NML

by RapiDe

Welcome to No Mans Land

Legal Disclaimers: Anything which is copyright DC comics, starting with Batman and covering everything from Gotham City on down, belongs to DC comics. I have no intention of making any money out of this fictional story, and am writing it purely for the sense of satisfaction I will get from completing it, since I enjoy writing. However, the character of Asp/Helena Corleone is copyright Vader, as are all original storylines. Ask if you want to borrow them, politely. Finally, there is some bad language and graphic violence here, so if you read on you have been warned.

Chronology: This story is set during "No Mans Land", which is the eleventh year that Batman is Gothams resident "Urban myth".

Quick recap for the uninitiated: "Cataclysm" hit Gotham City in the form of a devastating earthquake three months prior to "No Mans Land", devastating the city and effectively destroying the original Batcave as well as Wayne Manor. With Gotham expecting Federal Aid to rebuild, Nicholas Scratch-see the Batman comics for this mans details-in Washington made sure that not only did they not get it, but Gotham was declared "No Mans Land" in short order, an unsalvageable ruin. Bruce Wayne tried to change the decision by appearing before Congress to plead Gotham's case, but failed totally. As a result, Gotham was cut off from the outside world by blown bridges and mines that surrounded the city in the sea, the US army patrolling to enforce this after "Black Monday".

Following his failure to secure help for Gotham, Bruce Wayne disappeared on a hedonistic orgy around the world. Batman, after a little time, returned to Gotham to attempt to save it from the inside. To discover what else happened, read the "Batman: No Mans Land" stories. This story begins about a month into "No Mans Land".

"Lost and Found"

Part II

Confessions

A day in the former city of Gotham, since it had become merely "No Mans Land", felt like a cold winter month. A week was like a Siberian summer, while a month was a long day in Hell. No electricity anywhere, except where those few who were either strong enough or evil enough to control one of the few remaining generators lived. No fresh water, let alone warm water, flowed anywhere in the city under the pressure of any of the purpose-built pipes from the plants that collected and siphoned it. The cities sewers, cracked, broken and often simply destroyed by the earthquake that had ruined the city, were almost all useless as well.

Light, excepting sunlight, the moon and stars, was a thing of the past with very few exceptions. In the meantime deep, dark shadows once hidden by the mask of progress, illuminated by everything from streetlights to firelight, crept back in slowly but surely, reminding those who remained in the ruins why all had once been afraid of the dark. Added to ruined, broken buildings, leaning towers which were all that remained of once-great skyscrapers, cracked pavements, shattered paving stones, broken streets and the shattered glass that still lay all around, one could have been forgiven for believing that the end of the world would look little different.

It actually was winter now, snow and ice covering the ground, hanging in icicles from roofs, doors and window frames. It all made broken, ruined streets and homes only yet more dangerous even as freezing, arctic-cold winter winds bit through thin clothing to chill the flesh beneath, the only ways left to keep warm the most primitive of all, no more than shared body heat or the burning of wood at best. It all did more than make the scene appear to be the end of the world, it gave it the feel of such too.

Worse was the sickly-sweet smell of decaying, lost corpses putrefying in collapsed graveyards of stone and steel, the stench of charred, burnt flesh from early mass cremations intended to prevent disease still hanging in the air. With sprayed traces of blood, body parts and the occasional whole crushed, bloated, rotting corpse all still being evident to the eye, it was as though Hell had come to Earth. No Mans Land, Gotham...no matter what anyone wanted to call it, the fact was that the fallen city was now little more than a huge graveyard, a place where the remnants of civilisation, law and order struggled to hold on to the slightest fingertip grip.

There were no heroes left, in any case. The Batman was gone, so were all of his students, from the young man Nightwing to the boy Robin. All of the worst Gotham had to offer, the Joker, Two-Face-once known as Harvey Dent, Gotham Cities former District Attorney-the Penguin, Killer Croc and more were loose in the ruined city, carving out areas of it as their places of power. One of the last acts of the Gotham authorities had been to throw open the gates and cells of Arkham Asylum, madhouse straight from Hell, while their only real opposition was the remnants of the Gotham City Police Force, led by Commissioner James Gordon. Huntress, not a hero by almost any standards, was the only one of Gotham's vigilantes left, and she made no attempt to help the remnants of the GCPD, now renamed the "Blue Boys".

However, while few had noticed it as yet, old threats that had reappeared were far from the only difficulties all sides had to worry about. There were whole new factors to consider as well, such the formation of tribal gangs to control territory, occasionally under powerful individuals, sometimes as just more dangerous versions of the old street gangs.

Then there were the inexplicable differences which had emerged, ones which appeared to have nothing to do with Gotham, as though there were outside forces which had moved in before the city had been cut off on Black Monday to stake their claim. That factor was, in fact, what had caused a concerned Commissioner Gordon to send out scouting parties to establish what was going on beyond the Blue Boys borders. While he didn't know it, however, the fact that he had done this was going to, in short order, give him an unpleasant shock...

Harvey Bullock, a man in his late thirties who had lived in Gotham for most of those years, had been in the Gotham police force for nine years. Fat and thick-set, with a streak of brutal honesty born of a hard life littered with too many disappointments and failures, added to a short lifetime as a policeman having shown him the worst humanity had to offer far too many times, he was a very unhappy man. Dirty auburn hair and hard light-brown eyes did little to conceal a sharp mind barely hidden behind dull eyes, although using his intelligence and intuition to catch criminals and solve crimes was one of few pleasures left to him. A couple of inches short of six feet tall, he was slimmed down from his usual bulk due to a lack of good food and more exercise than he'd ever been used to before No Mans Land.

Wearing a dark-brown trench coat, broad-rimmed hat and worn leather shoes, a white shirt contrasting against his dark-blue suit and tie, asides from the fact he was dressed better than most could manage since Black Monday he was nothing special. Only the revolver, a standard-issue police 9MM carefully concealed under his baggy coat, made him more than a lucky remnant of Gotham's pre-quake population. Since Black Monday guns and bullets were worth more than their weight in diamonds, so anyone who had any left was either ruthless enough to control one or part of a group strong enough to control some. Either way, being caught in possession of one by a gang outside your territory was a death sentence in NML, even lives weren't worth bullets here any longer.

His partner and backup, Renee Montoya, was as aware of this fact as Harvey was, if not more so. She had more to worry about for one thing, since the new tribal structure of NML territory paid no attention to anything remotely resembling what most people considered basic "human rights". Harvey would just have been killed for his weapon, his body stripped of anything useful before he was left to rot. If Renee was caught alive, even with a weapon, she'd be lucky if all that happened was she died quickly. Gang rape, mutilation, branding and worse were all just as likely, not helped by the fact that the tribes were formed entirely of men in almost all cases. Only the Triads, under their leader Lynx, a woman far more physically capable than most men in Gotham, were a real exception.

An inch shorter than Harvey, Renee was only twenty-seven years old, and it showed. Her youth was evident in her smooth features, graceful, quick movements and toned form. A curving, slender body and soft, smooth skin added to striking looks and dusky skin, courtesy of her Spanish-American roots, made her beautiful. This was especially true when added to the long blue-black hair held in a loose tail by a dark hair band at the base of her skull. Soft dark-brown eyes gleamed with intelligence, while pert lips and her expressive face made her expressions easy to read unless she tried hard to conceal her thoughts. A black raincoat fell to below her knees, while a cream blouse, dull-grey sweater and dark-grey trousers, added to relatively new tough black shoes, covered her well enough to mask her otherwise obvious femininity somewhat.

She carried a concealed police issue 9MM as well, but also carried a six-inch knife with a black plastic handle concealed in a sheath beneath her sweater at the base of her spine. It was intended as a nasty surprise for anyone who got hold of her somehow. She'd been taught how to use it by Captain Petit, a military-biased fanatic who had only joined the police because he saw it as his duty to clean up the streets by whatever means necessary, although he'd been constrained by the law before Black Monday.

With the law effectively gone, with his SWAT team training and massive amount of research and experience concerning matters involving weapons, combat and tactics, even self-taught, he was the natural choice for the equivalent of field commander when Commissioner Gordon wasn't in the field. It had been made clear, however, that this authority came with the absolute necessity of teaching others his skills, a task he had taken to with an almost worrying feeling of vindication. Bullock and Montoya, among other officers, strongly suspected that there would be trouble down the line with him, but, as Commissioner Gordon quietly stated when asked, they'd deal with that when and if it appeared. For now, he was too valuable a resource to ignore or sideline. Unfortunately, all of the training and weapons in the world meant little if you were outnumbered, surrounded, cut off and in hostile territory, especially in NML.

It had been one month since Gotham had been declared No Mans Land, since Black Monday, when the remnants of the city had been cut off from the rest of the world by the federal government. People were already eating cats, dogs and anything else they could catch while drinking rainwater from dirty puddles just to stay alive. It was a short step to cannibalism, and everyone knew it. In reality, though, some people had crossed that line a long time ago...

Added to death being a daily threat from every angle and individual one might meet, a total lack of anything resembling safety unless one was strong enough to protect oneself no matter what and the fact that some of the most dangerous psychopaths in the world were on the loose all over the city... People had as good as stopped planning ahead. Survival by itself from hour to hour was almost too much to hope for, more was almost a miracle. Despite it all, no-one yet understood the reality of the Hell that NML was rapidly descending into, nor would they for months to come. In reality, only the Joker would ever be at home in this place, a fact which very few would ever understand.

Harvey Bullock and Renee Montoya, however, would soon learn just how much they didn't know about this new world...

She paused to study the symbol, a word in a language she barely understood at all, sure that she would make sense of it if she could recall its meaning. It took her some long, dangerous moments, but she understood at last-and smiled. It was the Chinese symbol for death, marked in a bloody dark red that could have been blood. She knew it wasn't, though, blood flaked off of stone and concrete if it dried-if the weather or nature in one form or another, animals and the like, didn't get to it first. She'd seen it happen.

This was the area Huntress had told her was known as Chinatown, which made perfect sense considering the symbol. A Triad stronghold was what it had become, run by Lynx, the Triads dominant leader, with almost complete certainly. She pulled out a small hand-drawn map of Gotham city and noted the fact, then put it back into a belt pouch. She almost smirked at that, she'd gotten the idea from him, even though he'd never appreciate it. What would he think of seeing her, here in Gotham again, after all this time, though? Assuming she ever found him, that was, assuming he was even here...

Well, if he was here, she'd find him and do what she could, regardless of what he might tell her. She had far too much experience working out of and in the night, she knew the way the shadows worked as well as anyone alive, better than most. There was no safety here, no security, no help and no heroes. The only person anyone alive could rely on was his or herself. To think of this land as the world you knew, even in your nightmares, was a fast way to a cold grave. To forget that instincts would keep you alive where your mind failed would leave you in a pit so deep that the Devil would laugh.

Those who walked the streets in this lost city thought of a fate worse than death as normal, some of them had ideas that defied human comprehension as the "ideal" amount of suffering before one could be released to the "peace" of the Void. The big, frighteningly insane killer who called himself "Mr Zsasz" was the worst of the lot of them as far as she'd been able to tell, only his inability to fight as opposed to kill having prevented him from landing his knife in her guts. She'd marked him, yes, but it hadn't even slowed him down.

The Joker, whom she'd met a little over eleven years ago now, had no conscience, morals, feelings or sanity. He had a limitless imagination and was so disconnected from reality that he could do literally anything without blinking an eye and think no more of it. The difference between him and Zsasz, though, was that the Joker, while he came up with particularly creative tortures on occasion, did not really know anything about pain. She did, which made her better able to understand him than Batman ever would, but Zsasz was on a different level to almost anyone she'd ever met. If there was anything at all he didn't know about pain, both inflicting and taking it, then she was as crazy as the Joker...

Harvey Dent, also known as Two-Face, former District Attorney of Gotham City...he was out there somewhere, too. He wouldn't be alone, he was too canny for that, even now he'd have people following his orders, carrying out his instructions to the letter. Most likely he'd have most if not all of the twentieth century weapons left in the city under his control by now, he'd almost certainly have set up a headquarters in a still-standing building which was both secure and easily defended-for a crazy man, he was as focused as they came, which made him dangerous.

He wasn't a particularly good fighter, he wasn't a particularly good shot, he never had been. She'd kept a very close eye on him over the years, enough to know he was still the same. To kill or destroy something, hammer at it constantly until it dies or breaks with whatever weapons you have to hand, using everything from your bare hands to a nuke if necessary. Too bad for him, really. Bar the Blue Boys, with the Bat evidently gone, he would have been her first choice of ally.

She could still feel every one of the three shots he'd put in her during the final fall of the Falcone crime family and their allies eleven years ago in Gotham, even so long healed. She'd opened the door of her apartment in the middle of the night to a friendly voice-the next thing she knew her friends brains, blood and pieces of his skull were all over her face and chest. Before she could take that in, she'd taken a bullet in the guts just under the ribs, a second high in the chest which pierced a lung, the impact alone spinning her around, blasting her from her feet. She'd hit the floor, blood in her mouth, an inferno of agony in her chest-the last thing she'd seen was a bullet which tore into her head...

Only the fact that the bullet had knocked her unconscious, creasing her skull rather than killing her thanks to Dents poor accuracy, a huge eruption of blood making it appear she was dead, had saved her life. She'd come to five minutes later and managed to call Bruce on her Mobile, bloody hands making the phone slippery, dialling almost impossible, but it had been enough. An Ambulance had arrived right after him, and she, as she always did, had survived, regardless of the pain.

Out of respect to Bruce, one of very, very few people she'd ever cared about, let alone actually admired, she'd stayed out of Gotham City since the shooting. Arkham Asylum, where Two-Face was kept "secure" and almost regularly escaped from, was therefore off-limits as part of the cities boundaries. However, on occasion, he did leave the city-only very rarely after the first time when she'd been out of hospital after six months, mind. She'd tracked him down, possibly cost him the ability to have children, knocked several of his teeth out, cracked a number of his ribs and shot him in the left shoulder as he escaped in a hijacked car. After, that, crazy or not, he'd never left the city by himself even when he had to move outside it. She didn't care, she could wait, he was older than her for one thing. There was blood between them, and there was only one way that particular feud was ever going to be settled-with Dents decapitated head on her trophy wall.

Despite everything, Gotham was still Gotham, though, the city would never change that much. Dark, with shadows hiding worse holding darker secrets, the moonlight merely serving to illuminate the blood while the sun only made the streets safe, not the alleys, nor anywhere else. The leaning buildings and decaying infrastructure made the inanimate city more dangerous than any of its criminals. The only people who were ever safe were those who were too crazy for the city to touch, too alive for the street-life to kill. Bruce Wayne, also known as the Batman, was the one exception to the rule. He rode the city like a wild horse that he could and would break to his will, forcing his own intentions on it. He was almost as much of the city as were the dark, hellishly deranged shadows that crept about it every night, relentless as time itself. Only one of them could win, though, and, in all honesty, she still wasn't sure which one it would be...

Her head snapped up as her ears caught the slightest of sounds, the crunch of gravel underfoot, a breath... A figure burst from the shadows, eyes and hair wild, face demented, and ran at her with a shriek, ragged clothes flapping all about him, very real knife glinting in his hand. Anywhere else, she'd have just shot him. Here, even she didn't have bullets to spare, so she had to do it the old-fashioned way.

Just being Japanese didn't give you the ability to use martial arts, know how to kill someone with a touch nor automatically grant you superior combat skills. She'd spent almost thirty-one years learning to survive, she'd spent almost fourteen of those learning forms of fighting that weren't supposed to exist, others that had been deliberately "forgotten" because of their very nature, and all of that time she'd been doing just one thing: killing time, until she was ready. Almost thirty-one years old now, she'd been ready almost six years ago. Now, she did what had always been in her blood. She killed and she killed, and she killed and killed and killed...

The man screamed an insult in Chinese, lifted his weapon-she drove her fingers into his chest, right between two ribs, over his heart, like a daggers blade that didn't penetrate even the skin. His eyes opened impossibly wide, he gasped, stopped dead in his tracks-and fell over backwards. His arms and legs jerked uncontrollably even as he made impossible noises, seemingly trying to cough his lungs up as he somehow squealed and choked and cried and screamed all at once-he went limp, his eyes staring at nothing as his last breath left his lips...

As a kill manoeuvre, it was appallingly effective. Once the strike was delivered, the target was dead. She'd been taught it by Lady Shiva, who had long ago earned the title of "Worlds deadliest assassin" in undeniable fashion. It helped her to hold her temper, though, a white-hot storm which could easily drive her to psychotic bursts of appalling violence with little provocation being easily contained this time. After all, if Shiva had taught her anything, it was that the style of the kill was easily as important, if not more so, than the kill itself. After all, you only died once-well, except under rare and unfortunate circumstances. When you annoyed David Cain, for instance...

She sighed, and threw back her head to cast her ponytail behind her. Undone, her jet-black hair fell to her waist, soft and smooth as silk when she had the time to tend it. At the moment, though, it was in a tight ponytail held at the base of her skull and at its end, to ensure complete freedom of movement and make it as difficult as possible for anyone to get hold of it. Her eyes were a luscious deep, dark brown, bee-stung full red lips and fine features added to a curvaceous, slender form a mere two inches short of six feet tall making her Amazonian physique and stunning looks only all the more obvious. Her skin was a delicious, deep dark chocolate brown, which only drew the eye more, while a physique so perfectly developed that it would have drawn the eye at any gym, had she attended one, defined toned muscle and a hard body that most would have said made her an world-class athlete at the least.

Steel-corded muscles and hair-trigger reflexes added to a sense of self and her surroundings that was the wrong side of natural. A breadth of skills that ranged from surviving in the wild with nothing but your wits to live on and your body to rely on, to destroying fortified compounds guarded by entire armies with ultra-modern equipment and a fanatically fearless determination to use it all to kill you by whatever means necessary. A focus and concentration that she was well aware were just the right side of madness. Added to almost fourteen years experience of using them all, they made her almost inhumanly good at what she did.

Added to her total lack of feelings where anyone but a friend was concerned, a temper that would have made anyone on Earth think twice before annoying her and her habit of "practising" on the most dangerous targets she could find when she wasn't on the job, she came as close to being the perfect killer as it was possible for her to get. Bar, of course, exceptions like Shiva and Cain, who were in a league of their own. There was no-one she couldn't kill, nothing she couldn't destroy if she put her mind to it, nothing. The only problem, in fact, was that she hated, hated, hated taking orders...

Her clothes outlined her body like a second skin, soft and smooth but still made out of tailored Kevlar, coloured as black as her hair. A full-body catsuit, with a hardened ridge around the neck as a guard against strangulation, covered her from neck to foot, including gloves and hardened boots. It was padded in a way that both softened and soaked the impact of any assault, the design keeping her at a constant temperature no matter what the situation. Her suit was waterproof and fireproof while her gloves were reinforced with tiny steel spikes, designed like knuckle-dusters, that either added to a punch or strike or killed if she coated them with a poison which she knew had no antidote. Pouches containing a variety of gear were sewn into her suit at the waist and both upper arms. When closed, they were as secure as the rest of it.

A pair of drop-forged acid-edged titanium swords were crossed over her back, the hilts extending up either side of her head, held in special scabbards, while two six-inch knives were sheathed one to each upper leg. A pair of Glock 45. pistols sat in a double holster at the base of her back, she had one clip reload for each on her, more safely stored. Also stored were a snipers rifle and ammunition, grenades, several poisons, antidotes, and tools for repairing her weapons as well as her gear if necessary. She also had food and water, bedding and other necessities. She travelled light, yes, but, in No Mans Land, to ignore any of the necessities you might take for granted almost anywhere else would, she knew, get you killed, or worse, very quickly.

She stopped raking over the past in her mind again with a thought, instead setting her imagination the task of coming up with even more creative tortures for Harvey Dent/Two-Face than she already had. It was a favourite hobby of hers, and never failed to take her mind off of whatever problems she was either facing or thinking of if she wanted to take a break. Most people would have said that she was twisted in the head for finding relaxation in thoughts concerning maiming, torturing, and slowly, slowly killing someone she barely knew, but, if asked, she would have just said "So?"

She'd been born with a sick mind, her life had just made it worse, and if anyone was ever naive enough to call her "nice" or "normal" she'd laugh until her dying breath, hysterically. Her mind cleared, she looked around once more before choosing a route and continuing on her way. "Crazy", or even "reliable", those were words she could smirk at when used to describe her...

"I never thought I'd say this about Gotham, but I really hate this place" muttered Harvey Bullock, pulling his coat closer around him as he walked slowly forwards. He shifted his hat slightly with one hand so that it sat atop his head a little better as he moved, then sighed as his action merely helped to dislodge the snow which had slowly piled up on top. It was cold and wet, as well as being generally unpleasant, and it was all he had to look forwards to for the foreseeable future. He didn't even have a warm home fire to scuttle off home to at the end of his "shift", he grumbled under his breath-assuming, that was, both he and Montoya made it back to Tricorner alive...

Renee Montoya gave him a dirty look, underlined by a scowl. "Thanks for reminding me, Harvey. I was born here, remember?" she shot back at him, clearly even more unhappy about the situation than he was and just as unable to do anything about it.

Harvey just grunted in reply, paying more attention to their surroundings and what was literally underfoot than to any attempt at some sort of philosophical discussion. They'd been sent out here to find out what was what and report back, not get killed by whoever or whatever and probably have their bodies sent back in very small pieces. That made focusing on what was around them far more important than any kind of idle chit-chat, no matter how nervous he happened to feel.

Something caught his eye, a flash of colour on an otherwise dark wall of battered stone, made darker still by the death-darkness of night. He raised his flashlight and flicked it on, illuminating the symbol. A blood-red "D", spray-painted onto the wall, with two horns sprayed on above it. He whistled, quietly. "Now, just what the hell is that supposed to be?" he muttered, just loud enough for Renee to hear him.

She shrugged, as lost as him. "Some religious nut trying to tell us were already in Hell? The Joker? No, I think its a gang tag, say...the "Demons"?" she said, glancing at him to see his reaction. He clicked off his flashlight, threw up a hand and waved it about as though he was half-expecting it to fall off.

"Normally in Gotham? Yeah, sure, tag. Here? I believed in him up there, I'd start praying about now. Group uses that kinda tag liable to be people you don't ever wanna meet" Bullock said, shaking his head, even though Renee would hardly be able to see him for the darkness. Day or night were as bad as each other in No Mans Land, either could and would get you killed in very short order if you weren't real careful. Daylight, though, gave you less to hide in than night, hiding places which were safe and secure being as easy to come by in any circumstances here as the contents of Fort Knox on the outside if you weren't the US government. Night, at the very least, gave you a chance to run like mad bastards with the Devil after you if the worst came to the worst.

"So, we got the Penguin running some kind of Sodom and Gomorra a little north, we got LoBoyz east, now we got Demons-or is it Demonz? Whatever, fact is we got a big problem. That's three groups, tribes, you know what I mean, in southern Gotham alone, and we still got the west to go. Any ideas whether things'll get worse or better?" asked Harvey, the expression on his face making it clear that he expected the worst possible outcome as a matter of simple fact.

Renee threw her hands into the air in a gesture of frustration and annoyance. "I don't know, Harvey. No Mans Land tore up the rules I knew, spat on them and burnt the remains before we even knew what had hit us. Its a whole new world out here, and all I do know is that we don't even know the half of it yet-what?" she asked, stopping sharply in mid-speech as Harvey simply stopped dead. He waved her to silence, making her feel a sudden chill. Anything which was worrying about in "No Mans Land" was probably already too late to worry about in most cases...

"Thought I heard something..." Harvey muttered, hand slowly reaching for his gun even as he spoke. Renee did the same, quick as she could as she suddenly sensed the same thing he had-movement, all around them. Too late...

"Hola, chica" came a mans voice, deep and rough, an edge to his voice that made Renee feel ill just thinking about it. Half a dozen young men stepped into view, dressed in dark, scavenged jackets with the Demonz symbol painted on them very visibly. Shirts, trousers, boots, jackets, the occasional sweater for a lucky one. Four white boys, late teens, barely shaving yet, one Hispanic, about the same age, dark-skinned, haired and eyed.

The last was a big man in his late twenties, well over six feet tall, heavy muscles evident as opposed to a small head and beady, staring eyes that were worryingly vacant when one looked too closely. It didn't matter to the five teenagers, though, because big and stupid was very good at picking people up and holding them still while they worked the victim over until he or she gave up whatever they asked for. He was also very good at killing people, not that that bothered them particularly either...

"Shit" muttered Harvey, even as the Hispanic boy, who'd spoken, pulled out a Switchblade and flicked it open. The moonlight gleamed like lightning on the blades razor edge, like the flash of light that was the last thing one ever saw before one died, and the boy grinned as he raised it to his lips and kissed it. "You an' me, chica, we got some stuff to do. We don' need fat boy here, though. Ain't that right, Carlos?" he said, at which the big man just grinned like a maniac, displaying several chipped and broken teeth. Both Harvey and Montoya had seen his kind before, a fact only confirmed by the moonlight illuminating his face more clearly.

Bones which had been broken and hadn't healed properly when he was a kid in his face, white scars from old wounds about his throat and face, his sheer bulk... A professional bruiser, a bare-knuckle fighter who fought in pit brawls in the "Pit" area of Gotham, one of few places where Police never went except when backed by a full SWAT team and even then in force. His kind hired themselves out as available to do anything to anyone for the right amount of money, living off of what they made in the Pit in the meantime, so it only made sense that he'd join a gang like this one to get by in NML. Not that it mattered, since he would still cheerfully rip off their arms and legs with his bare hands before ripping out their hearts just because he could if asked.

"Really shit" muttered Renee, trying to keep track of everyone at once even as she and Harvey almost instinctively moved back-to-back. Not that it mattered, though, since they were outnumbered three to one and guns weren't actually that much use at close-quarters. She could throw a punch with the best of them, after that she kicked, bit and scratched like the next girl along. Harvey would simply do whatever was necessary to win if he got in a fight, a technique he defined as "survival". Not that it would matter here, not against that lump of muscle...

The four others just stood back and smiled. They were perfectly happy to wait their turn, Renee realised, with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. They weren't going to get out of this one by talk or bargain-"Hey, babe, don't I know you...?"said one of the white youths, staring at her in a way that made her feel as though she was wearing a target right over her heart while naked.

His eyes widened and he snapped his fingers with a laugh, throwing his head back before grinning at her. "Knew I knew you, babe! You that Police chick, aren'tcha, the one who looks sucking hot in that uniform? Well, damn, I always did wonder what you'd look like under it. Guess I'm goin' find out..." said the man, leering at her.

She wanted to kick him the balls, she wanted to smash his nose so flat that even his mother wouldn't look at that face sideways again and smile. She didn't want to die, but she was running too much on adrenaline added to fear and twisted guts as opposed to intelligence and procedure to particularly care. Anywhere, anywhen else she'd have been very annoyed with herself for doing it, that kind of loss of control got you killed on the streets. In NML, she thought that it might just keep her alive.

Harvey pulled his gun and made a point of cocking it, the "Kl-klatch" of metal on metal almost frighteningly evident in the dead silence of NML. "Walk away, little boys, and we won't have to kill you all" he said, manner calm, voice cool as ice. He was an old hand at facing down the worst the bad guys had to offer, as a cop of his years he had to be, but that was then, this was now, and NML was like nowhere else. Staying alive was the only experience that mattered here, the longer you lasted the better you got at it, in theory at least. Somehow, though, Renee didn't feel the need to test her survival skills against NML's multiple lethal hazards just yet, if she could avoid it. The choice was abruptly taken out of her hands by Harvey's actions, however.

All of the white youths pulled weapons, a baseball bat with a rusty nail through it, a jagged-edged stretch of heavy chain, a knife so long and broad that it was closer to being a short sword-and an old Second World War German Luger pistol that looked to be in perfect working order. The Hispanic youths eyes narrowed to slits while Carlos flexed his hands and looked increasingly menacing, looming like the shadow of Death over the two of them. Nothing else was said.

Carlos went for Harvey far faster than his bulk suggested he could move. Harvey shot the big man in the chest before Carlos got him in a bear-hug and lifted him off of the floor as though he was picking up a sack of potatoes, closing his arms with bone-cracking force. Harvey slammed his forehead against Carlos's nose with the crack of bone on bone, but the big man just smiled.

Renee pulled her gun but got punched in the face by the Hispanic youth, who followed through with an almighty punch to the ribs as she staggered-at least, that was what it felt like. She straight-armed him with her shoulder behind the punch, feeling his jaw crack with a sense of considerable satisfaction as he scrambled, lost his balance and fell on his backside in the dirt. Chain man came at her, but she stepped in close before he could strike and rammed her knee into his groin with such force his feet almost left the floor. He squeaked as his eyes bulged, then fell to his knees in a weird posture, clutching at his groin with both hands.

The one with the knife came at her, even while she tried to work out why her breathing seemed strangely painful as she found herself increasingly short of breath. Suspecting that the Hispanic had snapped a rib or two, she tried to aim her gun-her sight went unfocused, then snapped back to needle-point, although black spots danced across her vision. She barely had time to think What the Hell-?! before the youth with the Luger shot her in the head.

Not far away, the dark woman heard the sound of a gunshot, span and headed towards it at a run. Under normal circumstances she would have ignored it unless it made her stand out from the crowd to do so. In NML there were no "normal circumstances", the only absolutes were life and death. More to the point, alive or dead, anyone who could lay hand on a firearm here was dangerous, and so worth knowing about...

Renee turned as she heard the gunshot, her body automatically trying to jump out of the way even as her mind was caught off-guard trying to cope with increasing pain from her ribs and her eyesight problems. It saved her life.

The bullet was a small one, not intended to penetrate bone nor even to cripple by ripping off limbs if it struck only a glancing blow, as larger bullets would. Added to the fact that the old Luger was nowhere near as powerful as most modern guns and the youth firing had never actually shot at a moving target in his life before, Renee could have dodged the shot if she'd been able to see clearly and move normally. She couldn't, so instead the bullet tore through skin and flesh, glanced off of her skull and ricocheted away in spurt of blood.

Renee was knocked backwards and almost fell, but sheer willpower added to a ferociously stubborn refusal to quit that had let her succeed in the GCPD despite everything Gotham had to throw at her kept her upright. Her vision went a bloody red, she saw stars, momentary darkness then sparks of light which flashed across her sight as though she'd received a massive electrical shock straight to the heart. She thought she'd been blinded for a moment, until she realised that the blood she'd lost had sprayed across her face and covered her eyes. It wasn't much comfort, though, as a wave of pain straight from Hell tore into her mind and drove her to her knees, hands rammed into the mud and stone to keep her from simply toppling over even as she threw up everything she'd eaten for the past day, helpless as a new-born child.

Harvey heard the gunshot as his back and ribs creaked in his lopsided test of strength with the big man, realised that there could only be one possible target in a split second-and lost his temper entirely. He smashed Carlos's nose flat with a second head butt, then bit the big mans nose even as he slammed both of his knees into the mans guts before slamming his feet as hard as he could into the big mans groin. Even Carlos felt that, and he screamed as blood began to pour down his face, releasing Harvey completely as he tried to stop the smaller madman gnawing his nose clean off.

Harvey punched him in the throat as soon as his hands were free, shot him in the foot when he registered the fact that he was still holding his gun, turned-and ducked just fast enough to have his hat rather than his head torn off as the youth with a baseball bat just missed him. Carlos leapt up and down with a howl, clutching at his foot, even as Harvey demonstrated his intimate knowledge of fighting dirty and punched baseball bat boy in the balls before following through with an elbow to the chin that snapped his head back so hard it barely failed to break his neck. The youth was unconscious before he hit the floor.

Knife-boy went for him, but his aim was off. He cut Harvey's jacket and shirt but only nicked the skin beneath. Harvey didn't miss, landing an uppercut that raised the youth to the tips of his toes before kicking him in the chest so hard that he flew ten feet backwards, landing hard amongst trash cans with a clatter of metal and a screech of pain. He didn't get up again, clutching at his chest in obvious agony. Harvey turned-the others were gone, but a trail of blood led away down an alley. Renee was gone, too, but there was only one way she could have gone given the shape she was in. Harvey's smile would have frightened half to death anyone who didn't know him as well as Renee did. Barely pausing to pick up his hat and shove it back on his head, gun still in hand, he took off at a run after them.

Renee was dimly aware of being half dragged, half carried by someone big with a limp, someone who seemed to be moaning in pain if she was hearing a person rather than some big, ugly animal about to eat her. Someone nearby was swearing in fluent Spanish, although the voice was muffled, as though he was speaking around either a mask, something covering his mouth or broken bones. A third seemed to be walking strangely, his footsteps sounding at odd intervals, while a fourth was moving faster than any of the others somewhere ahead of them.

She couldn't see, her eyes were swamped with her own blood. Worse, her sense of balance, which way was up, which down, was nowhere to be found. She was hanging half over someone's shoulder, though, she could tell that, and her ears were fine, so she could hear them talk, too. They were arguing over what to do with her, though, a topic which ranged from taking her to "King D" and letting him decide to simply slitting her throat and leaving her to bleed out and join most of the rest of Gotham in the Hell this one was based on. The arguments suddenly stopped, however, and she was unceremoniously thrown down in the dirt with a painful thump which made her grunt.

With the sudden change in posture came an abrupt shift in the way the injury to her head was reacting to gravity. Instead of drenching her face to the degree that she simply couldn't see, the blood was instead simply running down her cheek from her scalp. She blinked twice rapidly as flickers of light slowly came into focus, forming into distinct objects, such as white wisps of cloud, a dark sky, Carlos, the Hispanic youth, Chain man, Gun man-was there someone else there...?

A woman's voice called out in Spanish, then in English. No-one she knew, which left her likely in trouble however she looked at it, regardless of if whoever it was was no friend of the gang. The woman was challenging them to think with their heads over their balls, especially if they thought a beat-up and bloody bitch like her-Renee-was worth having in any way. The Hispanic youths expression said what his face didn't, even as he slurred out words around his broken jaw in Spanish and then English, challenging the woman openly. She saw a glitter appear in his hand and realised that he'd pulled out his Switchblade again. Brilliant, just what she needed, a reminder of just how helpless she was...

Her body wasn't listening to her as pain suddenly surged up and out of her guts into the base of her skull like a sledgehammer swung by Carlos applied to the back of the neck. She doubled over, just managing to twist enough to avoid throwing up all over her clothes, and vomited again, choking and coughing helplessly. When it stopped and she could see again she couldn't fail to spot the flecks of blood mixed in with everything she'd brought up. It got better, she was bleeding somewhere inside to top it all. The Hispanic youths punch must have done more damage than she thought. Either that or, worse, her broken ribs were cutting into something inside her...

"Julia...?" came the woman's voice, cool and calm, cold even, yet warmly seductive despite that somehow. That voice dripped sensuality the same way the tone carried a warning of terrible things to come, a combination Renee would be the first to admit was unique in the experience of anyone in the Police she'd ever spoken to. Normally someone was either trying to kill you, torture you or seduce you, not all three at the same time. With that voice, the woman could have made a serious attempt at doing all of them at once without even making a real effort.

Come to that, mind, Renee couldn't help but think that, as she first caught sight of the woman, she wouldn't need to speak to get someone's attention in more ways than one. With her dusky skin, dark hair and luxuriously beautiful, even breathtaking looks to go on alone, added to a steely musculature and a body that would have shamed most statues from just what her cat suit revealed, the woman could have stood in a crowd and her sheer presence would have drawn every eye to her. The dark skin, eyes and hair reminded Renee of her own roots, but she knew what to look for.

The woman was Cuban, if she was any judge, a people she'd gotten to know well over the years in Gotham's slums. Nobody else had that strikingly seductive, powerful mixture of raw sensuality added to a passion and temper that were never to be trifled with, unless you liked living permanently on the edge of danger-or worse. However, she had no idea at all who the stunning woman was, so why had she called her "Julia"? More to the point, did those weapons she had strapped all over her actually have some practical purpose in her hands, or were they just for show? She quickly gained her answer.

"You want her...bitch...you come...take her" said the Hispanic youth, raising his Switchblade in threat as he managed to speak around his broken jaw with some difficulty. The tall, dark woman just stared at him, then shrugged, shaking her head.

"Okay. Run" she said, her expression not changing at all from evidently bored yet alert. The youths and Carlos just stared at her, then they burst out laughing. The Hispanic shook his head, waving a finger at her in mock chastisement even as his Switchblade glittered in his hand.

"You loco...bitch, but we...ain't here to enjoy you...yet. You move now, we not...kill you just...now. You don't, well..." said the Hispanic, sneering at the dark woman with the confidence created by arrogance. Arrogance which was created by the fact that he had three bastards who'd do what he told them when and how he said, probably without question or even thought... The woman's posture changed slightly in a way Renee couldn't have defined if asked, but she knew enough to be sure that, if she'd been the youths, she'd have run like Hell. Why was harder to explain, and it probably wouldn't have mattered in any case if the woman was everything she appeared to be. As it was, the youths and Carlos quickly found out that they, themselves, didn't matter at all.

There was nothing more than a flicker of movement and the hilt of a black-handled knife was abruptly sticking out of the Gunman's throat. Before he'd even begun to choke on his own blood, even as his eyes widened in horror, the woman had closed the distance between her and the youths. She hit Carlos in the face with a very particular style of strike, Carlos trying to look at his own nose with crossed eyes even as his eyes began to glaze over, the strike having driven his nose up into his brain, before ripping his chain right out of Chain-boys hands.

A flick of her wrists wrapped the chain around the youths neck, a jerk of her shoulders tightening it around his throat to such a degree that it tore skin, cutting into flesh, even before it closed off his air. The man went blue very quickly, barely having time to even scrabble at the chain before the woman simply dropped it and him, clearly having crushed his windpipe. Without even breaking stride, the woman drew both her swords, crossed them over her chest-then slashed outwards, as hard as she could. The Hispanic youth was the last to die, but, as his head slowly toppled one way and his body, cut cleanly in two at the waist, fell apart literally, Renee had to suspect that, in the few seconds that had elapsed, he'd been given probably the second quickest, cleanest death of any of them. The woman had, uncaring, sheathed both of her swords before the youths remains even hit the floor.

Not even a drop of blood or muck had so much as touched the woman, and her expression hadn't changed at all throughout. She still looked bored yet alert, excepting one thing-there was a look of total indifference in her eyes as she looked at the dead bodies scattered around her, a look which changed only slightly when she looked straight at Renee. If Renee had been able to, she'd have simply disappeared at considerable speed on seeing that look directed at her under normal circumstances, especially after what had just happened. However, NML never had been anything resembling "normal" up till now, and it had clearly chosen not to break the habit here. Besides which, the woman had, evidently at least, just saved her life...

Was that why she didn't even try to move as the dark woman walked towards her, after retrieving and cleaning her knife on the dead mans clothes? Or was the shiver that ran down her back her bodies way of trying to tell her what her mind was trying to ignore?

Harvey came around the corner at a run, skidding on slushy snow so sharply that he almost fell over. He righted himself without even a pause for thought, then threw himself forwards, legs pumping as though he intended to make up for the lack of exercise over the past thirty-some years in the next few minutes. He rounded a second corner-and stopped so abruptly that he ended up sitting on his backside even before his momentum was cancelled out by the rough, icy ground. He stood up again without even realising it, eyes wide, unable to think or say anything, raised his gun and aimed it-then suddenly found his voice as he screamed "GET AWAY FROM HER, BITCH!" at the top of his lungs.

Some time later, he would reflect that screaming like a madman in NML when you weren't friends of the local killers and psychopaths was not the best of ideas...

The dark woman's head came up sharply even before Harvey came into view, hearing the rapid splat-thump approach of footsteps approaching fast from the direction the dead idiots had been coming as someone raced through snow and ice and over pavements. Muscle memory and reflexes kicked in even as her instincts screamed at her, a Glock 45. being in her left hand and aimed at the approaching figure even before he saw her-although his reaction wasn't what she had expected, especially with his almost frantic scream, to say the least.

She suspected that she was going to have to kill him, regardless, since the look in his eyes made it clear to her that he wasn't interested in what was actually happening here, despite the very dead bodies literally scattered all around in still-liquid pools of blood. Thankfully, before he forced her to do something which really shouldn't have been necessary, Renee managed to speak up and stop them both.

"H...Harvey, itsss...its-alright, its alright, she's...not here for us. She helped...me..." Renee managed to hiss out between gritted teeth, trying and failing to not notice the copper taste of her own blood in her mouth. She didn't like this, not at all, whatever was wrong with her was, apparently, quickly getting worse...

Harvey stopped, stared, looked very closely at first the dark woman, then Renee, then back at the dark woman, before looking at Renee one last time. He visibly ground his teeth, but he was far from stupid, and in the end his intelligence and common sense won out. He lowered his gun, but didn't holster it, instead slowly walking over to stand next to the two women, although well away from the dark woman. He got his first good look at Renee since the fight, and his expression quickly became very grim.

He didn't seem to pay any attention to the dead bodies, steam, the dying embers of the warmth of life, still rising from them even as he stood still. He'd seen much worse during the Cataclysm that had originally devastated Gotham, the dark woman didn't doubt-but, if they hadn't already been dead, she'd have been intrigued to see just what he would have done to them because of what they'd done to his partner. Maybe she'd leave some next time, so that she could find out...

That they were both Police-or at least ex-Police, since NML-was obvious, the way they moved and walked made it obvious to anyone who knew what to look for, the way they looked at each other only helping to make it obvious. She had to wonder why they were here, together, and armed, right now- Renee had lost her gun in the fight, but her shoulder holster was still obviously empty-and she suspected that the most obvious explanation was the truth. They were scouts for Gordon out of Tricorner who had well and truly dropped themselves in it...

Renee was badly injured, and the continuing loss of blood was rapidly making the situation worse. A deep gash that cut right through to the skull near her scalp was spilling blood over her right-side face and throat, a trickle touching her right eye, while the stab-wound to her gut looked suspiciously severe, very likely internal injury had occurred as well. Someone had given her a bloody nose, too, which, added to the streaks of blood across her dusky skin and dark eyes, made it look as though she'd only just escaped from someone who'd been trying to cut her face off with sharp implements and no skill. None of her injuries would have killed her by themselves, but the loss of blood would, even if she didn't go into shock once she realised the extent of her injuries. All that the dark woman thought, though, was that if the Cop was to live she needed very quick medical attention, and there was only one place she knew to get that in NML...

"What's your name?" she asked, softly, trying to get the young woman's attention without appearing threatening. Not easy, considering how heavily armed she was, not to mention her choice of clothing and appearance, but she'd manage somehow, she always did. After all, if something wasn't a challenge, it wasn't worth doing to her. One always had to deal with the situation as it presented itself, mind, and in that case the only thing that mattered was success. Success in completing the mission, success in surviving the battle, etc, etc, as her Blood Cadre tutors had endlessly drilled into her...

"Renee-Renee Montoya...who're...you?" the Spanish-American Cop managed to answer, obviously having trouble breathing. The dark woman changed the "possible" internal injuries to "certain" without her expression altering in the slightest. Inside her head, she was already filling in all of the vital details regarding what Doctor Leslie Thompkins would need to know.

"My name is Helena Corleone, and if that means anything to you I'd appreciate it if you didn't panic or start screaming. Call me Asp for short, its a reputation of sorts before you ask" Helena replied, quickly judging whether or not she could safely pick up and carry the woman herself. Deciding that she'd need the other Cops help, she turned to face him-and found herself looking down the barrel of his gun again. She sighed, "Officer, this is getting boring..." she said, shaking her head.

"I could give a damn, even here. I don't know you, have no reason to trust you and should probably shoot you just for being here in that gear armed like that because I know trouble when I see it. Tell me I'm wrong and I'll laugh, then I'll pull the trigger" replied Harvey, his aim not wavering for a moment. She just looked at him for a moment longer, then sighed.

"Officer, in the name of sanity aim that somewhere else. For one thing, in case your actually that determined to see what's really around you, try to recall that your standing in and on evidence of what I'm capable of. You will get one shot with me, there will never be another, understand? For another thing, you don't want to know me, so just look at it like this. If I wanted to cause you and yours "trouble" there is nothing you could do about it at all. Therefore, decide now whether or not you want my help, because I won't change my mind once I've made a decision here for you" said Helena, looking Harvey right in the eyes, allowing the slightest signs of annoyance to appear in her voice and eyes.

Harvey didn't move for a long moment, and she began to think, again, that she was going to have to shoot him. He was no threat to her, he'd be lucky to even succeed in pulling the trigger if she thought that he was going to, but the fact that he didn't know that only made him more dangerous, not less. After all, you didn't need to be alive to pull a trigger in reality, that she well knew, and here, in NML, the slightest wound could easily kill you since you were so cut off from the twentieth century, its technology and medicine. She couldn't risk that, so her finger tightened on the trigger even as Harvey thought about it-he put up his gun just in time to save his life, although he'd never know that he'd come so close to a very final end.

"Tell you what, help Renee and we'll call it even. They were scum after all. You can help, can't you?" he growled, still obviously unhappy about the situation but intelligent enough to realise that there was little to nothing he could do about it. She holstered her gun, keeping her frown from her face effortlessly. It would just have to do, she supposed, if he kept his word...

"I might just be able to, yes" Helena replied, as she motioned him over to help her with Renee...

Harvey Bullock had considerably more bulk than Helena Corleone did, but he was relatively fit and strong to go with it, so his carrying the increasingly weak Renee Montoya in his arms proved not to be as much of a problem as she'd suspected it might be. She could have done the same herself easily, her body was extremely highly trained and had been forged in almost literal fire to enable her to keep going no matter what pain or injury she suffered from, a steel-strong musculature being merely a part of it, a will that no-one had ever broken being a greater part, but she had other concerns. Namely that, in NML, not having a hand free or a weapon to hand at any given time all of the time was a death sentence in the slightest part of a second. In NML one had to be lucky all of the time just to survive, anyone who wanted you dead only had to be lucky once.

She was almost completely preoccupied with using every single one of her senses, including her "sixth sense" of instincts that were impossible to define but were always there to be relied on, to ensure that they weren't ambushed as they passed through several too-quiet areas on their way to the clinic. Almost completely, but not quite, since she was very well aware that focusing with total clarity on any one situation, no matter what it was unless it involved you staying alive, could and would kill you. She had a ten-year-old scar under her left shoulder blade on her back to remind her should she ever forget, a wound inflicted by a crossbow of all things, which would have killed her all those years ago if a broken rib hadn't shifted the trajectory slightly from into her heart to "merely" deeper into her chest.

She referred to it as the "Hunter" state, when the mind and the body shut off everything which wasn't vital to ones survival and skill added to instinct added to experience ran the chain of command inside her head like a killing machine. It required a small effort of will, but most people didn't even know such a "trick" was possible, and every advantage counted, so the second-long break in concentration necessary to "activate" the state was a price well-worth paying.

Harvey grumbled the whole way there, about everything he could think of and some things which defied description, but she ignored his mumbled cursing without even consciously noticing it. A quiet part of her brain analysed and recognised what was occurring as Harvey's nerves, the reaction being his minds way of dealing with the stress and fear generated by NML and their situation, filed it under "irrelevant" and simply shut out the rest.

No-one, nothing disturbed them on their way to the Clinic, not people, not animals. Why she couldn't have said, but she could make an educated guess. Those left in Gotham when NML was declared and the bridges were blown were either those who couldn't or wouldn't leave. Couldn't were Gotham's own lost, hopeless, dying and dead remnants of a people, the old, the disturbed, the helpless and the mad. The ones who, for one reason or another, had either had not the minds or the means to escape. Wouldn't were people like Jim Gordon, Gotham's Commissioner of police, leader of the GCPD in better times, and most of those of the former GCPD who had stayed behind with him. Those were the ones who chose to remain regardless, to fight to retain some petty semblance of law and order amidst the collapsing anarchy of what had, once upon a time, despite all of its many faults and flaws, been one of the great cities of the USA.

Of course, as ever, there were others, those who stayed behind because they actually enjoyed chaos, anarchy, bloodshed and violence in all of their many forms, but those were the freaks. She made a point of killing those whenever she ran across them.

However, despite her experience in war zones, revolutions, rebellions, civil wars, guerrilla wars, Wetworks and Black Ops work all over the world of a kind there was no way to imagine, only to experience, over almost fourteen years now, she would never admit to anyone that the NML still managed to make her nervous somehow. Nor would she ever admit that she was glad to see the Clinic when it came into sight, especially when she spotted the ever-reliable Dr. Leslie Thompkins in amongst the thick of things as usual.

An inch over five and a half feet tall, Doctor Leslie Thompkins was a blue-eyed woman with shoulder-length silver hair in her mid fifties. She wore a white shirt, long brown dress and shoes, a white Doctors gown falling over them. A stethoscope hanging around her neck even as she worked to bandage up the gashed leg of a teenage boy only emphasised her medical background, which Helena knew for a fact covered a good thirty and more years of helping those who needed it and saving lives on a weekly basis at least. Her age was shown by a face with lines around the eyes and wrinkles caused by almost unending worry and stress as much as age, made worse than ever since NML had begun.

Nonetheless, she still managed to keep the Clinic open by sheer force of personality added to a stubborn determination to help the needy of Gotham until she was either simply unable to do any more or there were no more left to help. These things, added to the fact that she was the only real Doctor left practising in NML who would help anybody, regardless of allegiance or even nature, added to a no-exceptions "No weapons in the Clinic" rule that did a great deal to reassure people, made the Clinic one of the safest places in NML. It had been one of the first places Helena Corleone had marked on her map.

"Leslie?" Helena called, as she walked slowly into the Clinic ahead of Bullock, who was still carrying Montoya. Leslie looked up at the call, her eyes narrowing when she saw who it was, but she stood up and came over once she'd finished. "Oh, its you, Helena. Ah, and Officer...Bullock, isn't it? Good to see you again, Detective, especially here and now, although I don't believe I know this young woman?" said Leslie, taking note of the bloody Montoya cradled in Bullocks arms.

She looked back at Helena again before Harvey could speak, however, with a raised eyebrow and a cool stare. "Helena, mind, let me be clear when I say this. If you are responsible for this in any way, I will throw you out of the Clinic for a week if I must do so myself. Understood?" she continued, to a slightly sad smile from Helena.

"Trust me, Doc, she didn't do this. Some gangbangers with sharp implements including a gun did. I should know, I was there. She killed them, though, so you wanna shout at her about being a cold-blooded mass-murdering psycho bitch, you be my guest. You help Renee first though?" said Bullock, indicating the barely conscious Renee with a nod of his head even as he shot Helena a smirk, which she ignored.

"I see. I will, officer Bullock, but first let us be clear that there is to be no violence here unless you are helping to restrain another patient who has become violent, and only if a lethal weapon is drawn are you to even consider using any weapon you may have of a similar nature. I will help officer Montoya regardless, she is clearly beyond causing trouble to anyone at this point, but if you do not agree then I will bar you from this Clinic. I trust that I have made myself clear?" said Leslie, staring down the taller, much more physically powerful Bullock without even a trace of nerves, not at all to Helena's surprise.

Bullock just chuckled, tilting his hat back on his head with one hand. "Doc, it'll be a pleasure to be anywhere in NML where people ain't trying to kill me every step I take. You patch Renee up and do something about my chest, you won't hear even a peep outta me. Long as I get to keep my piece, course" he replied, to a nod from Leslie.

"Fair enough, officer Bullock. Take officer Renee to any spare bed you can find, I will be with you as soon as possible" said Leslie, Bullock striding past her without another word. Leslie's blue eyes swung around slowly to meet surprisingly soft deep dark-brown ones, even as a slight smile drifted across Helena's features at Leslie's half-infuriated half-fond look.

"As for you, young lady...what am I going to do with you, hmm?" asked Leslie, raising an eyebrow. Her body language suggested that what she had in mind involved long talks about nothing in particular, discussions about everything, endless patience and an attentive student, but Helena decided not to tell her the obvious. Instead, her slightly sad smile reappeared, causing Leslie to look at her in a way that was clearly confused. Not surprising, really, even given their old acquaintance. Very few people knew her at all in reality...

"I could suggest a variety of things, Leslie, but I'll stay with the same old ones for now. When I was three I saw my mother get beaten to death by my father so violently, right in front of me, that the entire room was covered in blood. I had to sit and watch her die over the next three days. When I was seven he gave me a cocktail of drugs to shut me up which should have killed me, but instead they messed up my body and brain chemistry so much that, added to pretty much rewiring my central nervous system to the extent that I was left immune to any drugs and almost impervious to pain, he took away a chunk of my humanity instead. When I was eleven he sold me as a sex slave to a businessman, the same night I slit my new owners throat in his sleep with a razorblade and ran away for good. Do I need to go on?" asked Helena, a sad expression on her face.

"Actually, I beg you to stop. Helena, you have told me all of this before, and more, and I suspect that I know as much about your history as anyone alive, but I still refuse to believe that you are as lost to this world, to us, as you have decided you are. You have seen and experienced things I cannot hope to even imagine, that I do not doubt for a minute. In fact, I do not believe that I am exaggerating when I say that I believe that in every way bar the literal you have been to Hell. I will not, though, cannot accept that you are so completely lost that you have no hope left at all" replied Leslie, pausing as she shook her head.

"You are an exceptionally capable, extremely intelligent, phenomenally talented beautiful young woman who still has the vast majority of her life in front of her. Due to the nature of your life and history you have been driven to use those gifts to make yourself a killer, and again I do not doubt for a moment that this has enabled you to do things that defy my imagination, likely even my comprehension, but that cannot be all there is to you.

The sins of our parents may be visited on us by fate and by blood, but we do not have to be them, we do not have to live their lives to understand our own being. You could be anything you wanted to be if you tried, Helena Corleone, anything. All I have ever asked is you let me in, let me help. Am I truly asking too much in this?" asked Leslie, reaching out a hand slowly and cupping Helena's left cheek.

She couldn't help but notice that the younger woman's warm skin was soft as silk yet firm as hardened muscle could hope to be, even as Helena's hand came up to cover hers. Helena sighed with Soul-deep weariness, then leaned into Leslie's hand and shut her eyes for several long moments before pulling away abruptly.

"No you aren't, but you don't deserve that, Leslie. Your the good one here, and you've already got more than you should have to worry about with the big bad brooding one and his Clan. Besides which, no-one should ever have to take a look around inside what passes for my head, let alone have to touch the part of me that doubles as a Soul when its not simply a hole full of pain, loss and an anger that kills all by itself.

I appreciate the offer, I really do, but I was damned to a place so dark I have to look up to see Hell before I was even born, there is no more to it. Please, help those who can still be helped, those of us who are already Lost will do what we can to help regardless-some of the time. Don't tell Bruce I said that, though, or anyone else, please. It was nice to meet you again by the way, Leslie" said Helena, just before she turned and walked away from the clearly unhappy Doctor Leslie Thompkins...

On a rooftop not far away a tall man stood, silent as death, dark as midnight on a clouded night. A couple of inches over six feet tall, over two hundred pounds of muscle and sinew evident against close-fitting clothes, the man would have been missed by anyone who happened to do nothing more than look up.

His clothes were really a uniform, very dark grey mixed with pitch black, but a mask covered over half his face, a cape shrouding him even as it shifted about his broad frame like wings in the slight wind. Last of all on his chest, over his heart, a dark symbol shone, a black bat encased in an elongated grey circle. His name was the Batman, although he was sometimes also known as Bruce Wayne, and he had finally conquered fears that he would never admit to having that had held him back from returning to his city for so long.

He'd been studying the Clinic, and was pleased to see that Doctor Leslie Thompkins was the one in charge. She'd been practising medicine in all of its many forms for longer than he'd been alive, and, lack of medical supplies notwithstanding, he didn't doubt for a second that she'd do the best job possible given the situation. He couldn't have made a better choice himself, although he suspected that in times to come Leslie was going to regret staying in NML. Of course, this was opposed to the guilt that she would have felt if she'd left all of these people behind with no real help, so one had to be balanced against the other. Clearly, her conscience and beliefs had carried the debate.

He was more than a little surprised to spot Helena Corleone-Asp, he reminded himself-almost as soon as he'd arrived in Gotham, but he wasn't surprised when, as she left the Clinic, she abruptly glanced up with a frown, then a smile, at his position. She disappeared into the shadows so completely after this with a single step that he lost all sight of her, but he'd expected that. He was well aware that where stealth skills were concerned she was at least his equal, possibly his superior. A fact that she proved by seemingly literally materialising beside him, atop a half-collapsed roof, without a sound barely a minute later.

She looked at him for a moment, then leaned back against the remaining parapet of the roof-it was still strong enough to hold her weight, she'd obviously decided-and smiled as she looked at him. "Been a while, Bruce. I almost thought that even you'd finally given up on this one, you know?" she said, her voice soft and gently musical, strong Spanish with a trace of America, just as he remembered it. She was just as beautiful as he remembered, too, if not more so...

"I had some...issues to deal with. They're no business of yours. Why are you here? Do you like the lack of laws, let alone law enforcement here, or something else similar?" he replied, glancing at her before returning his gaze to the street. If there was one thing he'd learned about Gotham since it had become NML, since he'd left and come back, it was that almost everything he'd taken for granted before the Cataclysm didn't apply any longer...

Buildings were broken, collapsing death traps all, sewers were either destroyed or pathways into Hell. Police and other services he had once taken for granted simply no longer existed, so if anything went wrong the only thing that would matter would be how long he took to die. Allies were almost non-existent, only rumours of the remains of the GCPD surviving at all to rely on so far being his information.

He'd thought that it would be just like Gotham when he'd arrived the first time after eighteen years away, a sink of filth and corruption, pain and brutality, one that had no order to it because only those who were the best at being the very worst had any influence at all. He'd been wrong, and he was still adapting now to the fact. It had required a fundamental rethink of his beliefs and strategies, one which was still going on and would for some time, but he'd adapt somehow. He would, no matter what, because there were no other options.

"Most people don't deal with "issues" by going to Monte Carlo and playing up the "Billionaire Playboy" image for almost three weeks before they get some sense kicked into their heads by bastards without a conscience, Bruce. The last time I had some personal problems, for example, to deal with them I went to a Whorehouse for women in Paris and had my brains screwed out for a week. After that they went away. But, then, that's not your style, is it? No, instead you went to the madman's Mecca, winning and loosing fortunes until you couldn't take it any more..." said Helena, looking closely at his face until she evidently decided that enough was enough.

"Welcome to the world I live in, Bruce. Its cold, dead and fucking violent at times, people will screw you up for looking at them the wrong way and every breath you take is blood on a razorblade edge-but I'm the Queen Bitch of Hell, I can take it. Can you? If you can't, Bruce, snap the Hell out of this self-pitying "My City broke" state before I rip your head off in sheer frustration and get out into the world you have instead of the one you want. Nothing lasts forever, Bruce, believe me I know" snapped Helena, practically slapping Bruce as she almost lost her temper at the Batman's cool response. He was staring at her before she'd finished, even before she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply to calm herself down.

Her smile reappeared slowly, even as the Batman's face grew grim. "Sorry about that, Bruce, but you know my temper. Now, are you ready to talk or are we actually going to get physical about this?" she said, her voice cool and controlled, even as her muscles visibly tensed.

Batman didn't want to fight her, he'd seen her in combat too often to think that it would be an easy fight, or even a quick one. She moved like a Panther, quick and sure and strong, always hit what she aimed at and always aimed to kill. She fought like a Harpy in a bad mood using more weapons than almost anyone he'd ever known to be expert with in a masters display, would stop at nothing to win any fight and was utterly ruthless where her survival or success was concerned.

Add in a sharp mind, more experience doing what she did than he had doing what he did added to a temper which came from the wrong side of Hell to be remotely normal, a savage streak of vicious cruelty barely hidden under the surface just waiting to be unleashed, and it became a nightmare even attempting to take her down without killing her. With her other advantages, it became as good as impossible-after all, how do you stop someone who doesn't feel pain? He suspected he knew the answer, but he'd hoped he'd never have to find out. He still did, but he readied himself for a fight just in case regardless.

A very large number of people called his determined paranoia deranged at best, and they were being kind, to their minds. To him, it was just common sense. After all, how did they think a normal human man, even one with his resources, could hope to go toe-to-toe with Metahumans physically and win under anything resembling "Normal" circumstances? The answer was he couldn't, so he made a near-obsessive point of knowing more about any and all of his fellow crime-fighters and every Metahuman than they did themselves, all of them. Of course, Asp wasn't a Metahuman, but with her it was a very, very fine line.

"Alright, how did you know about Monte Carlo? I'll answer your questions if you answer mine" he said, still looking straight at her. Her smile became a smirk as she sighed, then shook her head to settle her ponytail behind her more comfortably.

"A mutual friend, Talia? Oh, don't look so shocked. You must have known I quit the Blood Cadre about six years ago now? With blackmail evidence on their operations for the past twenty years set up in Dead-Mans letter boxes all over the world, which will be delivered to every national newspaper in a hundred countries if I don't make a certain call at a certain time each month? You do? Good. Anyway, I'm here to watch your back at her request. It seems she's still got you under her skin in no small way, Bruce" replied Helena, with a sensual smile that made his pulse speed up before he'd even realised what being so close to her was doing to him.

His eyes narrowed. "I see. Very well, but do not get in my way and at least try to not simply kill everyone you see who annoys you. As to your...suggestion, I am trying to deal with what Gotham has become. It...isn't easy, but I will manage" said Batman, turning back to stare down at the street, at the battered and broken remains of his City, as he sensed that the moment of real danger had passed.

"Bruce, if anyone can, you can, but all the same I hope that you have your fingers firmly crossed. Isn't Techno-Babe still in the Clocktower? She ought to make your life a little easier at least" said Helena, Batman rotating to stare at her so fast that he almost fell off of the building as she spoke.

"Do I want to know how you know about Oracle?" he asked, voice cold, as he put as much threat as he cared to into his tone. He doubted very much that it would have any effect on her, though, it was to show her that he was just as serious as he sounded as much as anything.

"Bruce, for the last time, "Scary voice with gravel" is actually quite funny. Stop trying to scare me with it, though, or you'll make me laugh so hard that you'll have to clean me up off of the street below us with a shovel and a hose of water when I fall off of this roof. To answer your question, though, her operative "Hot Lips" and I met about five months ago now, she was screaming for Oracle over a transmitter while I was busy stopping her from being killed. It was a bit difficult to miss, even over the sound of automatic gunfire and death screams I should point out. You ought to tell her that, by the way. As to the rest-well, I'm me, what do you think?" Helena replied, shaking her head.

"Black Canary? Why do you-no, forget that, I don't want to know why you have that nickname for her. I will have to speak to Oracle about that, though. However, if your here to help, may I suggest you start? What have you found out about NML since you came here?" asked Batman.

"You know about Huntress and her new cross-dressing escapades? Good. Well, there's a lot more than that to know, and I will tell you. But first, Bruce, since I haven't made it official yet?" said Helena, with a broad smile as Batman looked at her, not sure what she meant.

She leaned forwards and kissed him on the cheek, before turning and spreading both her arms out to encompass the entire city. "Welcome to Gotham, Bruce. Or, to put it a better way, welcome to Hell-its kind of fun once you get used to it, really..."

AN END...