul threats that would make most of Arkham pale.
Roman Sionis. Black Mask
"Dammit," Selina gritted out. It wasn't a trap for her or for the heads of the crime families in Gotham. It was a trap for someone who would be alarmed by the League of Assassins' rogue branch gaining a foothold in Gotham, who would be sensitive to news of the Underworld's disruption.
It was a trap for Talia al Ghul, so driven to protect her family even when they no longer considered her part of it.
That was a feeling that Selina knew all too well.
Claws out, Selina raced by the three doors containing her supposed-niece, her long lost cousin, and her past torrid romance. With one, long, clean sweep of her extended claws, she scratched across the metal and quickly undid all the locks by cutting through their wires. But she didn't wait along for the captives to notice their freedom or to discover the savior.
Though, Selina had to admit, she appreciated hearing Black Mask's curses from the stairwell when he realized the others were out without him.
Using her whip, Selina made fast time of the stairs, jettisoning herself upward flights at a time before stoping at the penthouse where Talia had before said she determined to go and take her sister by surprise. Little did she know.
Selina put away the key Talia gave her and burst through the door, very unlike her usual style and grace, taking the older woman holding Talia up by her shirt collar by surprise to say the very least.
"This is a family matter!" Nyssa snapped. "Leave or I'll have you killed."
"You're right," Selina said before using her whip to snap across the woman's hand from across the room, lacerating the wrist and causing her to let go of Talia. "It sure as hell is a family matter. And in Gotham, you're messing with mine."
Before the woman could react, Selina raced across the room, grabbing Talia, and threw an arm over her shoulder. She didn't stop, everything smooth as silk even as they neared the large bay window.
"What are you doing?" Talia asked a moment too late.
"The stupid thing," Selina answered before thrusting herself and Talia forward, shoulder first, through the glass. "Saving you."
One last time, Selina used her whip, taking it in her freehand and twisting herself back so that she could see the side of the building they were free falling from. The moment she saw a good ledge, she maneuvered her force into a swing of the whip and caught them both, springing them back up from their fall and clumsily sending them rolling onto the rooftop.
"Not my most graceful escape," Selina admitted, breathing heavily as Talia pushed up onto her elbows beside her. "But one of the more memorable." Still on her back, Selina smirked at Talia and used her newly freed arm to reach for the key from earlier, jingling it. "Someone suspected things to not go greatly for her and gave me the keys to… oh. Looks like a helicopter. Pretty fancy. Hope it has room for two."
"My sister won't leave my family be," Talia argued. "She has to be stopped."
"We'll stop her later," Selina assured her. "Both of us. For our family." She shook the keys again. "Now, until then, I don't know about you but I have glass in places I know they shouldn't be in. And some retired zoo lions at home who'd probably appreciate our company for now."
Talia smirked. "Are you proposing something, Miss Kyle?"
"I'm told I'm very hard to turn down," Selina continued.
That wouldn't be the only time her reputation maintained itself that night.