This hadn't exactly been Diana's plan for the day, but as she watched the armed men swarm through the bank she thought that they had the absolute worst luck. She kept the smile from her face as she scanned the lobby, trying to place where innocents might be in danger. She'd have to move fast, and there was a danger of exposing her true identity, but she couldn't risk the threat to the people in the bank.
"On your knees and hands on your head."
One of the robbers pointed his pistol at her, and Diana responded as she removed her glasses, calmly folding them. "Please, put your weapon down, and you don't have to get hurt."
"..What?"
Whatever else he might have said was lost when something pulled him through the floor. It was as though he'd fallen through it like a ghost. Diana's eyebrows rose. A second later she smelled sulfur, accompanied by a loud sound that could only be described as an implosion echoing through the lobby.
A man with blue, fuzzy skin dropped onto one of the robbers. His ears were pointed, and his eyes glowed yellow. A long, prehensile tail lashed out, ripping the gun from the robber's arm. The blue man flipped off of him and disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, that sound echoing again.
The sound of fighting drew Diana's attention across the lobby. A young, curly-haired brunette woman punched a robber in the throat, kicking off of the wall and spinning through the air. She came down with her knee on his head, then darted to another robber.
Diana continued to watch, absently snapping her fist back and knocking out a robber that rushed past her. The brunette jumped, kicking a robber in the face. As he went down, she spun gracefully on her heel and slammed her other foot into the head of the robber's nearest partner. Diana was impressed. And maybe a little turned on.
They both hit the ground around the same time and the woman landed lightly. Diana started to move forward when a robber came up behind the woman, then stopped in disbelief as he passed through her body. Before he had a chance to recover, the woman knocked him out from behind.
The blue man's head snapped up at the sound of approaching sirens. "Katzchen!"
"And here I was, just starting to have fun," the woman said. She grasped his hand and both disappeared in that puff of smoke.
Bruce replayed the security footage as he spoke to Diana over the phone. "There's been a noticeable uptick in metahuman activity since we stopped Steppenwolfe. I've been tracking these two for a few weeks now."
"So this isn't the first you've heard of them?" Diana didn't sound all that surprised. "It was amazing, Bruce. A teleporter! And that woman, she was like a ghost. And very well trained. A ninja, I think. Or similar training. And a dancer."
"I know a little something about that," Bruce said.
Diana smiled, "I didn't know you did dance."
"Yes, I'm a world class ballet dancer. It looks like the teleporter has a short range. One to two mile jumps at a time. Thanks to some upgrades from Victor I was able to trace the energy signature about twenty miles." Bruce traced the path on the display with his finger. "Then there was a different signature and the jump was much farther this time."
"There's another teleporter," Diana guessed.
"Exactly."
"Tell me where, I'll pay them a visit. Maybe we can fill a couple of those seats at the table."
Bruce gave her a long look, then nodded his head. He already knew what she'd say, but he asked anyway, "Want some backup?"
"No offense, but what we need here is diplomacy."
"I'm diplomatic."
Diana snorted laughter as she turned to go. "That worked out so well with Arthur."
"Diana, at least let me monitor. I can feed you information."
She stopped, then nodded. "All right. It doesn't hurt to be prepared."
The metahumans had gone to New York, the signature leading deep beneath the city, past the dead and rusting hulks of subway cars and into abandoned tunnels that felt like they stretched for miles.
Diana moved slowly, the weight of shield and sword familiar on her back. She didn't draw them, though. Marching in, sword in hand, was the exact opposite of diplomatic, and she didn't want to give them the wrong first impression.
The blue man had called the woman kitten in German. A term of endearment, surely, and a cute one at that. She'd spoken English, the blue man German. Neither tidbit was all that informative at the moment, but it was better than nothing.
"Bruce, have you found out anything new?"
His voice crackled in her ear, "Besides foiling the robbery attempt in Paris and similar activities in 3 other countries, they rescued people from a damaged monorail in Las Vegas and stopped a neo-nazi from burning a synagogue in Georgia."
"I like them even more." Diana turned right down another tunnel, trailing her fingers along the wall. "Is there a pattern?"
"Nothing that jumps out yet. I think they're just monitoring news reports and the internet." Bruce's voice shifted, "If they've somehow got service down there, they've got good tech, someone with talent, or both."
"Is it just those two? The German and American?"
"Details are fuzzy, but there were at least two others involved with the monorail according to eyewitnesses."
"Four then, or more."
"You're getting close to the last known location of that power signature."
Nodding mostly to herself, Diana fell silent. She wanted to get an idea of who and what she was dealing with before she just walked in on them. She hadn't seen or sensed anything that might indicate she'd been detected and Bruce would have warned her if there'd been something electronic.
So she jumped up, grasping onto a pipe and hauling herself up onto it. Quietly, carefully, she crawled along it and into an open space. It looked like it had once been some kind of control room, most of the technology decades old. Modern monitors had been set up along one wall, and she could hear people moving around in an adjoining room. She hooked her legs onto the piping and dangled her torso down to get a better look.
There were seven people, one she couldn't make out as they were mostly out of view.
That left six. The pretty brunette was having an animated discussion with a pink-skinned woman. A black woman with vitiligo over her left eye sat next to them, her feet propped up in the pink woman's lap as she received a foot massage. The German was hanging by his tail nearby, chewing on a sandwich. The last two were two younger women, probably no older than 19. A latina, and a muslim girl, only her brown eyes visible in her niqab.
They all had an easy camaraderie, the kind that only developed with time. Like a family.
Diana still couldn't see the seventh, and she didn't know enough about any of them to be able to assess strengths and weaknesses. She swung back up, and started to scootch back the way she'd come.
"There's someone here." The latina looked around, tilting her head and sniffing as what appeared to be knives slid out of her fists.
Freezing, Diana weighed her options and chose the open course. She dropped, landing lightly and holding up her hands as she stood. "I am not here to-"
A sandstorm erupted around her, blocking her vision and making it hard to breathe. Sensing movement to her right, she dodged as something slashed across her left bicep. And then the 'kitten' was in front of her. She was fast, and she knew how to hit someone. If Diana had been a normal being any one of those blows would have her laid out on her back.
Not wanting to hurt her, she blocked with her arms, twisting out of the way and grasping for the woman's leg. As she'd expected, the girl went ghost and passed through her hands. And then she jumped through Diana's body. It felt like being shocked, stunning her for a split second.
There was movement behind and she snapped her elbow back before the girl with the claws could stab her in the back. A flash of pink light came from her left and then she heard the movement to her right. Diana's hand lashed out, grasping a pink leg and she flung her into the German.
A gun cocked to her left and she rolled her eyes, blocking the shot with her bracers. Another shot followed and she blocked that as well. The bullet ricocheted above her, hitting a pipe and sending steam into her eyes. She swore she heard the shooter laugh.
"Diana, you call this diplomacy?"
She ignored Bruce, unable to sense where the girl in the niqab had gone or that mysterious seventh, but if this continued on much more she might hurt or kill someone.
She held up her hands, palms out, "I am not here to harm you! I only wish to speak."
For a moment, there was silence, and she thought maybe they were considering her words.
"Speak later, smash now."
"Hulk, wait-!"
A gigantic green fist came out of the dust, and Diana was punched through two walls, the latter of which collapsed on top of her. She groaned, pushing aside some rubble and shaking her head to clear it. She hadn't been hit that hard since Doomsday. She got to her feet, taking her lasso off of her belt as she walked back towards the hole. Blood dribbled down her arm from the knife slashes, warm and sticky, but she ignored it.
The dust had settled, and she saw a hulking green brute flanked by the other six. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to leap back into the fray and see exactly what that green brute could do. But she wasn't here to fight them.
Kitten put her hand on the brute's arm, "Wait, wait, no more smashing."
He huffed and folded his arms. "You never let Hulk have fun."
Diana just flashed him a smile.
"You'll have to forgive us, liebchen." The German's tail lashed, "If we act first when someone sneaks up on us."
"That was my mistake," Diana said. "I should have approached you openly, as I am here as a friend. My name is Diana Prince."
"Kitty." So that explained the nickname. She gestured at the others, "Kurt, Sooraya, Laura, Neena, Clarice and Hulk."
"Hello," Hulk said, scratching the back of his head.
"Hello," Diana replied, smiling. She held up the lasso, then wrapped part of it around her left arm, "This is the Lasso of Hestia. Any bound by it are compelled to speak the truth. I bind myself so that you know my intentions are good."
"I think I recognize you," Kitty said, approaching. "The bank, in Paris."
Diana nodded, "If you had not intervened, I would have."
"Not just there." Kitty stopped in front of Diana, looking up at her. She flashed Diana a smile, "News reports. You're pretty famous."
"I have been making a name for myself."
Glancing back at the others, Kitty held out her arm. Neena snorted, "Meets a pretty girl, divulges all our secrets."
Diana wrapped the lasso around it. "So I'm pretty?"
"Are you kidding?" Kitty replied, "You're hot and built like a truck and I want you to raw me against that wall."
She turned beat red as Neena's laughter rang in her ears.
Diana was kind of used to that by now, and she spared Kitty's dignity by ignoring it, "Who are you? Are you metahumans?"
"We're the Exiles," Kitty replied, considering the benefits of sinking into the ground. "We're.. Most of us are mutants. A genetic offshoot of humanity. And except for me and Kurt, we're all from different realities. Different versions of Earth."
"Different realities?" Diana asked. "Like alternate timelines? And you are saying each of yours is different."
"Ja," Kurt said.
"Think of time like a river," Kitty explained, face still burning. "With major events becoming new rivers that branch off from the first. In one world, I died when I was thirteen, and in another I lived much longer. Laura is from a world where most of us have died out, Sooraya from one where mutants are thriving. The only thing we have in common is we got… plucked from the moment of our death."
"So there's no going back without fucking up our timelines," Neena said, producing a bottle from somewhere and taking a swig. "Lucky us!"
"So why are you on my world?" Somehow, she thought that there was some difference between metahumans and mutants, though in a practical sense it probably evened out. And she was curious as to what had happened to Kitty. Clearly, she wasn't that thirteen year old she'd mentioned.
Kitty chewed on her lip, "Because if we don't stop it, something will cause this timeline to collapse, and you'll cease to exist."