A/N: Sadly I don't own Supergirl ect. Just a quick warning, there is violence and death towards the end of the chapter.

J'onn let out a grunt as the wind was knocked out of him. Recovering as rapidly as he could, he phased through the next punch and countered with his own. His assailant dodged and threw a projectile into his leg, it stung like hell. He blocked a storm of fists and legs and responded with a roundhouse which connected with her sternum, she stumbled but stayed up.

Batgirl glared at him and drew back a Batarang when the DEO alarms blared.

"I'll beat you later J'onn." Batgirl quipped with a smile as she replaced the Batarang.

"You wish. Agent Schott, what the hell is going on?!" He growled. Winn cringed.

"I'm not sure, there's been a massive power surge coming from Lord Tech." J'onn winced. If Max Lord was involved there were going to be issues.

"Batgirl, Supergirl, Alex, get down to Lord Tech see what's going on. Do not engage unless you're attacked. Do I make myself clear?" It's a risk sending Kara to deal Maxwell Lord, the two have a history of heated animosity at best. After the events of Myriad, J'onn had hoped that they would be able to bring the tech giant into the fold. He was wrong.


Barbara grappled up to the roof of the Lord Tech building and used her gauntlet to hack the skylight, there was a click as the alarm turned off and the state of the art electronic lock unbolted. She grinned, looked like the new program she'd written worked a treat, if she could get in to Lord's building, she could get into most buildings. Dropping silently Batgirl scanned her surroundings, she was in a dark hallway. What was it with shady organisations and dark hallways? There was always at least one in a secret hideout in her not insignificant experience. She'd have to ask Batman about it, or maybe not, he didn't really have the greatest sense of humour…

The first three rooms she swept were empty of anything significant or incriminating. The fourth was not. A large machine, possibly alien in origin or at least not recognisable to Barbara, there was a computer terminal at the base of what looked like a large spire, there were glowing blue strips of light at regular intervals around the circular edge. Her training kicking in before she just ended up staring, Batgirl connected her gauntlet too the computer. This was what had caused the power surge, it was drawing around half a million watts from the grid. Which, come to think of it, should have shut down half of National City in a major power cut. There was something bigger at work here, she downloaded all of the data onto her gauntlet computer and left the room.

Only to find six men with guns pointed at her head.

"Hi, I was looking for the office, could you point me in the right direction?" Hey, it was National, everyone was so much nicer than in Gotham. They started shooting.

It was worth a try.

She dodged back into the room and threw a Batarang which knocked the pistol out of ones hand, then, she leapt into the fray. Get in close, the guns become a hindrance, won't shoot their own men just to get her. Not like Gotham. She ducked below a strike to her head and pivoted on one leg, kicking him in the sternum. She cartwheeled away from a lead pipe that was swinging towards her head (where the hell had he got that? The hallway looked clean!). She bought her boots crunching into the head of another assailant. Elbow to the face. Ow.

"Touché, I did not expect to get tagged by you guys." She quipped, throwing up her arm to block a hook punch to the head. He screamed as he sliced his fist on the suits arm blades. This was taking too long, she needed to finish this quickly, not a training exercise any more, back up would be on its way.

She swept her cape in front of her and the three men left standing stumbled backwards, when they recovered she had armed the shock-dusters from the back pocket of her Utility Belt. This time when she hit the big guy in the stomach he went down. Went flying back through the air would be a little more accurate. His two colleagues looked at each other and flew at her. She spun out of their way and landed a kick to the base of the skull on the one closest too her. He too dropped. One on one now, she had a huge advantage.

Crash!

What the hell was that?! Kara, it was Kara on top of her, both groaning in tandem. Apparently, something had knocked her through the wall right on top of Barbara. X-ray vision, or just really good luck? She wondered. Kara took off and flew at Mach 1 (if the boom was anything to go by) and judging by the pleasant-sounding thud, she hit her target. Barbara's opponent was still shaken and apparently hadn't taken the chance to kick her whilst she was down. Either people in National really were much nice than Gotham, or he genuinely didn't know they had the firepower to do that. Probably the latter.

Batgirl did not have the same qualms.

She dispatched him with a swift punch to the face. Lights out.

She picked up the shock-duster from where it had fallen, blue light still flickering intimidatingly (she realised she was lucky she hadn't tased herself in the fall), put it on and climbed through the Supergirl shaped hole in the wall. It wasn't, she noted, plyboard either, this was heavy duty reinforced steel. There must have been a hell of a lot of force behind that hit. Hopefully it was a single charge energy weapon. Somehow though, she doubted she'd ever get that lucky.

She wasn't.

The thing that was throwing her friend around like a ragdoll was about ten feet tall, lumbering on four legs, when not attacking, resting on its front knuckles she noticed, now standing to its full fifteen foot. Explosive Batarangs it was then. Turning a dial on her Gauntlet she selected the highest charge, demo charges in fact, and drew one which hit the creature in the elbow. It exploded with considerable force and the beast stumbled backwards, there was a small wound in its arm. Behind the lenses of her cowl her eyes widened. That made this thing stronger than Bane, or the Batmobile (when testing these new weapons, she'd accidently made a new door in the Batmobile...). Thankfully however, Kara took full advantage. Using her density and flight to make her into a Kryptonian cannonball she flew at the beast and landed her fists straight between the eyes. It fell.

That didn't stop Alex from shooting it in the face as soon as it stirred as she sprinted headlong into the room. Kara gave her a look.

"It moved!" Barbara shrugged, it was still alive, and now well and truly unconscious.


J'onn was not a happy man.

"What the hell happened to not engaging?! What was I thinking sending the Danvers sisters to investigate Max Lord?" His eyes glowing a dangerous shade of red.

"In Kara's defence, that thing did attack first." Winn spoke up in defence of his friend. Cringing as J'onn rounded on him.

"How exactly would you know that?" There was a pause.

"I sorta hacked the security cameras from the street, I could just about see into the building, which was irrelevant as it came from the outside." He rambled, James smirked at his boyfriend's antics.

"So, it didn't originate from Lord Tech?" Barbara spoke up.

"I wouldn't jump to that conclusion yet," Kara, of course it would be Kara, spoke up, "it could be a distraction. Something to stop us from investigating too deeply." Whilst J'onn realised that Kara was hardly the most objective of witnesses, she had a point.

"Miss Gordon, Agent Schott, have you got anything from the telemetry from the machine you discovered?" He didn't know what the thing was, they'd come to him with the schematics, hoping he might have recognised it, or at least what it did. He didn't. Well, that wasn't strictly true, he recognised some of the components as coming from a Gordonian Battle Cruiser, but he wasn't sure why the machine needed a cooling spire that powerful.

"Well, we know that it needed more power than is produced by the whole of the National City grid, which obviously is what caused the surge. However, we also know that they must have some other power source, probably unstable because why attach to the grid at all?" Winn asked, tapping a couple of keys on his keyboard a hologram of the spire sprung suddenly from the projectors around the DEO. James did a double take, he had no idea that they had holograms, as he was sure Winn had pointed out, this was so Star Wars it was cool! Barbara tapped a part of the hologram, close to the main terminal, it pulsed red.

"This is the interesting point of the machine, as J'onn mentioned the vast majority of it is a cooling spire, but this is something else entirely. It's generating something in the realm of 22,000 kelvin, hence the massive cooling system, but I don't think that it's the primary purpose, sure heat like that can be useful in some chemical reactions. The creation of Red Kryptonite for example," Kara stiffened, "but it can't be just for that, I could knock up a converter with what we have in the DEO, there's no need for something on this scale. In short, I," she indicated Winn, "we, have no idea what's going on here." There was an uncomfortable silence. Barbara and Winn were two of the best scientific minds that any of them had come across and they were completely stumped. Working together. Kara was getting restless, Barbara's training meant she could see it before the rest of them, but she wasn't exactly subtle for long.

"Miss Danvers, is there somewhere you need to be?" J'onn asked, the corner of his mouth turned up in amusement.

"Uh, no. I mean, uh, yes, kinda... I have a date." She stammered, Alex laughed lightly.

"Go, we've got this." J'onn glared at Alex.

"Yes, we have this, but just remember you take your orders from me not your sister." J'onn laughed, still mock glaring at Alex.

"Try telling that to her!" Kara laughed, with that, she leapt into the sky. Winn laughed heartily and everyone gave him a look.

"You've met Alex, right?" J'onn raised an eyebrow and turned back towards the hologram. There was a bleep and Barbara put her finger to her ear and held a hand to them.

"Batgirl, go ahead." There was a long pause. "You're kidding?... Right, ok. Thanks Tim. Yeah, I'll talk to him. Bye."

"Anything we need to know?" James asked, he knew how it was with the Bat's having met them whilst with Superman.

"Yes, James, you're going to need to suit up. We have something on the creature." James nodded and sprinted off, Winn looked at J'onn who nodded, then grabbed his laptop and the keys to his van and followed him.

"Batgirl! What do you know?" J'onn barked, he didn't appreciate her starting her own op inside his headquarters.

"It's a Cadmus creation, that creature we saw, I had Red Robin look into the biometrics we drew off it…"

"I looked myself, I couldn't make heads or tails of it." Alex butted in, Batgirl ignored her.

"He found that it was genetically modified from a cross between some of the Fort Rozz aliens and another species we can't identify. He also found out that there was another power surge down at the docks about two weeks ago, which is roughly how old we estimated the creature was."

There was a silence. J'onn clicked into gear.

"Alex, prep the assault team. Heavy weapons and non-lethals, we need to be able to destroy any more of those creatures, and to take the Cadmus operatives alive. Batgirl, you and Guardian get down to the docks and find somewhere to set up shop until the team arrive." He tapped his comm. "Supergirl, come in. We need you." There was a whoosh as a concerned Kara landed with an audible thump. "Supergirl. We need you in the air, scan the warehouses at the docks, look for a laboratory, or lead. I'm coming with you." He morphed into his natural form and the two took off.

Batgirl stepped into her room and donned her armour, setting it to auto tighten and safety check as she ran for the bike. James and Winn were waiting for her, the former on his bike. They sped off, with Winn unable to keep pace in the van, he pulled off and set up his station two blocks to the south.

"Batgirl, comm check, I've patched you into our network."

"Received loud and clear." Barbara tapped a panel on her Gauntlet. "You should be able to receive my visual feed now Winn."

Winn jumped as her feed asserted itself next to Guardian's. He was incredibly impressed by the Prophet OS she was using. It was clearly a next level HUD, far superior to the one he'd set up for Guardian. He'd have to compare notes when she got back.

"Batgirl, Guardian. That crane is abandoned and is in striking range of most of the warehouses. Good place to set up an observation post." The two acknowledged and swung their bikes right. Pulling up not far from the docks and grappling up to the platform on top of the cab. James pulled a set of small, high tech binoculars out of his belt, flipped them open and scanned the ground.

"Enhance." Batgirl's cowl complied and zoomed to a level that she could use to perfectly make out the faces of everyone on the ground.

"Agent Schott, run an analysis of Warehouse 14 from the DEO satellite. We've got a lead flooring, presumably covering further underground layers. Try the OMAC program." Winn confirmed and Barbara and James focussed their vision on the warehouse in question. Armed guards. Lots of them. Whilst this wasn't of itself out of the usual for a dockside warehouse, the tech they were packing was. Prophet detected four alien weapons, two concealed energy blades and a comm system that rivalled the DEO's own. She passed on the information to Winn who informed her that it was equally unhackable as the set they were running. It was hardly two minutes later when Alex's strike team reported that they were in position. A quick call to Maggie Sawyer at the NCPD and a perimeter was subtly formed by their SWAT teams. If Cadmus noticed anything it didn't show.

"Results are back, there are 52 levels to that thing, highest heat concentration is on the 37th, I'm assuming that there's another one of those machines. I'd suggest that Supergirl stayed outside and covered everyone's escape, I'm almost certain there's Kryptonite in there." J'onn stifled Kara's inevitable complaints by agreeing and ordering her to stay outside. He gave the signal and the attack started. James grapneled to the floor vertically and took off at a run towards the warehouse. Barbara leapt off the crane and opened up her cape into a glider, holding her hands to the edges. Her feet collided with a Cadmus soldier, one who she had targeted due to the sword in his jacket. There was a hail of energy weapon fire around her as Alex's assault team launched into action. Now largely forgotten as Cadmus returned fire Batgirl threw a Batarang and disarmed a man with a rather dangerous looking weapon which was pointed towards Guardian, who in turn knocked a man off his feet who was aiming at the back of Batgirl's head. Then Supergirl and Martian Manhunter dropped out of the sky. There were two huge crashes as they landed, creating craters in the concrete. They moved in perfect unison, standing up and launching themselves at the enemy. Reinforcements were arriving now, but a carefully timed volley of fire blocked their entrance into the battle until they threw a grenade through the entrance.


The explosion was massive.

Winn could feel it from where he was sat in the command centre. He no longer had the visual feed from any of the agents, Batgirl, Supergirl or even James.

James.

He could be hurt. Winn stood up, hands clutching his head as he tried the comm.

"This is Agent Winn Schott, does anybody read me." Silence. "Anyone?!" Still nothing. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, grabbing a rifle of a similar type as that which he had used to save Kara with the help of the heroes of Earth One. He sprinted towards the warehouse, hoping that there would at least be someone left to save.


Guardian had covered himself and the nearest agent with his shield as soon as he saw the grenade roll out of the door. There were blue pulsing lights, similar to the ones on the spire. As soon as it detonated James realised that his HUD was down. All he could see was what his eyes showed him. What they showed him was chaos. There were at least five dead, a further three either critically injured or dead as well. Batgirl had a broken arm by the looks of it and the blast had sent Supergirl to the ground which was no mean feat. The problem was that they were disoriented now, and the Cadmus reinforcements had the initiative. There was an exchange of fire, the remaining DEO agents being forced into cover. The heavy weapons fire had also forced Martian Manhunter and Supergirl first to ground, then to cover themselves. Supergirl popped up and used her heat vision to scatter Cadmus. Now both sides were pinned. Guardian could do nothing but use his projectiles to try to disarm as many enemies as he could, but every time he tried to move forward, covering himself with his shield to retake the initiative, the sheer volume of fire would force him to retreat. He called Winn, hoping for a new angle, or some tech that he'd overlooked to help him. There was only static.

"J'onn! Comms are down. Can you link us up?" He shouted to the Martian who was dragging one of their dead comrades back to the DEO's line. Once he had covered himself behind a shipping container he closed his eyes. When they opened again they glowed red.

"Can you all hear me?" He asked using the Mind Link.

"Loud and clear director. What's our plan?" Alex asked, popping up and firing her weapon dropping two of the Cadmus lackeys before they could draw a bead on her.

"J'onn, if we give you cover fire could you phase behind them?" Kara asked, J'onn took a breath and nodded. Supergirl leapt into the air and used her superspeed to rush the enemies, dodging heavy weapons blasts, whilst Cadmus was distracted by Kara, who was now being slowly forced back step by step Guardian launched himself into battle. From the side, Winn appeared, firing his stun rifle (J'onn and Lena still insisted there was no way they were going to call these things phasers) at full auto, dropping two or three of Cadmus' soldiers before being forced to duck into cover. By this stage, the whole of the DEO's force was advancing and Cadmus was falling back to their second line of defence.

Their second line of defence, and the Martian Manhunter.

J'onn targeted the heavy weaponry, dropping the operators hard. Cadmus was defeated, they knew it. The last five were back behind the doorway, firing at full auto at anyone who got close.

"Supergirl, can you stop them please?" Asked Batgirl, still clutching the broken arm, now in a sling. Kara smiled and walked slowly, arrogantly, through the door. She knocked the remaining soldiers to the floor unconscious and beckoned the others to come through after her. There were sirens nearby, apparently, Maggie had ordered the SWAT teams into action after Alex hadn't replied for a time after the grenade.

Winn walked through the door after Alex and could see the others starting down the warehouse. He turned to look.

"Holy shit."

A/N: Hello my lovely readers. Sorry this took such a long time to put up. Coursework/Revision is slowing my life down and ruining it. Ugh. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, the story is beginning to take shape in my head now. I must admit, I hugely enjoyed writing the pitched battle between the DEO and Cadmus. What did Winn and the others see? Find out next chapter :)

As always, constructive criticism, thoughts and the rest are greatly appreciated.