The Tale of Nemesis: In the Beginning…
Part I: What The Hell Am I Doing?
It was a standard dark night in Gotham City. It was raining heavily, and it was storming with lighting all around. Though, I suppose not too dark, despite the rain and the night. It is a large city of course. It would be lit up still, now wouldn't it?
It was lit up, of course, due to the city never wanting to sleep. However, I'm sad to tell you, if you're looking for Batman here, you've got someone else completely different entirely. But, you'll run into familiar faces soon. Don't you worry yourself any, they will come.
My name, who am I, why am I spoiling Gotham and running around, trying to show up Batman? Well, before you accuse me of that or anything else of the sort, I'll let you know a few things. I do not care to outshine batman or take over his job, I know this is his turf, and I know I tread on it and I respect it. Who I am is a matter of importance, though. I am Astrid. That's all you need to know for now. What am I am doing, is seeking vengeance. It's traditional in my family.
Now, I suppose you've all heard of the Joker before? Even if you haven't, you should know he is one of the most psychotic villains, and he is not to be trifled with. However, he was the one that trifled with me first. So I'm going after him.
Am I crazy as hell? Yeah, you bet I am. But I don't care. I want revenge, and I want justice. I'll do it on my own if I want to, I just would rather avoid being found out by Batman. I didn't need him finding me, and I intended to disappear before he caught on that another citizen was targeting a villain of his.
No one needed to know what I was doing. I would rather do things myself.
That's how I operated. I was a self-sufficient person, and I preferred to keep it that way.
I'd used some resources to find out that the Joker and his hyena-girlfriend, Harley Quinn were going to rob a bank. What resources, you ask? Well, I'm a lawyer by day. I used my cards right since I work to put his goons and other criminals behind bars anyways, and I did some questioning of my own, and forced them to tell me something. My methods…were a bit harsh. A lawyer has her ways and access to criminals especially if she's a well-to-do lawyer with a large, powerful firm that she herself created, after graduating Harvard Law.
Enough about my background now, though. I'm not going to talk about how I got the information, that's not important right now. I may not have been completely legal about it, either. Fine, I did some wire tapping and stuff. I delve in that kind of thing. I've always been a smart kid, not trying to brag, but I have.
So I was dressed in a black hood, and I had a visor down from it that covered my eyes, except they glowed and inhuman blue from the black guise, and it left most of my face in shadows, especially since I had that covered. I'd made myself a strong, durable suit. It had no marking on it, except for an N.
But why, an N?
Well, I'm a fan of Greek Mythology, and Nemesis is one of the parts of Zeus that is a god of justice-style-revenge. So that's what I'll go under as an alias, if anyone catches me. I figure it has to work, but I don't plan on being caught.
I was creeping along the ledge of the bank, then I used a hidden blade that popped out from my gloves, that looked an awful lot like a claw, and I cut a clean circle out of the glass with it. I slipped in, and I crouched down, hoping like hell that I got the right information. If I didn't, there would be hell to pay for a couple of Joker's minions. I waited, and soon my waiting paid off.
"Come on, sweet-cakes. This is our chance, Batman hasn't even shown up yet, and our little distraction is sure to keep him busy for at least a bit. Are you ready to blow this safe wide open?" He said, smiling at her.
I looked over at her, my eyes glowing with an intense inhuman glow. I could see well in the dark, very well, even with a visor. That should tell you already that I'm not entirely the ordinary citizen I claim to be. But, we don't have time to explain right now. I would, but I am a little busy if you can't tell.
"Here's the charge!" She said gleefully, hooking it onto the safe mechanism and pressing the ignition button. The charge began counting down fast to zero, then backwards, then it completely zeroed out. Then, nothing happened…
I was utterly confused, till a huge burst of confetti appeared and the safe door was impacted with a solid THUD, blasting the lock clear through by otherwise deafened a bit by the noise of the confetti coming out.
Really mature and funny, you two. I'm practically rolling on the floor laughing. I can't live with people who are never serious….
"HAHA! WE DID IT SWEET'UMS! IT WORKED JUST LIKE YOU PLANNED!" Said Joker exclaiming loudly. I waited while he began to bag up the money as fast as he could.
"You grab what we need, honey, I'll keep watch. I think Batsy will like my wonderful new toy! I know I do!" She pulled out a giant, scary looking bazooka. It was ten times scarier because that crazy as hell bitch was wielding it. I didn't really care. I waited until they became slightly complacent, then…
I launched myself at Harley Quinn, athletically jumping in the air and unsheathing long, serrated, needle sharp claws from my wrists with hooked ends.
I was jumping down aiming to land on top of her, using height and impact, hoping to strike down upon her with my claws.
"YOU'RE NOT SAFE UNTIL I SEE YOU BOTH DEAD!" I yelled.
Harley Quinn was startled, not just because I had the element of surprise, but because she'd never seen someone like me before. She fired a shot, and it hit me in the gut, and kicked me back behind a desk, shooting me into the counter where the tellers usually worked.
"HAHA! Seems Halloween has come early, sweet'ums, some little girl dressed up as black-riding-hood has come to mess with us. We'll have to put her in her place." She said, reloading quickly.
I got back up, and my temper was building. There is a special switch in me, and sometimes it is not easy to turn on or off, or to stop it from going both ways. Right now, it was slowly starting to click on, but I was surprisingly fighting for it to stay off. I couldn't use it yet, not yet.
I made a low growly sound that sounded unearthly to their ears and I jumped on top of the teller's desk. You could tell I got shot with a rocket in my lower abdominal region on the right. But all there really was was a lot of shrapnel and plenty of blood and some nasty torn up wounds, but I didn't look shaken at all. If anything I was tenser, angrier, and pissed off even more now. My anger was no longer simmering lukewarm, it was boiling.
"I'm NOT SOMEONE you should dismiss so easily. I just hope you don't learn why quite yet." I said, jumping down from the teller's desk, which was about thirty feet from where Harley was, and it was another five feet or so to the vault that the Joker was now looking out of with utter shock. I charged at them, suddenly wielding a long, beautifully crafted titanium sword with black obsidian engravings and an obsidian-carbon-compound handle that was incredibly strong as well as heavy and durable. I charged at Harley Quinn, and I sliced at her across her shoulder blade, cutting right into the toy she had and damaging it too much to fire again, the spark ignited the current rocket she had and it exploded in both of our faces, creating smoke and a cover for her, and wounding us both.
"Sweet heart, she's no ordinary girl; ordinary little girls don't shrug off rocket launchers twice like that. Let's go while we can, before Batman shows up, too!"
Speak of the devil…Batman came in, having used his grappling hook and climbed up and entering right where I did, a bit miffed that someone had already cut an almost perfect circle out of the glass for his grappling hook to go through and catch onto the building's ceiling. I charged on through the smoke, not caring about the injuries I had, trying to go after Joker. However, I didn't expect him to try to slow me down with…
They were running up to the roof, which meant only one thing; they were escaping by air. I needed to stop them NOW so they didn't get away, because sadly, I can't fly. If only…
So, our cunning villain's first way to slow me down WAS….
A wet floor, provided by a...
Broken water fountain?
Original, really. He'd obviously had Harley use what was left of her "tube of fun", or rather, her rocket launcher, to bash it open. To create a hazardous diversion; which was absolutely wonderful when you're a superhero that's wearing HEELS for fuck's sake! It was gushing and it was practically smashed, and I slipped a bit through the water in my heels, then I managed to get through, but it had lost me some time. He'd also managed to break out some fire extinguishers and bar the door with them. I tried to kick through how they were arranged, but I only got the foam sprayed at me.
I had just about had it, I got on my hands supporting myself on the floor and I did a round house kick with both legs to the door, causing a mess but getting it open. When I got out there, he was escaping by helicopter. He laughed maniacally at me.
"See yah later, little riding-hood, I did enjoy watching you fall for all of that! Next time we meet, we won't be so easy on you!" he shouted, and then following it with his maniacal laughs. I yelled a threat after him while he was still in ear shot.
"I WILL RIP OUT YOUR GUTS AND SHOVE THEM DOWN YOUR THROAT, YOU CACKLING FOOL! THIS IS FAR FROM OVER!" I shouted back in a roaring angry yell.
All I got was the faint sound of them both laughing at the idea, and I could barely make out "why so serious, little girl?" as they got farther away.
Damn it. I blew my first try. I completely blew it.
Batman burst through the roof and swung a punch at me, hitting me as I tried my best to partially block it as my instincts kicked in. Yep, I have instincts. I'm sounding less and less human by the minute, aren't I?
"WHO ARE YOU! ARE YOU WORKING WITH THE JOKER?" He yelled, squaring off with me and trying to hit me again.
"Slow down, Batman. I'm not working with them. I hate the Joker; if you couldn't tell just now I JUST told him I'd take out all his organs and shove them back inside him through his mouth. You have no reason to fight me. I want him dead; I have a vendetta against him. Besides…" I said, suddenly dodging his strike and hitting him roughly with my gloved hand in the form of a claw, hitting some pressure points along his arm, "I need to go. I don't want to do anything to mess with your work. I have no quarrel with you. Besides, I really don't want to hit a handsome man like you. That's why I preferred pressure-pointing you." I said with a smirk, as he realized his non-dominant hand was temporarily immobilized.
"…If you're not against me, then I suppose you're with me. But you should know that I won't let you kill the Joker. It's also obvious you're no copy-cat or ordinary citizen exacting your own vengeance. You also aren't in too bad of shape, considering you were hit by two rocket launchers. No, you're not ordinary at all. Who ARE YOU?" He said, moving towards me as I walked backwards from him, my hidden-blade type claws coming out from my wrist and my gloves, literally adding claws to my stance. He couldn't help that notice that they were awfully familiar to how a dog would use its claws, and designed to work like that. Quite strange of me, but also brilliant.
"Do you really want a name?" I said, back flipping onto the ledge of the building, balancing with my muscles constantly flexing and my charismatic, athletic body portraying complete control over such a precarious position.
"Perhaps I could help you…"
"Then find me, first. You're Batman. I can't just make this easy for you." And then, I jumped, my long, white-platinum-blonde hair spilling from the hood a bit, as I got into a crouching position to land in. He shot a grappling hook onto the nearest street light and went after me, then saw the hair and threw a bat-a-rang at me, hoping to cut off some hair in case I escaped him, though it was a twenty-story-drop from this massive bank.
He swung out to try to grab me, but I simply plummeted straight, crouched and then I landed on the ground, and there were several loud cracks and a small cloud of dust where I landed on the asphalt. I made two medium-sized impact craters for my hands, and one large one for the rest of my body. The Bat-a-rang pinned my hair to the side of the building he was about to swing onto, right just within reach. I knew he was Batman for a reason. I smiled from under my mask.
"What do you call yourself, at least?" He said, looking down as I hopped onto a very fancy looking motorcycle built for speed and to hold a manner of things. He then noticed the sword on my back, too. I wasn't an ordinary resourced citizen either, apparently. Money can be a pretty nice boost to being a superhero, but I didn't just have that. I had something else. He couldn't quite figure me out.
"Nemesis." I said frankly, and then I kick started my bike before he could release himself down to try to catch me again, and the di-nitrogen-oxide rocket on the back of my bike expanded to have two smaller ones, and I zoomed off, making my escape.
I knew he had a way to identify me now. But I did not want my family involved, and I had a pretty good reason. We were more important than just all being pretty well off; we had a higher status and purpose than that. My family needed to be kept out of anything I did, especially since I was focused on doing this kind of crazy stuff. What the hell was I thinking, anyways? Well, with my legal capabilities, at least I could keep my family, what was left of it, and my extended family safe. That was what I wanted the most.
If the Batman wanted to find me, he would find me and me ONLY on my record. I wanted him to face me head on, and leave my family out of everything. Though, that was going to be a huge surprise when he found that information erased and barred from him by my own personal legal contingencies. A little "trolling" if you will from me, I suppose. A curveball, if anything.
Batman had scanned my hair into his DNA decoder, and he was searching for a match in his database, and then continuing his search until he found a name. The name finally popped up.
"Astrid Hanna Wülfenheim. Parents, deceased, Josef Wülfenheim, father, and Aurora Wülfenheim. Twenty-three-years-old, graduated from Harvard Law School. Five-foot-six, white-platinum-blonde-hair, eyes; blue." He read off the screen. There was a picture there, of me smiling at the camera with a slightly mischievous half-smile that looked a little more like a smirk.
"Siblings…." He said, trying to access that file.
"Access Denied." Said the machine.
"What?" He said, utterly confused. He then attempted to bi-pass it.
"No sibling matches for Aurora Wulfenheim."
"Only child. Interesting. Parent's death's…" he said, typing aloud.
Articles were pulled up of the massive chemical explosion and fire to Wulfenheim Bio-Chemical Research Corporation. He read the articles, and suddenly Batman had a pang of guilt for me. By the dates, they died shortly after I graduated, before I could get home to Gotham from Harvard Law. If anyone knew what that pain MUST have felt to me. He exactly, because he had experienced the same pain as a boy, and it began to soften him a bit to his frustration at me refusing to let him help me.
He checked for an address, but he ran into my legal contingencies about that, because I had gotten that protected in case the criminals I made sure to jail as a lawyer for the City of Gotham against its most notorious criminals, sending them to jail. He tried to get past it, but I'd done my job well. No such luck, Batman.
However, I did not account for a rogue element at play. Bruce knew just who to call. He got out his personal cell phone, and called a fellow Justice League member to help him out.
"Hello, Bruce. What's bothering you so late at night, huh?" Said Clark Kent, otherwise known as the one-and-only Superman, answering the phone at the other end of the line.
"I have a problem I want you to help me with." He said back simply, ignoring Clark's teasing.
"Really? Need me to suit up and head over right now!" He asked, sounding a bit alarmed.
"No, for this, I need Clark Kent. You're going to interview someone and get information from her."
"Her?" Clark said and his interests peaked a little. "Don't tell me you've found a girl and you want me to go ask her out for you, Bruce. I thought you could handle rejection yourself." Replied the sarcastic and teasing Kryptonian.
"No, Clark, I'm good, I can handle that part just fine. I need to find out information on her; she was out before I was, after the Joker. She beat me to it and she did a good job considering it was her first time. She was really professional about it, but not only that, she survived a rocket launcher attack to her gut, and an explosion in her face, and then jumped down off a ten-story building and landed crouched and didn't seem shaken, though she made three decently sized craters where she landed. She's not ordinary, and, with some help, maybe we can help guide her. She's set on killing Joker, her parents were massacred in the Wulfenheim Corporation explosion by Joker when he stole that compound that….." suddenly, Bruce became silent, respectful, and trailed off. It wasn't something he wanted to bring up with Clark. Because it affected him personally.
"...That Luthor used to kill Lois. It's okay; it doesn't hurt as much anymore now that I have come to accept that she's never coming back, Bruce. You can say it now. But thanks for the respectful attempt to leave it out. Avoiding it won't do anything anymore."
The response was still pained, and having been friends with Clark for a long time since they were both some of the founders of the Justice League, he knew him too well for him to be able to hide that. It was a sad day when Luthor finally hit Clark where it hurt most; killing the first woman he ever loved with an unstable compound stolen from Wulfenheim Corporation, a new compound being researched to isolate diseases, viruses, and then break them down in their stages of growth and mutation. However, if injected, it sped up the process quick in a body, and this veritable disease cocktail it contained had no cure, because it was being used to find a cure. The only good thing about it was that the diseases were not contagious, because the compound prevented them from being so, but injected, it still did it's work inside a body, all too well.
"Well, do still want to interview her for me, or is that too much to ask?" Said Bruce after the long pause, letting Clark gather his thoughts again and compose himself out of courtesy.
"Of course, I will, Bruce. What's her name? I bet I already know her last" He said, back to his humorous mood.
"Astrid, Astrid Wulfenheim."
"You mean that really attractive lawyer that shuts away the criminals you bag up there in Gotham? Huh. That doesn't sound too bad. From what I've seen, she's not too bad either…" Said Superman, thinking about the pictures he'd seen of her in the news. No, she wasn't bad at all. She was…attractive.
"There is one thing that I have a hunch on, though, see if you can't gather some information for me on it, you know, and hints."
"What's got your paranoia, Bruce?"
"Her name translates to 'Wolf Manor' or 'Wolf House, House of Wolves' loosely depending on how you skew the German. I just wonder if that has something to do with it. Her DNA is also a little abnormal, but nothing I can identify or that the machine can decode that matches anything. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but…"
"Hmm. Mr. Wayne thinks he may be dealing with a female werewolf then? That is quite a conclusion jump, you know. But, she does have abnormal abilities. You could be right. I'll see if her wolf obsession raises any flags, and, I'll make sure to get information to where you can trace her. Got any tracking devices or anything I'll receive to put on her?"
"I just need a phone number."
"A phone number?"
"Yes, the one on her business card will be fine. That should be enough personal information to find her house, if not search back to her own personal address because she is the one that heads and created the lawyer team and firm. Though, a personal one would make it easier."
"If I get that, I'm not sharing it." Said Clark with a laugh.
"Clark, is that a glimmer of attraction I hear in your joking? Because if it is, it could be good for you." Said Bruce back with a smug voice.
"Maybe it is. I'll see what flirting with her will do." He said sarcastically.
"Fine, then I challenge you to get her number. Let's see if it'll be that painful for you to do, that way you won't mope so much." He retorted back.
"Challenge accepted. Good night, Bruce. I'll get back to you tomorrow. Send me her file, won't you?"
"Why? Want a picture?"
"Yes, it's always nice to match a pretty face with a beautiful name."
"Good night, Clark. Keep it in your pants; we can't have you show all your cards." Was a sarcastic reply.
"Good night, Bruce. I'd tell you the same for Wonderwoman."
And then there was a click on the line.