Fun With Time Anomalies

Prologue

Selina made a conscious effort not to give Talia al Ghul and her little cult too much credit. But this time she could have kissed her.

She stumbled across the League of Shadows completely by accident. Apparently Talia's little goons made the mistake of not concealing the brilliant light of their stolen invention and curiosity got the better of the Catwoman. Selina had been lurking around a few abandoned parts of the subway system in Gotham City when a bright flash had nearly blinded her. When she investigated further, she discovered the three League of Shadows tampering with a strange machine with a bright ball of energy at it's core. It radiated no heat but the brightness was enough to sting her eyes. She did her best to remain hidden in the only shadowy parts of the tunnel and turned off the nightvision on her goggles to protect her sight.

It was difficult to understand what they were saying. Their accents were a little too heavy for her to make out much of anything, but the word "time" had come up quite a bit. Selina was just about to dismiss it as another one of their rituals to bring back Talia's father when suddenly the core expanded, filling the archway of the machine and firing a man out from the light. He crashed into the wet cement and his colleagues rush to gather him to his feet. They shouted amongst each other in their excitement and the English language completely disappeared from their vocabulary. Selina rose her eyebrows, because while the other men were speaking in the Arabic language, the man who came from the light was speaking fluent Italian. And then suddenly his voice transitioned and shifted into Arabic, surprising even his own friends.

"Has our mistress been informed of this?" one of the men asked very slowly in English.

"Not yet. I will go to her." was the response from one of the other men.

"Go quickly. We will be rewarded for our discovery. Time travel has been tested and proven to be true."

Oh, that won't do at all.

If Talia knew nothing about this place, this meant all Selina needed to do was hit these little boys hard enough to do some temporary brain damage and this toy was hers for the taking. Reaching to her side, she slipped out one of her bolas and after giving it a few good twirls, sent it flying right into the face of the would-be messanger to Talia al Ghul. It struck him right between the eyes, broke the bridge of his nose and knocked him right off of his feet. Before his colleagues could process what had happened, the Catwoman kicked off of the wall of the shadows and divebombed the next man, making sure his head hit the ground hard before she sprung off of him, flipped forward and rushed at the next warrior. This one had managed to get his dagger in his hand once the thief had rushed him, but Selina was much faster than he had anticipated. A strong kick from her heeled boot took out his knee and he could barely get a scream or a stab in before she drove her own knee into the side of his head. She heard footsteps rushing up from behind her and saw that the man who emerged from the portal was charging right at her.

"Oh, you." Selina purred, and much to her enemy's misfortune, her whip was already in her hand.

The whip cracked against the side of his neck, coiled around him and she tugged hard. He flew at her and with a twist of her body she body slammed him facedown on the ground. She pushed her foot down on his back and tightened her grip on the whip, just enough to lift his head a few centimeters off the ground. He was still awake. Good news for her.

"Now I'm going to give you a few minutes to breathe, and then you can tell Miss Kitty all about what's in that big pretty lightbulb over there." she whispered, then pushed the button on her whip. It loosened around his neck and uncoiled, returning to it's rightful place at her hip. "Start talking, or I'll slice you."

Whatever the man had been doing before he emerged from the portal had left him fatigue, and turning into Selina's personal cat toy had taken quite a lot out of him. But thankfully he put up very little struggle against her.

"...It is a time anomaly…" he gasped as Selina applied pressure to his back. "It took me to Italy…. the Italian Renaissance… I could communicate with the people there, I could actually speak Italian… it was remarkable."

Selina rose her eyebrow. He could've been lying, but she saw the proof for herself. He was speaking Italian and seemed pretty shocked that it wore off so quickly when he came back. If the League of Shadows was convinced that this time traveling was real, maybe it was. Only one way to find out.

"Thank you, handsome." and with that she kicked him in the back of his head, just hard enough to put his lights out but not kill him.

After taking the time to remove the unconscious and most likely comatose League of Shadows from the premises, Selina returned to the strange machine to observe it closer. It looked like an archway or some kind of gateway that housed this strange light. It was metal, very clearly looked like a man-made machine rather than an ancient ruin, but she saw no buttons and no indication that it was designed and built by a company. Surely Wayne Enterprises would've went public with a time machine, especially if it meant the possibility of bringing back the two murdered founders of the company. The ball of energy was very responsive to her as she approached but she felt no pull or force moving her towards it. It was as if it was welcoming her into the light.

"So, I've watched enough movies to know it's a bad idea to go back and change history…" Selina muttered to herself as she circled the machine. "Can't go disappearing like Marty McFly. Imagine how boring Gotham would be without little ol' me in it…"

She reached her hand towards the light and again was surprised to feel no heat and no force, although she noticed it started to expand in her direction. Feeling a little bolder, she outstretched her fingers and touched it, watching her fingers disappear into the light but feeling no pain. When she withdrew her hand and found it to be still intact and unharmed, she couldn't help but smile.

"Well, if the League of Shadows can slip in and out of the Renaissance and not destroy the human history in the process, surely this little kitten can have her fun too…"

She did a quick look all around her. If there were other members of the League of Shadows present, she didn't see any of them. Certainly they would have tried something by now to stop her from stepping into the light. Perhaps it would have been wiser to think things through and consider all the possible alternatives, but where was the fun in that? Without further hesitation, Selina stepped into the light and watched as it expanded around her and opened up like the gates of Heaven. The brightness proved too much for even her goggles to handle and so she closed her eyes, still feeling the intensity through her eyelids and only reopening them when everything had darkened.

When she opened her eyes, her jaw dropped at the sight before her.

She was outside and under the stars ontop of the roof of a very old church. And she was staring out at the skyline of a small town in what was very obviously Italy.

Renaissance-era Italy.