This is for all the people who read my Huntress Trilogy. Thank you for all the support you gave me. This story is set after that trilogy, but it's not necessary to read it to understand this one. Basic outline: Huntress left Q, found love with Captain Atom, but found herself drawn back to Q anyways. Hearts were broken, origins were explained, dialogue was exchanged, but the end was inevitable. Question/Huntress forEVAH!

Artemis: Sweetie...The Tempest is the first story of three. It's a TRILOGY. There's two more stories!

Chapter One: Little Hunter

Gotham City had the worst crime rate in the United States. Recent estimates had a murder happening every ten minutes, a sexual assault every seven, a house broken into every three, and a mugging every thirty seconds. For a city with a population of ten million, that might seem like a lot. Truth is, it was. Take into account, that most of that is from villain to villain, and it's not so much. The mafia families are always feuding, the supervillians are always bickering, and innocents are always getting caught in the crossfire. Gotham was a bloodthirsty, destructive, apathetic city, and for all its faults, Huntress loved it.

It was something Batman had never been able to understand. Sure, this was his city, he was here first. She was here too. She wasn't leaving, not for him, not for anyone. He could have downtown, and most of the outlying areas of urban sprawl. However, the West End was her's. To do as she deemed justice with. Even Batman had recognized it, and warned other capes of it. Only she was allowed to reign there, and the criminal populace had recognized. While not as feared as the Dark Knight, her own bloody form of justice had recently, finally, begun to be respected and feared. She'd never have a spiffy spotlight with a symbol on it, but she did have her home, and she protected it with her life.

Huntress sat on the edge of the West End Water Tower, and marveled at the night life tonight. Three am and still gangs roamed about. She smiled sardonically as she pulled her crossbow to aim and pulled the trigger, sending an arrow across the wide street, a rope attached. Hooking her arm around it, she slid down, hitting the fire escape below near silently. Below her, the five youths were in red and black, gang colors of the Fire Dragons, a new Chinese gang trying to mosey into her territory. On their arms, tattooed in deep red, was a Chinese dragon. It didn't look like what people expected of a dragon. It was more like an eel, no arms or legs or even wings. Helena knew from a semester of Ancient Mythology that that was what Chinese dragons usually looked like.

In the past week alone, they'd mugged ten people, assaulted five, and raped two women. Huntress wasn't putting up with anymore of their shit. Her boyfriend, a masked detective who called himself the Question, often told her that she was more violent with gangs because they reminded her of the mafia, just with less prestige and pompous rites. He then told her that she was most violent with Mafiosi. It was a fact that she couldn't even try to counter-argue.

Below her, the teenagers eyed an older woman walking along the other side of the street. She held her purse to her chest, her wrinkled face studying the gaunt faces of the boys, and walking faster as she instantly didn't like what she saw. Huntress waited until the woman was out of sight, or at least out of hearing range, and dropped down into the plotting boys.

Instantly, at the sight of the purple and black clad vigilante, the gang drew their knives and dropped back several feet. Huntress smiled and slowly placed her crossbow back in its modified holster at her back. Her hands bare of any weapon, she gestured for the boys to bring it. They did.

The first one, tallest of the group, but also skinniest, came rushing forward, his switchblade held in his fist as he lunged at her, his inexperience pitifully clear. Parrying his attack with a quick elbow jab to his ribs, she turned to meet the next attacker. This one was shorter, but also burlier, and by the looks of the way he moved, an experienced fighter. Huntress grabbed his wrist and he dropped the knife, twisting himself backward, turning his arm around in her grip, but catching the knife before it hit the ground. Even as she prepared to twist the arm further and cause damage, he was turning back, the dagger swinging at her neck. Behind her, she heard the first attacker coming again. She ducked, and momentum already started, the second attacker was unable to keep his knife from entering his buddy's hand. As the first attacker reeled back, screaming and bleeding, Huntress, still gripping the second's wrist, twisted it violently and broke it neatly. An upper-cut to his chin sent him flying backwards into two of the remaining three able-bodied gang members. The last member, shortest one, and youngest, looked at her with frightened eyes. What was in his hand belied those eyes.

A gun, a Firestar, one much too large for the small hand that held it. The four other boys were out of the fight, two unconscious after getting thrown into a wall by the body of their friend, that friend dazed and out of it, with a broken wrist, and the other with a knife stuck in his hand had taken off running to get medical help. Huntress stared down the last boy.

He aimed it at her, his grip shaking, his eyes wild. He was a child, caught up in a war he knew nothing about. Huntress saw boys and girls like him too often.

She smiled disarmingly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

He snorted, showing courage that hadn't seemed there the moment before. "Yeah, right."

"I'm not. I just want to stop the violence."

The boy stared at her, unflinching. "You can't solve the problem, with another version of the same problem."

Huntress cocked an eyebrow. "You're obviously a smart boy. What are you doing in a gang?"

"No other place to turn."

"There's always another place."

"Not for me."

"Let me help you."

"Why?" The boy asked, waving his gun to point at his friends. "I'm just like them. I have no family, no home, nothing. So I got invited and I accepted. I did what I was asked. I was there when they did everything, and yeah, I helped. Cops get ahold of me, and I'm going to juvie. I'm a criminal." The boy, probably not older than thirteen, didn't sound too happy about that. It gave her hope.

Huntress shrugged, edging forward a bit, her hands still held out and empty. "We all make mistakes."

"Yeah? Well, you're Huntress. You kill people like me."

She shook her head, still ever closer. "Not people like you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

The gun lowered a bit, before coming right back up. "Guess I should kill you first then." He started to squeeze the trigger, and instantly she was thinking of ways to get out of this. She'd dodge to the left, away from the stirring three at the wall, and come up in a lunge, taking the boy off his feet and knocking the gun away. The other three would go to jail, but she'd get him out of here before the cops came. Take him to a safehouse set up by Oracle not far from here. He'd get help.

Before she could start to move, staring down that barrel, a foot away, and already moving to the side, a blur of black came out of a nearby alley, slamming into the boy, sending him careening to the sidewalk, his head hitting it with a sickening thud. For a few seconds, the two figures lay there, and Huntress stared at them.

Snapping into action, Huntress pulled the blur, now revealed to be a teenage boy in black and...purple. He stood there, grinning broadly, a bit spaced-out. He watched as Huntress kneeled beside the young gang member, looking at his head where he was starting to bleed, and taking his pulse. She apparently liked what she saw and stood again, starting towards the "hero".

"Who are you, and why did you interfere?"

The boy, dark hair and tan skin, brown eyes, and about sixteen, laughed and threw his arms out, grinning broadly. He was Italian in descent, American by birth, and Mafia by nature. Helena recognized him, but had asked the question anyways. He answered slyly. "I am Little Hunter!"

She cocked an eyebrow and turned away. "Oh, that's nice. You're delusional. Did you hit your head when you tackled the kid?"

Little Hunter watched as she stooped down and picked up the teenage gang member with no trouble, turning back to him, waiting for his answer.

"I don't think so."

She smiled. "That's good. Go home."

"But I have to go with you!" Lil Hunter cried, starting after her, his black trench coat floating around him, the purple highlights within catching in the minimal light and glinting ominously. Huntress thought he looked a bit like a comic book character.

"Why is that?" Huntress asked, while in her ear Oracle relayed that the cops would be there within seconds.

"Because I'm your sidekick," Lil Hunter replied matter-of-factly.

Huntress stared at him incredulously, while on the other end of the open line, Oracle and Black Canary had themselves a good ole gut-busting laugh. "Seriously?"

The kid nodded, and opened his trench coat, hands on his hips. On his chest, an ornate purple H was inlaid into a circle of purple. "I am Little Hunter."

She didn't find it funny.