Author: CaptainTightPants12
Rating: K
Disclaimer: If I owned DC Comics and/or any of it's associated characters or storylines, don't you think I'd be posting this in the funny pages for money instead of on the internet for free?
Summary: Spinning out of Flashpoint, Helena Wayne and Power Girl try to come to terms with living in a new world where the doppelgängers of the people they knew aren't as familiar as they'd like.
Chapter: #10, Zombie Ninjas
Author's Note: Alright! Here is Part Three! The Court of the Owls are here! The Joker is here! Are you ready for it to get huge?!
"The Court of the what? Did he say Owls?" Power Girl asked. "Is this because the Mighty Ducks were taken?"
Talons leapt from the balcony and landed down in the lobby while drawing their weapons. Huntress took the crossbow and fired an arrow into the shoulder of one of the Talons, but he simply ripped it out without hesitation and threw it to the side with a clang. They exchanged looks, "What the hell are these things?" Huntress asked and Power Girl simply shrugged her shoulders. There was no such thing as the Court of the Owls on the Earth they were from.
Catwoman looked scared, ""Beware the Court of the Owls that watches all the time... Ruling Gotham from a shadow perch, behind the granite and lime..."
Eyes widening, Power Girl shook her head, "Is she kidding me right now?"
"They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word of them, or they'll send the Talon for your head..."
One of the Talons leapt forward and Power Girl stepped between it and the others, it threw down it's sword with a roar. She grabbed the blade and it actually moved her hands down a couple inches. Her eyes grew wide, "Yeah, like Hel said, what the hell are these things?!"
Huntress looked back at Black Mask, "We could just hand you over, you know?"
"Yeah, yeah," he growled. "Let's fight these weirdos and we'll settle up on the back-end."
She glanced to Catwoman, "And you?"
"I have a few lives to give," she smirked. "What the hell?"
Grinning, she nodded, "Alright, Sionis, you fight in the front. You're not stabbing me in the back when I'm not looking."
He scoffed, "Just because I'm a criminal, doesn't mean I don't have respect. I'll stab you from the front."
"That's the spirit," she rolled her eyes.
Power Girl struggled for a moment, but then threw the Talon aside, and heard a loud crack. She looked to see that it's back had been broken. Before she could feel guilt, it stood back up and cracked it's back into place and began to advance. "Ok, seriously, what in the actual hell?!"
"Our Talons have been trained from a very young age to be the most loyal, most lethal assassins the world has ever seen," the Owls leader boomed from over head with outstretched arms. "And don't you worry about playing rough with them, ladies. Our Talons quite simply cannot die. You may bend them, you may break them, but the Talon always rises again. You really should have given Sionis over when you had the chance."
She rolled her eyes, "Zombie Ninjas. Why does it always have to be zombies in this town?"
A trio of Talons advanced on her and she quickly sparred with them. Her super-strength and speed gave her an advantage, but he hadn't lied. They were highly trained and extremely powerful. This wasn't like fighting the goons and simply being bored, she had her hands full. She glanced back at Huntress and Catwoman and watched as they were dueling to protect Black Mask. Huntress fired her crossbow and littered them with arrows to keep them moving slowly, but had to dip into her quiver of tricks and specialty arrows that would've been Oliver Queen jealous as they exploded into a variety of adhesive compounds and concrete to stop them in place. Catwoman leaped back and forth, using her speed and reflexes to avoid being cut by their knives.
Cracking her whip with as much strength as she could muster, she could see the decayed, pale flesh underneath their black robs surrounding the vicious marks that her whip was leaving. "I don't think these things are alive anymore," she shouted to Huntress.
A Talon tried to attack her with an arrow sticking out of it's eye-socket, "I think you might be right about that!"
She dropped back onto her back to avoid the slice of a sword, and then sprung herself forward to kick the arrow through the back of it's head, still it kept coming at her. She looked over to Power Girl, "They're just going to keep coming! We need to figure out a game plan!"
Power Girl unleashed her heat-vision, but they were too quick and leapt from her blasts and swarmed her to keep her from using it. "You're telling me!" Their swords were mostly useless against her, though the pain was still there. With enough of them attacking at once, she was far from having her best day ever. She swung wildly to knock the few away that she could, but they were trained well enough to slash-and-dash to avoid her wrath. She quickly glanced across the way and got an idea, "We've got to get down to the main lobby area!" she shouted across to Huntress.
"We're going to be bottle-necked down there thanks to that hole you left in the ground!" she shouted. "We can't take them fast enough to not get overrun!"
Rolling her eyes, "Could you listen to me for just once?!"
Huntress growled and grabbed Sionis by the arm, "Down you go!"
She threw him over the railing and he landed ungracefully on the main lobby floor with a thud. After he got the wind back in his lungs, he looked up with a glare as he got to his feet, "I'm going to kill you all kinds of dead for that when this is over!"
"Get in line!" shouted Huntress as she backflipped over the railing. "Catwoman!"
Catwoman snapped her whip around the neck of one of the Talons and jumped. Before she hit the ground, the Talon crashed into the railing and caused the whip to pull up just in the right amount of time. She grinned at the impressed Huntress, "You rang?"
"Alright, what's the plan, Blondie?" Huntress rolled her eyes and turned to Power Girl. "And don't say you have part of a plan."
She shrugged, "I've got most of a plan."
Huntress grumbled under her breath, "I hate it when you say that."
"You love it when I say that," Power Girl smirked.
"I'd love it if you told me how the hell we're going to deal with that!" Black Mask growled.
Before he could say another word, a crack-sound whipped through the bank and they saw Sionis bent over clutching his cheek. They turned to see Catwoman rolling her whip around her waist, and she shrugged, "Language." There was a loud ahem overhead, and they turned to see the elder of the Owls pointing towards the balcony. The Talons were watching patiently from the second floor, and at the wave of a hand, they begun to leap down to the lobby.
Huntress raised her crossbow, "Now would be a really good time for that plan of yours..."
"Wait for it..." Power Girl muttered.
They approached slowly, unsheathing their weapons. As they backed up, Black Mask held up his knives. "I'm over waiting..."
She rolled her eyes, "Don't get your panties in a bunch..."
Catwoman stopped as she felt the edge of the hole where Power Girl had been ripped down earlier. "I hate to say it, but he has a point..."
Power Girl whispered, "Get ready to whip him then..."
They had backed to the point that they rested around the hole in the ground with nowhere to go. The Talons looked prepared to attack, and that's when Power Girl shouted out, "Oh, Pam-Cakes! I think I'm ready for round two, because I've been talking with my ole pal Sionis here, your plants just have to go! We're going to bring manufacturing back to Gotham! It's time to reopen that steel mill again! And we gotta have something to burn for those engines!" A moment later, the ground shook and Power Girl grabbed onto the back of Huntress and Catwoman's costumes. "Now!"
Whipping her whip around Black Mask's waist, Power Girl lifted the three of them off the ground and up into the air the moment that vines broke through what was left of the lobby's floor and sent the Talon's crashing down into the depths of the bank's foundation.
"That was your plan?!" Black Mask growled.
She nodded, "Of course, I'll leave it to you to explain to Ivy what really happened today, but I suspect she'll be busy with the Zombie Ninjas."
They landed next to the members of the Court of the Owls that had remained. "I think you were saying something about how we should have given over Captain Halloween when we had the chance? Has the chance passed? I can't tell. I feel like we have plenty of chances to do whatever we want."
Power Girl could hear the leader's teeth grinding. "Our Talons will return."
"We won't be here when they do," Huntress scoffed.
"And neither will you, because you're coming with us," Power Girl nodded.
They rounded up the Court of the Owls and began leading them out of the bank. They were nearly out of the bank when Power Girl's eyes grew wide, "Oh, I just remembered what I was going to tell you before I got back in here... And you're not going to like it..."
"What was-"
The doors to the bank exploded open, and colored smoke filtered into the room. Ribbons fell from the ceiling, and they hit the ground in a panic. "What in the hell was that?!" Huntress asked as she tried to feel around for her cohorts. "Where are you guys?! What is going on?!"
"I told you that you weren't going to like it," Power Girl muttered as she found Huntress in the smoke.
Huntress shook her head, "What am I not going to-" A cold laughter began to echo through the smoke. Her eyes grew wide, but then there was more laughter that began to echo. She shook her head, "What the hell is going on?! What happened to my-"
Catwoman grabbed onto the two of them, "We need to get out of here... I know that laugh..."
"What do you-"
"Well, well, welllllllllll," a cold voice echoed through the smoke. Chills ripped down the spines of the three of them. "You knoooooow... I really thought that in allllllll this panic, in all this havoc, that I would get more than thissssssssss... I really thought... I really thought I'd get a baaaaaatttttt..."
The smoke cleared and they saw a crowd of what looked like citizens, roaming in like the cast of the Walking Dead. Each one looked more disheveled than the last, but they all had one thing in common. They all had an ear-to-ear grin that was far too reminiscent for their stomachs. And then there he was, at the center of all the madness, the only one that truly seemed to be understanding what was happening at this particular moment.
Stepping forward, he stretched his arms out, "I mean, how much noisssssssssssse does a man have to make?"
Glass crashed overhead, and several bodies dropped in from the ceiling. Two familiar faces to both Huntress and Power Girl. A blonde woman in a leather jacket, complete with fishnet stockings. Another woman, this time with long red flowing hair and a jumpsuit colored with purple and green. But they were joined by two other figures that they weren't so sure of. Another woman with red hair, but her skin was pale and featured a large red bat on her chest. The final member was wearing red and green, a young man, who looked far too young to be involved in something like this.
And then finally, a new figure dropped from the ceiling. He stood up and the moonlight shined off his chest, revealing the black bat stitched across his chest and a scowl on his face. That produced an even wider grin from the man standing across from them.
"Bats have fantastic hearing," the Batman growled. "And you've made enough noise, Joker."
. . . .to be continued. . . .
Author's Note: Well, what did you think?! The Joker is involved now?! For those of you that read Flashpoint, you'll know that this is where Batman went when Superman let him go away, which hopefully will answer some questions of where and why he left! For those of you that are just enjoying this story, what did you think of Huntress, Power Girl, and Catwoman against the Talons and the Court of the Owls?! That was a lot of fun to write! Hopefully it was just as fun to read! I can't wait to hear what you thought, and of course, I can't wait for you to see what happens next! I'm very excited! Can't wait to read your reviews! Shoot me some of those bad boys and then head on over to the next one! See you over there!