Chapter Ten - The Big Bad Day, Part Three
The blinds cast horizontal shadows over Selina Kyle, who was standing in her apartment, talking on the phone. "No more questions, Holly. Do what I say. Clear the streets. We're on lockdown. We're not selling any tail in Pleasant Meadows. Not tonight."
She'd no sooner put the phone down than a huge shadow fell over her from behind, and large arms wrapped themselves round her. She tried to push them away but they were too strong. She felt hands moving around her neck.
"Don't struggle," said a voice from behind her, as she was lifted off the ground. "You'll only hurt yourself. Your cause is lost. I know everything. Soon the corpse of Jack Napier will be in my possession and the truce between your prostitutes and the mob will be shattered. There'll be deaths, deaths and more deaths, and then, with your forces and Edge's depleted, I'll take over; take over from Edge, take over this neighborhood. You will all be slaves. nothing can stop this. But it is within your power to save many lives, just surrender Pleasant Meadows."
The stranglehold was released as Selina was thrown to the ground, but somehow she landed on her feet. "Son of a bitch, I've read about you," Selina said, finally seeing her attacker. "You're from New York... they call you The Kingpin."
"I see my reputation precedes me," he said, flexing his mountainous shoulders. "Yes, I'm in charge of the New York underworld, and soon I will be in charge of Smallville too, and then you and all your wretched kind will serve me. Now get dressed and shed a tear for Bruce Wayne if you must, because, by now, he is surely dead."
"You don't know him. My man will find a way. He always finds a way."
Bruce Wayne lay on the floor of the cave, cold stone against his face. He couldn't remember how long he'd been unconscious, but it couldn't have been that long, his head wound was still hurting like hell.
He stared out through a half-open eyelid, and saw six ninjas walking towards him, their footsteps silent on the ground. One against six, Bruce liked those odds.
His legs swung up in the air and he jumped to his feet, then, before the ninjas even had time to react, he'd grabbed the nunchucks that had been lying next to him.
"This is my goddamn cave," he said, flinging the nunchucks into the face of one ninja, then leaping into the air and kicking two of the others. The fourth one sent a shuriken his way, but Bruce managed to pull the fifth one into its path and then punched the sixth ninja across the cave.
Bruce was relying on instinct and skill and he had those in spades, but the ninjas had the numbers and were resilient and fought back. Bruce recognized the fighting style. These weren't just any ninjas, these six. They worked for The Hand. And if they were hired by who he thought they were, the bad times hadn't even started yet.
Bruce had been trained by the best in the world, and he could have beaten them individually, but working together they kept driving him further and further back, until finally one flying kick blasted him through the air, sending him falling into the chasms below. His hand shot out and grabbed a rocky outcrop on the way down, stopping his fall; shards of pain ran through his shoulder but he managed to hang on. Helpless, he hung there, his fingers struggling to keep a grip.
He had to concentrate, ignore the pain in his shoulder, pay attention to what was happening above. Ninjas were never the easiest people to eavesdrop on, but he heard Jack's body being dragged out of his car, and then nothing, and then, from far away, the sound of a car engine being started. He wasn't sure if all of the ninjas had left or just some of them, and it didn't really matter now as Bruce felt his fingers going numb, and then, one by one, they started to lose their hold on the rock.
Nothing to do now but fall. They were counting on him, and he'd blown it.
For a moment he felt himself falling, and then he stopped.
Skinny, steely fingers at his wrist. He looked up and saw Elektra hanging upside down from a piece of rope. He looked into her eyes, and saw the same emptiness he felt inside, looked at her body and saw something that had been perfected over a lifetime. They had a lot in common. Elektra, she was an angel and a saint, and if she'd shown up minutes earlier, they'd have still had Jack's body.
She hauled him up onto the cave floor, and as he rubbed his sore torn shoulder, wiped blood from his head wound, he saw the bloodied bodies of three of the ninjas she'd discarded there.
At that moment, a secret door opened in the side of the cave and his butler Alfred walked out.
Alfred looked at the bodies, and the blood-soaked athletic lady dressed in red carrying a pair of sai. "Sorry to interrupt your fun, Master Bruce, but you have visitors... Two ladies of the nocturnal persuasion; your parents would be so proud. May I assume that was the reason for your talking about having a pole installed here?"
"Spare the goddamn sarcasm, Alfred, and show them in."
"Very well, Master Bruce, and I have to admire the way you say goddamn, it makes you seem ever so grown up."
"Goddamn butler," Bruce muttered under his breath, as Alfred showed in two girls, Holly and Lana. Holly was dressed in her Zorro outfit, Bruce tried not to let his mind go back to a movie theatre on a night long ago. He shouldn't feel sorry for himself just because he had dead parents, Lana thought that was just him being attention-seeking.
"Lana? I'd heard you were dead."
"Lana is dead," explained the Lana Lang lookalike. "It's me, Tina Grier, the shapeshifter, but I've become Lana now. Some people you just can't let die."
"Bruce," interrupted Holly, "they've got Selina!"
Bruce contemplated this latest piece of the puzzle. "You've got yourself a spy in Pleasant Meadows, a stoolie who sold you out to the mob. We've got to find out who it is and rescue Selina. But first we've got to get our hands on Jack's body before it gets to wherever it's going and this whole situation blows wide open. Elektra, I hope to hell you left one of them alive enough to talk."
She pointed up amongst the stalactites above. Hanging from one of them was a ninja, who she lowered down.
Bruce let the ninja know he wasn't fooling around, trying all his tricks to show he meant business - his goddamn cursing, his husky voice like just after Selina's whip had been round his throat - he'd have even wore that leather mask that Selina kept wanting him to wear if he'd have thought it would get a response. But no, there no was response; he'd talked to The Hand but The Hand wasn't listening.
Elektra decided to take over; she didn't have Bruce's conscience holding her back. Bruce would have been worrying whether the guy had a family, a son, whether the cycle of violence would claim yet another innocent victim, but Elektra had no such concerns, she just wanted answers and fast.
It didn't take long, not long at all, before the guy sang like a canary, though several octaves higher, and once he'd spilled his guts, she spun her sais in her hands, wondering whether to spill them all again.
The ninja had told them where Jack's body was being taken and Alfred had taken care of Bruce's wounds. Now Bruce had to stay smart and stay cool. It was time to prove to his friends that he was worth a damn. Sometimes that meant dying. Sometimes it meant killing a whole lot of people.
Holly had her foot down, cutting corners, taking shortcuts, desperate to find and head off the car carrying Jack's body. Bruce yelled out directions, using routes in Gotham only the locals knew, while Elektra and Tina stayed quiet in the back. Finally, as her bumpy car bound over a field, they found what they were looking for.
"There they are," Holly said, pointing to a car roaring down a road at the edge of the field. "What do we do?"
"We stop them, Holly."
Holly nodded, and rammed her car straight into the side of theirs, sending it swerving into the next field. Bruce leaped out of the car, and ran over, just as one of the ninjas was dragging Jack's body out of the car.
Holly exited her car, guns blazing, but a wave of shurikens embedded themselves in her neck, and blood spurted out, coloring her dead before she'd reached the ground.
While one of the ninjas, having dispatched Holly, now faced Bruce and the others, ready to fight to his and their deaths, the other ninja carried Jack's body over his shoulder and headed for the highway.
The first ninja adopted a fighting stance, threw out a stream of shurikens, and then drew out a sword which he waved menacingly.
Bruce would have punched the guy's lights out, but, before he had the chance to, Elektra had leapt in the air and thrown her own large shirukin decapitating the ninja, leaving him standing there headless, his sword at the ready.
That's when two nunchucks, thrown by the other ninja, made contact with her in the air, wrapping themselves around her, binding her tight, and sending her plummeting to the hard ground below.
Bruce didn't know if Elektra was alive or dead but he didn't care; either way he wanted revenge. He ran towards the ninja just as the dark figure disappeared with Jack into the ground below.
Bruce rushed to the highway and saw the open manhole. This was bound to be a trap, but he wasn't planning on dying today.
The ninja was standing there waiting, and when he saw Bruce Wayne leap down the manhole, and splash into the water below, he was ready. His foot flew out, smashing straight into the jaw, knocking his adversary out cold. It had all been too easy, he thought, as he saw Bruce Wayne's body floating face down in the water. No, his opponent must be bluffing, it was time to deliver the death blow.
And that's when Bruce Wayne's body suddenly transformed into that of a teenage girl, and there was another Bruce Wayne dropping at him through the manhole cover.
"Her name's Tina," explained Bruce, in amongst a rapid flurry of punches to his face. "She can look like anyone. Even me."
As the pummeling continued, the ninja decided he hated his job, and then his legs gave way beneath him and he fell into the murky water next to Tina's body... just as the ninja had planned.
He put one of his shurikens next to Tina's throat and then got back to his feet, as Bruce looked on helplessly.
But it wasn't the girl who Bruce was looking at, he realized, as he looked down and saw the blood-red tip of a sai jutting out of his own chest.
Elektra the assassin was behind him. He wouldn't feel a thing unless she wanted him to.
She twisted the blade. He felt it.
That was the last thing he felt.
Once they'd carried Tina's unconscious body and Jack's dead one back to the car, Bruce told Elektra what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.
He grabbed poor Holly's car phone and made the most important call of his life. Bruce hated guns, but this was a big bad day and sometimes you had to fight fire with fire.
First they had to rescue Selina, then came the kill. The big fat kill.