After the Bat – Chapter 11
Summary: John Blake was given a legacy, and a city, to protect.
1.
Cassandra saw her chance, and she took it.
The timing wasn't great. Her stomach still had no strength, and she had been lying here still and bound for too long. But he was distracted by whatever was happening outside, and it was probably the only chance she was going to get.
She twisted and snapped a kick at his throat. He ducked his chin, protecting the throat, and the kick took him in the face, taking him off his feet and knocking him backwards.
She twisted, using her free foot to undo the strap on her other leg. She'd practiced with tight knots and handcuffs.
Getting her feet up to her hands to undo those straps was harder than she'd expected. Her stomach was still torn up, the muscles still burning with pain at any use. But she managed, twisting to use the muscles in her side.
They hadn't thought to put locks on the straps, since she was secured so well. That was as stupid oversight.
He was up off the floor now, holding that strange cape. And he twisted it, and it became a staff in his hand, a deadly weapon with range and power.
She rolled clear of the bed, stumbling to the floor. Her balance was off, and she crashed into the wall.
She was sweating.
She carefully found her center of gravity, pulling herself together.
He waited, just standing there. Defensive posture. The doctor was backing away from them slowly and quietly.
"Doc, don't touch that phone," said Tim.
Cassandra didn't look, but she could see the doctor freeze out of the corner of her eye.
"If she's going to fight, your security guards will just be… you'll be sending them to their deaths, sure thing. Just… just go."
The doctor's voice was loaded with worry. "Tim, you can't… who can I call?"
"Nobody." He was looking at her, and those eyes were seeing right through her again. Cassandra was beginning to hate those eyes. "I meant it; you're free to go. Just walk out. You wanna kill me? You want to rip this city apart and kill innocents? Then go ahead. Start right here. Be the monster."
He was trying to play psychological games with her, and she wouldn't fall for that. She was strong. She could ignore his words and focus on the mission.
He grinned at her suddenly. "Besides. Whatever just blew up, I need to get there. Danger in Gotham. People in trouble. That's up to me."
He turned and ran for the window. She broke to the side, heading for the mop leaning against the wall by the broom closet. She'd had her eye on it for a while. A weapon to counter his amazing memory cloth.
She grabbed hold of it and snapped it in half, spinning around to face him.
He was at the window, opening it up. He grinned at her. "Got places to go, things to do—I'll see you on the flip side."
He went through the window, swinging himself outside, and then he dropped.
She waited for a second, just staring after him. If it was a trick of some sort to lure her to the window to ambush her—it would be a stupid mistake, he'd be on the wrong side of the window and she would just throw him down, make him fall—but it would be an effective misdirection.
She approached the window slowly. He was gone, having dropped away. She scanned the nearby windows, but couldn't see any sign of him. They were in Wayne tower, higher than most of the surrounding buildings, but she couldn't see him on any of the rooftops.
She backed away from the window, looking back at the doctor. For just a second they stood there, Cassandra trying to decide what to do.
"If you want to leave, you can go," said the doctor. "Here… you need to take these pills. Antibiotics. Your intestines were ruptured, and you're very susceptible to infection still." She moved to the cabinet, unlocking it and opening it. "Don't strain yourself. Your abdominal muscles are still very delicate, and if you tear them it'll take much longer to heal. Bed rest. Lots of fluids."
Cassandra took the bottle of pills from the doctor, examining the handwritten instructions. Obviously the doctor had been thinking about discharging her—or had seen this impasse coming.
It would have been cleaner and simpler to just kill the doctor, leaving no trail behind. The doctor and the boy. No trail, nobody left behind knowing what she looked like, no witnesses. That was her way.
"Thank you," she said, forcing the words past her lips. "Do you have my clothes?"
The doctor nodded. "The shirt is ruined. I have one you can wear, though it won't fit."
2.
Blake went in first. Not because he was any better equipped than Helena, or had any better an idea what he was doing, but because he had all that reckless abandon filling him right now, spurred on by yet another child dragging themselves kicking and screaming into the danger that was his life.
He dropped himself down into the middle of the street, between the naked woman and the cops. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he could see drawn guns. He could see this going south.
When he had started this, all those months ago, with all this gear, he wouldn't have known what to do.
Now he knew.
He put his hands up, one in front of himself, one behind himself, palms out. A calming gesture. Trying to de-escalate the situation.
Making himself ready for combat.
"Okay, I don't know what's going on here," he said, and he didn't even bother with the Batman voice. Too many people already knew—he had already had to abandon his identity, his life. There was no point disguising it. "But let's just calm down."
The girl in front of him tilted her head to one side, as if trying to process this. He could see heat radiating off her face, a shimmer in the air. Her eyes glowed red.
She looked scared. Her eyes were wide, and she looked vulnerable.
He faced her, keeping his hands up and his voice level. "Are you okay?"
No response.
He tilted his head to the side, matching her movement. "Did you do this? Did you blow this street up?"
All around them the world seemed to have turned into chaos, madness, and another post-apocalyptic nightmare. But Blake had lived through that once, and he wasn't thrown off by that.
"It's okay," he said, softening his voice. "It's all right."
He heard the lash of the whip a split second before it wrapped around his chest.
3.
Helena was waiting for it, for the moment when this very public spectacle drew the ire of David Cain. They'd known he was out there still, waiting for a chance. They'd taken his daughter. This was probably their best chance, while he was angry and not acting quite so logically.
Cain came out of nowhere, attacking with the same treachery that he had used before to get behind Blake. Using the whip, still. Relying on attacks from behind, attacks from the shadows.
Helena had observed the attack; Helena had learned from it. She had scrounged every little idea of how he would attack this time from what she had been able to see. She had also tried to consider the idea that he would be smart enough to change his MO, but he hadn't.
And so she was here, on the rooftop, with the bird's-eye view of his attack, and she responded immediately.
She jumped off the roof, the cape snapping open behind her, slowing her descent. The grappling gun was in her hand and she snapped off a shot, hitting Blake. Anchoring herself to him like some kind of absurd kite.
The grappling hook hit him in the center of mass, right in the armor, pulling him back. Pulling him away from the whip so Cain couldn't get him down on the ground.
The grappling gun made a whistling sound as it pulled her down, and Cain was yanked out of the shadows, pulled into the daylight by the whip and his tight hold on Blake.
Helena released the grapple gun, letting it fall, and shaped the wing, swooping forward and down, flying.
Right into Cain, who was struggling to get his balance and prepare for the fight.
Her whole weight plowed into him at speed. She took in the shoulder, forming her body up into a straight line to take the impact. It blasted him off his feet and arrested her movement, and she let the cape turn limp, flipping herself over and him and coming down on her feet.
It had all happened in seconds, and it had utterly reversed his position.
He managed to drop the whip, drawing knives in each hand and attacking her with a brutal speed, coming up off the ground as if he hadn't been struck. He was wearing functional body armor, and he was very fast.
She used the gauntlets to block the knives, slapping an elbow into his face. He had to have all the moves that the girl had, had to have trained her in them.
He'd sent his daughter alone, which meant he thought she was faster and more powerful alone. It meant she was the deadlier of the two.
Helena threw everything she had at him, fast and hard. She spun and kicked, dodged and threw fists and elbows. She used the weapons in the suit, the bladed gauntlets. She used the cape to slow him down, and then used its amazing properties, grabbing hold of it and stiffening it, hitting him with a suddenly-solid line of metallic cloth in the face.
He fell back behind him.
Blake stayed back, waiting and watching.
Something hit Helena in the shoulders, from behind, knocking her down, past Cain. Something hard.
She rolled, coming back up to her feet. Cain was in a crouch, staring back at the naked girl.
The girl had a car up over her head.
Helena's mouth was very dry, suddenly.
4.
Cassandra climbed into the empty elevator, leaning against the wall. She felt wrung out, as if she had been exercising to her limits. She felt ravenously hungry, and faintly nauseous.
The doors opened, and a little blonde girl in a purple hoodie was staring at her.
Cassandra blinked a few times, trying to identify the look in the girl's eyes. Anger? Sympathy? Knowledge?
"Hey," said the girl. "I'm Steph."
Cassandra just gave a little nod, not sure why the girl was telling her this.
"I'm here to see Tim. And you've got blood on your shirt."
The words just hung in the air between them for a minute. Cassandra didn't know how much the other girl could possibly know, so she had to assume Steph knew everything, that she was one of his associates, that this was going to be a fight.
She waited.
The doors started to slide closed again, and Steph put out a hand, stopping them. Holding them open. Waiting.
Cassandra tried to gather some more strength.
"You're the one who tried to kill him before, right? Because I didn't get much from them, but I think you're some kind of assassin. Did you come here to finish the job? I gotta tell you… you look half dead. Are you coming or going?"
The questions seemed like nonsense, except for the last one. "I'm going," said Cassandra, keeping her voice level and even. Trying to project strength while leaning against the wall.
Steph laughed. "Of course. Listen, I don't mean to pry, sorry. I really don't. You got somebody picking you up? You really look like shit."
Which was a way of asking if she had backup coming. Cassandra just stared at the girl, not answering.
"Of course, of course. Come on… here." Steph stepped forward, holding out a hand.
Cassandra just stared.
"Come on, I'll give you a hand."
Cassandra licked her lips. This had to be a prelude to an attack. It had to be.
"You don't remember me, do you? My dad used to run with the Graysons. The circus? You and your dad stayed with us for a while? I remember you. You were the super-cool little assassin girl who didn't speak. League of shadows. Cassandra Cain, right?"
This was very dangerous ground indeed, suddenly.
"Come on. Take a chance. I can tell you didn't kill Tim—for starters, that's not nearly enough blood, and I think it's all yours. And I can't let you just bleed out here. I know, I know, you're thinking you can't trust me. Too much going on right now. But my dad was in the business, and maybe I'm not running with the old crowd right now but I have loyalties. Come on, take my hand and we'll go. If it's a trick, well, you're probably better at close-quarters grappling than I am. Come on."
Cassandra took the hand.
5.
David tried to stay down in a crouch, tried to think this through. The creature, the Kryptonian, was lashing out. There was supposed to be a mechanism to control it, to make it attack whoever he wanted, but now it was just picking targets at random. The eyes burned red like a demon, and he could feel the heat radiating off it.
The woman recovered quickly, aiming another attack at him with the cape and moving away from him. She mumbled something softly, and the Not-Quite-Batman began moving away slowly as well.
They were treating the Kryptonian like a scared, confused child, trying to mollify it. Trying not to make it angry. Acting as if it was lashing out from rage.
Also, probably scared shitless by the whole 'car over the head' thing.
He had a gun on his belt, and he went for it. They weren't paying enough attention to him. He fired quick, aiming for the head, where the body armor might be thinnest. First the woman, this mystery player who was so much more deadly than the stupid ex-policeman. Three shots, snapping them off. He twisted, aiming for Blake.
The ex-cop twisted, throwing something. A fast twist of his arm. Blades, wickedly sharp, cut into David, into his hand, his arm, and his chest, and he let out a grunt, losing his stride.
The Kryptonian let out a shriek of anger, and the sound was a wave of force, knocking them all back. Their fight was disturbing her, and she was still disoriented.
She was supposed to come out of the vat programmed and full-grown, with a set of knowledge built into her. This was all wrong.
David decided to cut his losses and run.
Right after he killed this meddlesome woman.
6.
Steph was true to her word, getting Cassandra into a cab and getting her across town to a run-down building. She got her up the stairs, half-lifting Cassandra with an iron grip. She settled her in on a couch.
"This place is more or less abandoned. There's a bunch of homeless kids down in the cellar, but they don't come up here—a couple of hoods were using it to move drugs. They got shut down last week, but it should be okay for a while. How you feeling?"
Cassandra just stared at the girl. There was going to be a price to this help. She wasn't sure if she could pay it, or wanted to, and so that probably meant she was going to have to kill Steph.
Steph grinned at her. "Weighing your options, huh?"
Cassandra tried not to let anything show on her face. The girl knew too much, and might be useful. Maybe she knew something about Tim, or the others. There were possibilities here… psychological games to be played.
Assuming that this wasn't a psychological game. Had Tim arranged for the girl to meet her, to catch her, to offer her a ride and help when Cassandra needed it most?
"Hey, so. We really need to talk about some stuff." Steph sat down next to Cassandra, close enough that either of them could initiate a fight at any time. "Listen, I don't know how much you understand about what's going on here, but let's back up. When was the last time you saw the Graysons? The whole circus?"
Cassandra shrugged. The whole circus front had been utterly silly, but had somehow worked.
"Well, the thing is—and you're going to love this—they're out of business. They went down, and hard. And you know who did that?"
Cassandra's mouth twisted. She had already got all the bleeding heart speeches straight from Tim. They weren't going to make any difference coming from Steph.
Steph smiled. "Yeah. Isn't that the dumbest thing you ever heard? Where'd he get the idea that taking out his own dad's personal mob was going to be something right, or something easy? Or even that he ought to do it? Listen, I don't know what your war with him is about. I don't know if this is payback for his dad, or if this is about his extracurriculars right now."
Cassandra nodded. It was all about the 'extracurriculars,' but she could see where the other stuff was going to make it confusing.
"But one thing I'm sure about. Really, really sure. You and your dad are here to shut down the Batman, right? Same as Bane. I remember when you used to run with him. You know what used to scare me most about that dude?"
Cassandra had always been afraid of Bane. It wasn't just his fighting skills and ruthless viciousness. There was something in his eyes. He'd been too long in prison, and it had long ago eaten anything of mercy inside him. He wanted to kill everybody. He wanted to burn everything. "Nihilism," she offered.
Steph smiled. "Excellent guess, but, no. What scared me about him is that he lost the plot. What was his big plan? What was he building to? Your dad's thing was always to strengthen society by cutting down bad cities, bad places. That's your thing. Bane didn't care about that. Bane would just as soon destroy a healthy, thriving, crime-free place. Revenge over the mission. That's very blinkered thinking, right? So, correct me if I'm wrong… what is your beef with Tim? Isn't he just doing the job you say you want to do? Taking down the corruption you say you're against?"
This was a much more dangerous and subtle line of questioning than Cassandra had been expecting. She pressed her lips together firmly, determined not to speak again. It had been a mistake to share in the disdain for Bane, because that way lay the illusion of solidarity.
Steph smiled, and it was a bit like a shark. "See, Tim kept me out of his business with his dad because he's got this idea that he's got to protect me. And that's just so adorable and dumb. His dad made him an idealist, and that's who he is. Listen, you need to rest. I'll bring you some food. There's a whole bunch of stuff I'd love to talk to you about, but I'll understand if you decide to skip the preachy bits and run off. But… before you run off, seriously, take a minute to scrub up. You look terrible. And, listen, things have got really bad in the last few days. I don't know if you've seen, but somebody's capping every major player in town."
Cassandra frowned. That was something her father might have done, if they weren't in the middle of this vendetta. Was that him, trying to stir up trouble to find her? "Do you know who?" she asked.
Steph grimaced. "Welp. I do. It's… do you know Jason?"
Cassandra remembered him very well indeed. She wouldn't have known his name, except that Tim had called him by name during the confrontation in the cave. She put both hands on the wound on her stomach meaningfully, glaring at Steph.
"Oh, really? Well, he's capped Cobblepot and a whole bunch of other dudes. Wesker. Doing things your way. Does that make you…?"
Cassandra frowned. It was another complicating factor in a whole mixed up mess. And Steph was far too good at exploiting her confusion and planting seeds. A soft face, blond hair, and the very devil himself behind it, grinning and spinning webs of lies.
She was dangerous.
Cassandra reclined on the couch, yawning theatrically. And then she waited.
Steph nodded. "I'll bring back pizza. You like pizza, right? Everybody likes pizza. Plain? Pepperoni?"
7.
It was all crystal clear. Cain had enough dirty tricks from a lifetime of assassination to take down a small army, and Helena was distracted. Cain was going to kill her and bolt, and hope that the metahuman who'd just woken up angry and unable to understand what was happening around her would kill Blake.
So Tim jumped into action.
All he was wearing were these silly hospital pants, barely more than paper, the cool guantlets, complete with armblades, and the silly yellow sheet, which he had formed into an armored mask-hood, with a half-cape fluttering behind him. No shirt, no shoes.
No problem.
He swung down from, above, dropping right beside Cain. And when Cain focused on him, trying to get a weapon up and ready, he simply dropped under the first attack, grabbing Cain's wrist and kicking him in the armpit, a quick one-two-three jab to dislocate the shoulder. The armor Cain was wearing couldn't protect him from the mechanics of the blow, and Tim felt the whole arm spasm and pop as it worked.
Tim grasped the short cap in his left hand, spinning around and dropped to one knee, using the suddenly-stiff cape to drop Cain. "Take him!" he yelled to Helena, sprinting forward, at the naked woman.
This was a bit riskier. Her eyes were boiling red. She obviously had Superman-type powers, and that meant she was way over his head.
As he went by Blake he grabbed him by the arm, jerking him back towards Cain. "Focus on Cain—I got this, dude."
Then he was face to face with her. She flinched back, surprised by his charge.
He held his hands up in front of him. "You're obviously in pain, okay, and I think I can help. Let me help?"
Her eyes flared up, and he was barely able to avoid the sudden burst of heat. He danced around her, hopping from foot to foot. She was generating so much heat that the ground was boiling, and burning the soles of his bare feet.
Not good. "Okay, let's try this. Why don't you try to hit me?" He tapped her on the shoulder as he continued circling her, trying not to get distracted by her nudity. Wasn't he supposed to get some kind of pass on being distracted right now? Being a teenaged boy and all? Of course, getting a pass from society probably wouldn't be much consolation if she took his head off because he wasn't focused.
She spun, aiming a punch at his face. He was barely able to dodge it, and the force she'd put into the punch sent her staggering off to the side, towards the sidewalk.
He could hear Helena and Blake fighting Cain, who was apparently still a match for them with a dislocated arm. He probably should have dislocated the other one, just to give them a fighting chance.
Oh, well.
He grasped the silly yellow half-cape, hoping nobody was recording this. As his touch the half-hood released, falling away from him, soft and insubstantial fabric again.
Then it turned into the staff.
Tapping her on the shoulder had nearly burned his hand. She was overloaded with energy, and he wasn't sure what that meant. Had they been doing something to her, something involving massive amounts of energy? What? Some kind of forced aging process, to get a full-grown and fully powered Superman clone? But if she was a clone of Superman, why was she a she?
So many questions, and no answers.
He used the staff to tap her on the side, and as she swung around again, trying to hit him, he danced back, doing a quick somersault. Showy and dazzling, trying to imply more dexterity and speed than he currently felt like he had.
It had just been a few days ago he'd been stabbed in the throat. If she laid hands on him for even a second she could kill him. And she was trying to punch him.
He'd taken Cain down quickly because he didn't think Helena and Blake could handle this girl, but now he was starting to think that he couldn't handle her either.
And he had no idea how to disengage.
Whoops.
