Trinity: Remixed
- Crusader -
Luthor aside, Bruce had been more than ready to corner the Man of Steel in an attempt to acquire the opportunity to study the unusual physiology of the Kryptonian.
Then the windows crashed inward under the weight and force of armoured men.
Even as people screamed and fled, Bruce had pressed a button on his wristwatch that sent a tiny signal to Alfred, down in the limousine. If he could find an exit, he could turn into Crusader in less than a minute.
He didn't have even a minute.
There were guns trained on the now-panicked crowds. Guns, but no bullets - not yet.
In the meantime, there was a moving blur of black tuxedo and white shirt that had already take care of two of the men, impervious to the bullets that bounced off his skin.
Bruce had to admit, it was a very dramatic save on Superman's part.
But even more dramatic was the move the theives took to stop him.
Bruce saw the side of the muzzle of the gun swinging towards him, and allowed it to knock him backwards. A certain clumsiness acted in his favour as a disguise. Disguise was good.
The gun muzzles that now pointed at Lois and Ms. Prinze were not.
"Hey, Superman!" The bandit yelled, his voice hard and cold. "Are your girlfriends bulletproof?"
As threats went, it was a highly effective one.
Superman froze, the strong muscles of his neck and throat standing out as he willed himself to stillness for the sake of the bystanders. Sprawled inelegantly on the floor, at one level, Bruce was impressed with the ingenuity of the men. On the other hand, that ingenuity had neutralised their biggest threat, which was not quite as impressive - from Bruce's point of view, anyway.
"Ladies and gentlemen," spoke one of the men. "We hope you've been having a lovely night!"
He seemed standard for most of the intruders, dressed in green army-like fatigues with a flak jacket, balaclava, and a semi-automatic weapon - one of the older AK-47s. Bruce noted the spare sidearms that several of the men wore, and briefly wondered if he could reach one, then abandoned the thought of heroics as long as they had so many men and so many hostages.
The spokesperson continued, dry irony in his voice as he added to his greeting. "We're going to make this simple for you rich, fancy folks. Hand over your jewels and valubles and you won't get hurt!"
With a sigh, Ms Prinze collapsed on the floor.
Bruce barely managed to catch her before she hit her head. He lunged up from the floor and promptly found himself with an armful of fainted socialite.
Due to his training, his mind tended to remember fragments of scenes in peculiar montages. His senses would later pull up the memory of her scent, the feel of her skin, and the colour of her dress. Jasmine, velvet, royal blue... His senses would also recall the calibre of the guns, the limp of the leader, the military gait of several of the men. Coolly, his mind catalogued all this information away. There was significant organisation behind tonight, this hadn't been planned this afternoon.
Lois was pale and worried, but not unduly frightened as the men stripped her of her jewellery and purse, tossing them into a sack each man pulled from beneath his flak jacket. The gun held against her head kept Superman tense but quiescent.
But at this moment, all that came secondary.
The first thought in his mind was that Ms. Prinze wasn't breathing.
There was an order to the world. Bruce felt it in his bones. He'd become a doctor in honour of his father's life. He'd become a vigilante in search of justice for his father's death. The two were a balance that he'd struggled with all his life.
He wasn't so sure he'd found it, even now.
Crusader should be in here, showing these men who owned this city, who claimed it - protected it.
Dr. Bruce Wayne only knew that there was a woman here who needed his medical expertise.
The doctor won. Thieves can be tracked down, but dead is dead. Not much of a choice at all.
Frantically, Bruce checked for a pulse and sighed in relief as he found it. At least he wouldn't have to initiate CPR. His jacket was yanked off with more speed than skill to give him greater freedom of movement. A handgun was cocked at his head and he could feel the tension in the trigger-finger, mere millimetres from splattering his brains out across the white-gold rug.
"What are you doing?"
Another man might have frozen. Bruce did not. "She's not breathing," he said, checking her mouth without looking up at the man who held the weapon on him. "I'm a doctor, I'm helping. You're already up for theft and endangerment. Do you really want to add murder to your rap sheet?"
There was a silence from the man, and Bruce brushed a finger across the fine plane of the cheek and checked her pulse again. Still strong, but her chest wasn't moving.
She wasn't breathing.
"Get his wallet off him!" Someone else yelled. "Don't worry about the bitch!"
He pointed at the discarded jacket without looking away from his patient. "Wallet's in there." Not that he carried much to these events. Chequebook. ID. Credit card. The rest was left with Alfred down in the limo. Unnecessary.
Vaguely, he was aware of a chance in the tension of the room. Then there was the sound of steady gunfire and renewed screams. A moment later Lois flung herself down to the floor beside him, "Is she okay?"
Bruce hardly noticed.
His eyes were on her face, on the rich beauty so still and unmoving, and he tilted her head back and began resuscitation techniques. Breathe, count four, breathe, count four, breathe count four...
She wasn't breathing.
Beyond him, there were cries and the sounds of fists hitting flesh. A woman's voice rang through the room above his head, cool, commanding tones that bordered on the familiar - if his mind could only stop long enough process it. He stored the familiarity for a time when he wasn't attending to his patient and cataloguing other tiny bits and pieces about the situation.
A moment later, a second pair of fists joined the fray, and he could hear the alarm and panic through the room - as well as the subtle shift of dynamics. The intruders were on the defensive now, taken by surprise.
But she wasn't breathing.
Damn you, woman, he thought angrily as he continued resuscitation. Breathe!
He could keep this up for only a little longer, then someone else would have to take over. In the meantime, she wasn't getting as much oxygen as her brain usually needed. Oh, there'd be enough to keep her alive, but not much else.
She wasn't breathing.
In the background, he could hear Lois gabbling into a cellphone - she'd had the presence of mind to call the ambulance. Alfred would have sent an alarm to the Gotham City Police the instant he received the signal from Bruce.
That was the way things usually worked in Gotham. Crusader took care of the problem, and the GCPD got the criminal they wanted.
The GCPD would be on their way by now, but Ms. Prinze needed an ambulance.
In the meantime, she had Bruce working over her.
And the stupid woman still wasn't breathing!
"The ambulance is on their way." Lois glanced up, "And the police have just arrived..."
The sounds of fighting had stopped. There was no gunfire. Superman was speaking to someone. The GCPD had arrived on the scene.
Ms. Prinze wasn't breathing.
"Injuries?" Bruce didn't look up from the socialite. Even unconscious, the woman was exquisitely beautiful. Now if she'd only be exquisitely beautiful and breathing!
"One man is dead," she said, pale and tight. Lois wasn't the fainting-flower type. "A couple of bruises where people got smacked around when they resisted the gunmen taking their stuff. A bullet wound, but Hank O'Malley is on him."
Hank was a good doctor. One less thing for Bruce to worry about anyway.
"Superman?" He was surprised she hadn't yet said anything about Superman. Lois, for all her aspirations to being a modern, independent woman, had fallen for the Kryptonian from day one.
"Imprisoning the last of the thieves with Lady Night."
That startled him as few things did. Bruce paused in his resuscitation and looked up, startled. "Lady Night?" Abruptly he recalled himself and returned his attention to Diana.
"She arrived after Ms. Prinze fainted," Lois said. "They're..."
"Is there anything I can do?"
Bruce barely looked up at Superman's request, mentally counting to another four as he said. "If you can get her to a hospital in the next thirty seconds, then, yes." He bent to breathe into her again.
And this time, as his lips lifted from hers, she moved under him, trying to inhale and exhale all at once. The result wasn't pretty. She choked as her reflexes demanded she drag air into her lungs and yet expel whatever it was had gotten caught in her throat.
Still, there was no way to describe the relief Bruce felt as he sat back on his haunches and began waving people away. It rushed through his veins, as intoxicating as any drug, as triumphal as any primal cry. He had fought death and pushed it back for one more day.
A fight worth fighting for.
Now, he'd have a harder battle on his hands: crowd control and giving a socialite advice.
"Ladies and gentlemen, step back. Give her air to breathe." He watched the blue eyes open, and had a reassuring hand on her shoulder as she sat up coughing and wheezing. "It's okay, Ms. Prinze. Everything's fine." Charity Director Kennedy was still hovering anxiously so Bruce addressed him, polite, but firm. "Would you get Ms. Prinze a glass of water?"
It was one way to make the man stop hovering.
She coughed a few moments more, sounding oddly forced, before she drew in a long, steady breath and exhaled clearly. "Are they gone?"
Bruce kept his hand on her shoulder. "Yes," he said, with an authority he didn't have.
Technically, he didn't know that the bandits were gone, but he trusted Superman and Lady Night. If those two were cleaning up, they'd have done a fairly thorough job.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to have a talk with them both about jurisdiction and his city. Never mind that he hadn't been able to stop these thieves, they should have known better. Besides, Crusader had a reputation to keep in Gotham and among his team-mates of the League. "They're gone." As she sat up, he put on his best 'authoritative doctor' voice. "Take it easy there. You stopped breathing for a couple of minutes."
One black-gloved hand waved him away, but she accepted the glass of water with a smile for the director before she looked back at Bruce. "Don't fuss, Dr. Wayne," she said lightly. "I'm fine. Just a fainting spell, nothing to be worried about."
"A fainting spell during which you stopped breathing for several minutes," Bruce said, careful to rein in his irritation.
She'd taken a gulp of water while he spoke, her eyes fixed on his face in a very disconcerting manner. It gave the impression she was listening very hard to his words, though Bruce considered it highly unlikely that she'd pay heed to anything he said.
He was right.
"Dr. Wayne," she said, in a coaxing voice that made him want to gnash his teeth, "it should be quite obvious that, unconscious or not-breathing, I'm fine. Better than fine, in fact."
"You should listen to your doctor, Diana," Superman said, looking away from where he'd been speaking with Lois.
Oh, so it's 'Diana' is it? Not that the intervention did all that much. She only came back with the retort: "Sadly, he's not my doctor, Superman." The arch look that accompanied such sentiments was aimed squarely at Bruce, and he ignored the brief syncopated thud of his heart. He was a single man, not a dead one.
"If I was your doctor, you would be obeying my directions," Bruce said somewhat dryly. He was well aware that he was playing into her hands with his comment, but sometimes that was the easiest way to deal with a woman.
Lois didn't quite sigh, but he could see the roll of her eyes from where she stood as Ms. Prinze answered, "So I guess you like being in control, hmm?" The gleam in the socialite's eyes was positively wicked as she regarded him, and he flushed. His complexion was beyond his control, even if he had a sharp rein on his thoughts a moment later.
He didn't bother to hide the flush. It would add to his image of a woman-oblivious work-obsessed doctor. "Ms. Prinze," he said with the manner of someone trying to keep a derailed topic on the straight-and-narrow, "When the paramedics arrive, I'd like you to go with them. You should have a couple of tests performed, just to be sure that everything is fine..."
"Oh, that shouldn't be necessary, surely?"
"I'd strongly advise it..."
"But I don't have to if I don't want to, do I?"
She certainly had her cajoling down pat. Bruce sighed. "No, you don't have to, but Ms. Prinze, you were unconscious for..."
"Thank you," she said, and now there was the hint of stubbornness in her voice. "But no. I'm quite fine, Dr. Wayne, I assure you. No more help needed." Then she smiled a little. "Unless you're going to be helping me up from the floor."
Bruce recognised a lost cause when he saw one. Not so Superman.
"Ms. Prinze, I don't think you should be dismissing Dr. Wayne's opinions so lightly."
"Oh, Superman," she said with a laugh as the Man of Steel helped her back onto her feet, "Dr. Wayne has my utmost respect as a practitioner of medicine, but I feel fine." Her hand rested on the muscled bicep for balance a few moments longer than necessary, and Bruce bit back the surge of irritation that washed over him at the woman's careless dismissal of her situation. Several minutes with minimal oxygen to the brain was nothing to sniff at.
Still, he wasn't so rank an innocent as to show such irritation on his face. To the rest of the world, his expression was rueful and exasperated as Lois hauled him to his feet. "You're okay?" He asked her with a quick glance over her to confirm it for himself, even as he also took in the rest of the room in his peripheral vision.
A dozen bodies lay prone on the floor, most being hauled up and handcuffed even as he watched.
The GCPD were giving the matter their full attention - not that they had much choice with Gotham's wealthiest and most powerful in the room.
Superman went to speak with them, excusing himself, and escorting Ms. Prinze over so she could give the detectives a bit of information about the guests - or just so she could break a few more hearts. Bruce was feeling quite disgruntled after having his medical opinion so summarily dismissed.
A glance around the room showed most guests had found chairs. Not a few were looking very distressed. Those were most usually surrounded by friends and acquaintances who were saying things in soothing tones. One sensible servitor had found a tray of champagne and was passing it around to steady the nerves of any guests who felt they needed something to drink.
Personally, Bruce felt that a double whiskey on the rocks would have been more than welcome.
A man had died in the theft attempt. His tablecloth-covered body lay in a spreading stain of scarlet. Across the room, the dead man's wife was sitting in a chair having hysterics as another woman held her hands and spoke to her. Bruce's hearing didn't reach that far, but judging from what he could read of her lips, she had already begun counselling the bereaved woman.
He saw Hank O'Malley, kneeling down beside a man, glancing around in assessment of the situation. Their eyes met and meshed, and Hank gave him a quick nod to show that things were under control for the moment.
Bruce turned his attention back to Lois, who was answering the question he'd first asked.
"I'm fine," she said, more irritated than scared. "I handed over my stuff, nice and polite and they promptly ignored me. Other than the shock of having a gun stuck to my head..." She heaved a deep sigh, looking out across the floor where the Gotham Police Department had arrived and were taking charge of the situation.
"What did they take?" Bruce asked.
"Mostly personal stuff," she told him. "Purses, wallets, jewellery. They were halfway through when Lady Night appeared." Lois shook her head. "One minute, there was nothing, the next, she'd slipped out of the shadows and was in the middle of it all. She got four of them down before they realised what was going on. Then Superman joined her, and between them they got most of them."
"Most? Some escaped?" Bruce arched a brow. Something in him was pleased. Tracking them down would be Crusader's task later tonight.
After he had a word with Superman and Lady Night. They'd done good work, but Crusader did have a reputation to keep. And Gotham was his city, after all.
"Only a handful." The pretty bow lips twisted in sudden frustration. "But the ones that did took my Palm Pilot! I had my notes for tomorrow's articles all written up on it!"
In spite of everything that had happened tonight, Bruce found himself with the urge to throw back his head and laugh. Lois was incorrigible. He took her elbow and gently steered her towards the tables where enterprising waiters were pouring glasses of alcohol as fast as they could.
Across the function room, Ms. Prinze was charming Commissioner Gordon with that smile.
"I could do with a drink," Bruce said. "I think we're going to be here a while."
He could wait an hour or two before starting on the hunt for these men. They hadn't been mere thieves, that was for sure - there was too much organisation here, even for one of the gangster groups that Gotham bred like rabbits.
Organisation left papertrails, and papertrails led to criminals.
And when Crusader found the criminals...
Well, that was for later.
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