IX

Gotham City

A large, thick fog plagued the dock area heavily that night, as Ciciley, Elisa, and Sean arrived there. Nervousness continued to overwhelm Sean while pulling up near the sidewalk, just a block away from the warehouse. Across from him was the still-bleeding Ciciley, aiming her gun at the head of Elisa Maza, a woman who was only doing her job and seemed to have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.

It was pretty obvious that the warehouse had been broken into, because the chain that was supposed to be locked around the front entrance was clearly snapped loose. Indeed someone had broken in, but the important question was who had done so. That was the one thing Ciciley was determined to find out, even if it meant taking Elisa along with her.

"Get your butt outta the car, Maza." She demanded of the detective. "You're comin' with me."

"Why? So your cousin won't see you pull the trigger?"

"Shut up!" Her harsh tone made Sean jump a little; obviously he was thinking what Elisa said was the truth. Seeing his anxiety, Ciciley calmly assured him, "I'm not going to kill her. I'm just gonna prove to her that I'm not the corrupt one here."

Elisa scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Oh, please."

"Navarro and Gonzalez will be here any moment and then you'll see what they've been doing behind the backs of every Gotham City Police official." Ciciley stated, before pulling out a pair of handcuffs and tossing them to Elisa. "And if I'm lying, then you've got my permission to haul my paranoid butt off to jail for insubordination or whatever you wanna call it."

Maza glanced at the handcuffs in confusion, wondering if it might've been some type of ploy. For all she knew, Ciciley could've had a spare pair of cuffs in her back pocket or saving the one she handed to her for whatever trap she could've been setting up. Without a gun by her side, she needed to be ready for anything. So she nodded in agreement with Ciciley's offer and placed the handcuffs in her left pocket.

"Alright," she regretfully said. "Let's do it."

Both women exited the vehicle simultaneously, leaving Sean to continue sitting where he was and being as nervous as he could be. He felt the usual cramping sensation come over his stomach during moments such as this, and his hands even started to shake a little while clutching onto the steering wheel. These were the kinds of situations that he imagined to run into when he moved to Gotham City, anticipating on the risks that he had to take in order to maintain a reasonable career as a field reporter. He watched from the driver's seat how Ciciley and Elisa crossed the street, making their way around to the back of the warehouse.

The rear area contained loads of crates, stacked against and on top of each other. They were exactly what Ciciley needed to get where she wanted herself and Maza to be – the warehouse rooftop. From there, they could observe everything that was happening inside through the skylight and not worry about being spotted by whoever had already busted in and was waiting for Detectives Navarro and Gonzalez.

Ciciley forced Elisa to climb up the crates first, aiming her gun straight at her head to motivate her in doing so. Sometimes it amazed her how much power a gun had, even while it wasn't being fired. But nothing impressed her more than the secret she was keeping to herself about the gun: it wasn't even loaded. Ciciley realized it would be pointless to shoot Elisa, if she would be the only witness to the corruption happening in their department. As long as she had her thinking the gun being pointed at her was really loaded, then she would have no trouble convincing her.

Once the two women reached the warehouse rooftop, they headed to the nearest of the six skylights sitting parallel to each other. Through it, they got a perfect view of the space somewhere at the center of the warehouse, where an antique wooden, rectangular table sat. Right beside it was a middle-aged Asian-born man wearing a lab coat, tied and gagged to a chair. Across from him were two other parties who were all too familiar to Ciciley and Elisa: Quackerjack – a former toymaker turned vicious jester with a weird obsession for toys – and Negaduck – a bizarre, evil version of Darkwing Duck, donned in a red, black, and yellow costume that opposed Darkwing's usual gray and purple one.

A confused Elisa Maza looked on the scene, several questions running through her mind. "What're these weirdoes doing here?"

"Navarro got them out of Arkham." Ciciley answered. "Why she did it? I have no clue. But it's anything but good, I'll tell ya that much."

At that point, they heard a vehicle pull up in front of the building. Ciciley didn't have to guess all that much to know it was her two prime suspects making their way there. They kept their focus through the skylight, as Quackerjack and Negaduck were keeping a close eye on the man who could only be assumed to be a scientist from his lab coat. Quackerjack was jumping madly up and down on the table, taunting the scientist with words that were inaudible to Ciciley and Elisa.

The screeching sound of the front entrance sounded in their ears, as Navarro and Gonzalez were coming into the warehouse. Negaduck moved away from the table, leaving Quackerjack alone with the scientist temporarily. During the moments in which Negaduck was away, Quackerjack further tormented the scientist with the antics of his banana-headed doll, "Mr. Banana Brain," sticking it into his face and telling jokes from what Ciciley and Elisa could understand.

When Negaduck returned to the scene, he was accompanied by Gotham City Detectives Navarro and Gonzalez, who were armed with shotguns and pistols. Ciciley and Elisa could only guess that they were armed this way, because they might've anticipated the two Arkham escapees to try something crazy or stupid during this meeting. Navarro was dangerous, but she wasn't naïve; she knew the criminals' profile and didn't dare herself to take any chances.

Ciciley glanced over at Elisa, seeing the look of betrayal registered on her face. As pleasant as it was to see, she somewhat regretted that she had to find out this way. "I'm sorry, Maza," she sincerely told her.

"Why would she do this?" Elisa angrily inquired. "She is a dedicated officer, practically one of the best we've got in our department. There's no reason for her to go over the edge like this!"

"That's what I've been trying to wrap my head around, ever since I was promoted to detective." Ciciley looked back down through the skylight, watching Navarro as she walked towards the scientist. "But whatever it is, this guy's got some connection to it. Why else would she have Quackerjack and Negaduck bring him to…?"

BAM!

The ring of the shotgun resonated throughout the warehouse, shaking its very foundation – Ciciley and Elisa even felt the skylight's frame vibrate from it. Apparently the Asian scientist didn't seem to be of too much importance to them, with Navarro blowing his head away. Ciciley and Elisa jumped in surprise from the unexpected occurrence and alarmed Ciciley to the point that she forced herself in loading up her own gun.

"Dear God!" Elisa exclaimed. "What has come over this woman?" She then realized how Ciciley was loading her weapon and felt more deceived than she already was. "You mean that you were…?"

After finishing up, she held the gun up to Maza's face and interrupted her in mid-sentence. "You wanna go into this now, while there's a homicidal police officer in our presence?"

Staring down at the barrel of the gun, Maza curiously asked her, "What do you intend on doing anyway? You've got two criminals and two corrupt officers in there, ready to blow you away at any second! How far do you think you're going to get in stopping them with just a gun?"

"That's why I gave you the handcuffs." Ciciley said, following that statement with a wink.

While Elisa pulled out the handcuffs and stared at them in confusion, Ciciley stood back a few inches and aimed her gun directly at the skylight. Firing one shot, she blew away the skylights, showering the four corrupt souls down below with sharp-edged glass. Navarro, Gonzalez, Negaduck, and Quackerjack all dodged out of harm's way, covering their heads with their arms in protection.

"What the heck…?" Negaduck exclaimed.

With the distraction in place, Ciciley leaped down through the broken skylight, falling fourteen feet towards the table. The moment her body hit it, the legs beneath had collapsed. She knew the risk in taking the drop, feeling the sharp pain in her left ankle, which seemed to be sprained from what she could tell. But she didn't have time to lick her wounds, as the adversaries surrounding her would be ready to pounce at any moment.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Detective Gonzalez aiming her shotgun at her. Quickly, she fired her gun in his direction, missing his right arm by an inch and hitting the side of a nearby crate instead. The sudden action was enough to force Gonzalez to fall back into the shadows, which was what his cohorts had done as well.

Weakly getting up, Ciciley limped towards a nearby crate and sat down upon it, while looking upwards to the broken skylight that Maza was looking down at her through. "You alright?" she asked in concern.

"Never mind!" She retorted. "Find another way in!"

Elisa nodded in acknowledgment and departed from the broken skylight. Meanwhile, Ciciley began limping around the corner, heading between a large stack of crates. Gripped firmly in her right hand was her gun, with ninety percent of a fresh round of ammunition still left after firing two bullets at the skylight and one at Gonzalez.

She was just about near an intersection amongst the crates, until the ammo from a shotgun was unloaded right in front of her, scratching the very spot on the floor that she almost stepped upon. "Take another step, Cici, and it's your head!" The threat came from Detective Navarro herself, as she stood at the very top of a mountain of steel crates, her shotgun aimed directly at Ciciley.

Ciciley glanced her way, seeing the ominous way she appeared, with her silhouette eerily illuminated by the light hanging behind her. She could only make a few of her most unattractive features, such as the patch she wore over her grotesquely injured eye and the hints of grey in her dark brown hair. "It's over, Navarro. I've got Elisa Maza with me here. Your little fun and games ends here and now."

"Whoever said this was all fun and games?" Navarro asked. "This is business, kiddo. Something your inexperienced mind clearly knows nothing about."

"I'd rather be inexperienced than loopy like you and your so-called friends." Ciciley retorted. "What were you thinking busting Quackerjack and Negaduck out of Arkham? And you kill an innocent man for no reason at all?"

"Quackerjack and Negaduck just needed some air – gets a little funky in that asylum." Navarro remarked. "And as far as that scientist goes, there was an excellent reason for me killing him."

Before Ciciley could have asked for an explanation to the reason, she caught the smell of iron being melted. She then felt some intense heat coming close nearby and spotted the exterior of one crate melt away into a puddle of scolding hot iron. At first it was a huge mystery to her; but once she witnessed the glowing eyes of a tall, muscular man who was clad in all black, from the ski mask he wore to his boots, walk out through the hole made in the steel crate, things became clear and puzzling at the same time.

The inhuman stranger advanced towards Ciciley, who unloaded on him with a hail of bullets. However, once they made contact with his body, they just bounced right off of him. Realizing that the man was wearing some type of body armor, Ciciley saved her bullets and decided to take him on, hand-to-hand. She rushed at him, executing a roundhouse kick with her healthy leg that connected with his face.

Although the stranger's head swiveled slightly from the kick, it did not seem to faze him whatsoever. In fact, it was Ciciley who suffered more from the impact, as the leg she used to kick had been sprained just like her other one. She fell to the floor, nursing her freshly injured leg, while looking up at the stranger who towered over her. It bewildered and surprised her to realize that kicking this man's face was close to kicking a brick wall.

What the hell is he?

She didn't waste pondering this question any further, as soon as she watched the stranger reached down at her, picking her up by the collar and lifting her high off the floor. If the thug she faced at the bar wasn't enough of a challenge for her, this bizarre behemoth of a man definitely was. And with an extreme amount of superhuman strength, he hurled her body far across the air, causing her to land hard into a pile of wooden crates.

Detective Navarro looked on in amusement from what she witnessed.

The moment Sean heard the shots fired from around the warehouse, he reached for his cell phone and called the police. He wasn't sure if Ciciley would've wanted him to do that or not, but he doubted that even she knew what do in this situation. Gotham P.D. promised that help would arrive as soon as possible – of course, knowing them, it would be a lot longer than that. It was that reason why he almost decided to take matters into his own hands, making use of the gun left behind in the seat that Ciciley had occupied, which belonged to Elisa Maza.

That was until he spotted Detective Maza herself rushing towards the Maxima, with a look of urgency masked on her face. As soon as he saw her, he climbed out of the vehicle and approached, feeling heavily concerned about Ciciley, whom was not accompanying her. "What's wrong? What happened? Is Cici alright?"

"Sean, try to relax. Everything will be fine." Elisa calmly said. "I just need you to hand me my gun."

He complied with her demand, reaching into the Maxima and retrieving her weapon. As he had done so, he told her, "I contacted Gotham P.D. They said that they'd be here at any moment."

Elisa's eyes registered an alarmed reaction to this news. She then said to herself in a low voice, "Then my backup better get here quick."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing," she quickly answered, while taking her gun from him. "Just stay in the car. Help will arrive shortly."

Although he begged to differ about help arriving within that time limit, Sean nodded in agreement over her demand. While he got back into the Maxima, she rushed back to the warehouse, cocking her pistol and gripping it in ready position. Watching her go, Sean prayed that this situation wouldn't become any worse than it was already starting to. As dangerous and crazy as she was, that was his cousin in there, and he would be devastated if anything happened to her.

Upon getting back into the Maxima, he heard a faint whooshing sound come overhead, as if something with wings just flew or glided over the area. He looked up to see what it might've been, but could barely make out much in the dense fog. Whatever it was, he certainly hoped that it had no involvement with what was currently happening.