Chapter 20: Return of Batman and Huntress
A rookie, Officer Simon Jansen had never been in a high-speed chase before. He gripped the steering wheel tightly while flooring the gas pedal. "Shoot the tires!" he shouted.
His partner, a twenty-year veteran named Kelly drew his gun and leaned out the passenger-side window. He tried to get the bike they were following in his sights, but balked at the expression of the petrified trader clinging to the rear of the bike.
Kelly shook his head. "No shot!"
The deputy commissioner's voice blared from the cruiser's radio.
"Back off," he ordered. "They've got hostages."
The bikes disappeared into a midtown tunnel. The cruiser followed them into the tunnel, maintaining a safe distance. To his surprise, Hansen saw his rear-view mirror go dark.
He glanced back.
"What's going on with the lights?"
A wave of darkness seemed to be advancing through the tunnel, extinguishing every light it encountered. Not just the overhead lights, but also the headlights of every oncoming vehicle blinked out abruptly. Their headlights burned out, the gumball blacked out, and the siren went silent.
The car's engine sputtered and died.
Out of the inky blackness, two shadowy shapes roared past at high speed. Ebony capes flapped behind them.
"It can't be …"
"The hell was that?" Jansen exclaimed.
"Oh, boy," the veteran cop said. "You're in for a show tonight."
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The bikes shot out of the tunnel onto the highway. Bane led the way while the sandwich guy, Petrov, took up the rear.
Looking back over his shoulder, past his squirming hostage, the mercenary saw the streetlights exploding behind him.
He frowned. This wasn't part of the plan.
All at once, the bike's engine chocked and died. Swearing, he worked the throttle, but was no good. He still sped forward, through sheer momentum. Still he fell behind the rest of his team. Seeing a chance, the hostage behind him undid his straps and leapt from the back of the bike. Hitting the concrete, the hostage rolled to the side of the highway and clambered to his feet.
"Help!" he shouted. "Somebody, help me!"
As he continued to glide forward on the silent machine, Petrov drew his pistol. He wouldn't be taken alive.
The darkness swept over him like a tidal wave. Something grabbed onto his collar and yanked him off the seat. He was thrown to the ground hard enough to be knocked senseless.
Petrov lifted his head, on the verge of passing out.
Speeding away from him, in pursuit of Bane and the others, was two armored figures leaning low atop two customized black motorcycles. Their midnight cloaks spread out behind them, flapping in the wind.
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The bikes split up as they reached a highway intersection. Two of them stuck together, while the third veered off in a different direction. A high overpass loomed above the crossing—as did Batman and Huntress.
The pods rumbled beneath them as they pulled up to the guardrail. Huntress sat up and drew out a futuristic-looking rifle. The muzzle glowed a luminous shade of blue as she took aim at one of the fleeing bikes on the roadway below.
An electronic tone sounded.
The glowing muzzle pulsed.
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Batman frowned as the last two bikes disappeared under another overpass, out of range of Huntress' rifle.
Huntress holstered the electromagnetic pulse rifle, which had taken out the first two fugitives. Then she and Batman gunned the engines. Then they hurled down the highway.
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The highway stretched in front of Bane. He pulled up alongside McGarrity's bike. The computer hacker glanced inside his bag, which was stowed up by the handlebars. He held up his fingers to signal that the program still had two minutes to run.
Bane flanked behind him, seeing the spreading darkness that had already brought down two of his men. He recognized the effects of a localized EMP generator. He could think of only two individuals in Gotham who might employ such a device.
Batman and Huntress.
So he made a decision. He reached back and pluck a whimpering hostage off his bike and swung him over onto McGarrity's. No longer saddled with the hostage, Bane's bike accelerated. He peeled away from the other rider, making his escape. As he anticipated, Batman and Huntress chose to pursue the bike with the hostage.
McGarrity was on his own now. He accelerated down the highway, trying to stay ahead of Batman and Huntress. The laptop in his bag beeped, and a quick glance confirmed that the program had finished running. He sighed in relief. His mission was complete.
Now he just needed to get away … if possible.
The sobbing hostage, bouncing on the rear of the bike, slowed him down. Gleaming skyscrapers rose on either side of the highway, the light from the buildings allowing McGarrity to glimpse Batman and Huntress bikes gaining on him. Remembering what had happened to his comrades, he ducked his head as the two pods came along on either side of him, but, to his surprise, they vehicles appeared to be missing their riders.
Two dark shapes came swooping down from the sky, casting two fearsome shadows over the hacker and his hostage. Batman and Huntress scalloped black capes extended outward like the wings of a glider. Huntress ripped the kidnapped trader off the back of the bike, jarring McGarrity, who lost control of his vehicle, laying it down across the highway in a shower of sparks.
The driver rolled away from his bike. Bruised and bleeding, he reached desperately for his laptop.
Batman was on him in an instant. The cloak falling back over his shoulders, he grabbed McGarrity and yanked him to his feet. His masked face was only inches away from the hacker's.
"What were you stealing?" Batman shouted.
McGarrity gulped, but held his tongue.
There was no time to try to sweat the truth out of the thief. Batman smacked the man's head into a concrete divider, knocking him out so the police could pick him up.
Huntress knelt next to the gym bag that had been thrown clear of the crash. The battered laptop rested inside the bag, a message on it's screen.
APPLICATION COMPLETE.
In the next moment a blinding light from above left Batman and Huntress exposed on the highway. A police chopper descended from the sky.
"We got to go," Huntress said as a veritable host of cops closed in on them from all directions.
The pods rolled to a stop nearby, just as Batman and Huntress had programmed them to do.
The freed hostage, dropped off by the side of the road, ran toward the oncoming police prescence.
Huntress grabbed a USB drive that was plugged into the laptop and placed it in a pouch on her utility belt just as a loudspeaker boomed overhead.
"STEP AWAY FROM THE BIKES!"
Batman and Huntress scanned the vicinity. Stopped traffic packed the highway. A large car transporter, its racks empty, idled below a nearby onramp.
As they jumped back on the pods, Batman activated his cycle's twin 40mm blast cannons. The front-mounted weapons unleashed their firepower, and a well-aimed blast struck the back of the transporter, causing its rear ramp to crash onto the concrete.
They raced toward the truck, mounted the ramp, and used it to jump directly to the onramp above.
Weaving through stalled traffic, Batman and Huntress fled their pursuers.
They zoomed down a wide boulevard, only to find another wave of cops charging at them from the other end of the street. They made a sharp ninety-degree turn and darted into the sheltering darkness of a large blind alley. Cop cars squealed to a halt, blocking the entrance. It looked like Batman and Huntress had nowhere left to go.
VAROOOOM.
A deafening roar, came from the alley. The copters that hung in the air above the cops were sent spinning sideways by a massive dark cyclone as it roared out of the alley, high above the street level.
An intimitdating black aircraft like nothing the cops had ever seen before thundered over the assemblage of the cops, taking off into the sky.
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Catwoman towered over Daggett, who lay sprawled on the rough, tar-papered surface of a roof.
"Where is it?" she asked.
"The Clean Slate?" he said, trying to make it sound derisive. "Type in a name and date of birth and within a couple hours that person ceases to exist in any database." He snickered at the tantalizing notion. "Little too good to be true."
"You're lying," she hissed. "Rykin Data took it to beta-testing."
"That's why I bought them," he admitted. "But they had nothing. It was a gangland myth."
Catwoman stepped back, mulling it over. She was taken aback by his claim.
Before she could react, armed men joined them on the rooftop, coming from several directions.
"Stay back!" she warned the newcomes. But to her surprise they kept coming. "I'm not bluffing!"
"They know." A gravelly voice came from the shadows. "They just don't care."
All eyes moved to the source. They spotted two cloaked figures crouching atop the roof of a luxury apartment complex, one building away.
Batman and Huntress.
Batman and Huntress startling presence distracted her adversaries. The goon with a silencer spun in surprise. Seizing the moment, she tossed Daggett aside and pounced on the gunman, wresting the pistol from his grasp. None of the other men rushed to Daggett's aid, proving that Batman was right.
Batman and Huntress jumped effortlessly across the intervening space, landing immediately behind Catwoman even as the other men charged at them from all sides. Back to back to back, they took on her anonymous attackers, lashing out with boots and fists. Batman and Huntress both were a flurry of lightning-fast strikes and dodges, not a move wasted. A bat-shaped boomerang thrown by Batman disarmed one attacker. Huntress caught a knife blade between the fins on her gauntlet. Batman butted another man in the head with his cowl.
Grateful for their timely assistance, Catwoman fired the borrowed Glock, clipping an overeager goon, who dropped like a stone. She targeted a second man, aiming right between her eyes, but, before she could squeeze the trigger, Huntress yanked her arm down, spoiling her shot.
Huntress took out the goon with a well-placed roundhouse kick to the gut instead.
"You've got to be kidding," Catwoman protested.
"No guns," Huntress said. "No killing."
Catwoman was both annoyed and amused by Batman and Huntress scruples. "Where's the fun in that?"
They didn't reply as more men poured onto the roof. They turned and ran for the edge of the roof.
"Come on!" Batman gritted.
Catwoman watched in confusion as Batman and Huntress flung themselves off the top of the building, and hesitate momentarily before chasing after them.
A bullet whizzed past her, spurring her on. Hoping that Batman and Huntress knew what they were doing, she ran across the roof and peered over the edge. Her eyes widened behind her mask.
A stealth aircraft hovered just below the edge of the roof, several stories above the street below. Batman and Huntress waited in an open cockpit, surrounded by a complex array of matte-black elevators, vents and ailerons.
Shots rang out behind her as she leapt. Landing nimbly on one of the smooth, aerodynamic panels, she slid into the passenger seat behind Batman and Huntress.
"My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange people."
"This isn't a car." Huntress pointed out.
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Batman put a safe distance between themselves and Catwoman's attackers before landing the Bat on the empty helipad of a midtown skyscraper.
The canopy slid open above them, letting in the crisp night air. Catwoman spring from the passenger seat. "See you two around," she said breezily.
Batman and Huntress followed Catwoman onto the roof.
"You're welcome," Batman said.
"I had it under control." Catwoman insisted.
"Those weren't street thugs," Huntress asserted. "They were trained killers. We saved your life. In return we need to know what you did with Bruce Wayne's fingerprints."
Catwoman looked over them thoughtfully, putting the pieces together. "Wayne wasn't kidding about powerful friends." She hesitated before coming clean. "I sold his prints to Daggett. For something that doesn't even exist."
"I doubt many people get the better of you." Batman said.
Catwoman shrugged her shoulders. "Hey, when a girl's desperate—"
"What were they going to do with them?" Huntress asked.
"I don't know," Catwoman admitted, "but Daggett seemed pretty interested in that mess at the stock exchange."
Batman didn't like the sound of that. He and Huntress already knew there was a link between Daggett and Bane.
A police chopper swept past overhead, continuing the manhunt. Batman and Huntress stepped back into the shadows evading its searchlight until the aircraft had passed. Then they turned back to continue the questioning.
But Catwoman was gone.
"Miss Kyle?" Batman said.
Catwoman had disappeared, as silently as a cat.
"So that's what that feels like." Huntress said.
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Truth to tell, Alfred had never liked the Batcave. He found it dank, gloomy, unsanitary, difficult to dust, and more than a little depressing. It would have been better if he had a little company. But after placing the silver ball on the base of Dawn's neck she had screamed and then passed out. He was not sure what it would do, but he knew what Buffy's friends had assured her it was supposed to do. He hoped for Bruce, Buffy and Dawn that they were right.
He sat at the computer doing what had at one time had been Dawn's job, studying captured security of the assault on the stock exchange, when a booming roar and the glare of high-intensity landing lights penetrated the waterfall that hid the mouth of the cave. A bright white glow shone through the curtain of water, heralding the arrival of the Bat.
A wet spray sprinkled Alfred's face as, rotors spinning, the Bat flew into the cave. A pair of slate cubes rose to form a landing pad. The Bat touched down on the cubes.
The canopy opened and Batman and Huntress emerged from the cockpit. Alfred was relieved to see that they were still in one piece.
"Very inconspicuous," Alfred observed, brushing water from his suit. "Shall I tell the neighbors you got yourselves a new leaf-blower?"
Batman and Huntress shed their capes and cowls, or in Huntress case, mask, becoming Bruce and Buffy once more.
"We bought all the neighbors." Bruce said.
Alfred took Bruce and Buffy's cloaks as they walked away from the Bat. "From the look of the television coverage, you two seem to have your taste for wanton destruction back."
Buffy plucked the USB drive from her Utility belt. "We retrieved this."
"Shouldn't the police be gathering the evidence?" Alfred suggested.
"They don't have the tools to analyze it." Bruce said.
Alfred glanced around at a high-tech apparatus filling the cave. Dawn had made specific demands on the computer hardware when the cave was refurnished. All of it was state of the art. "They would if you gave them to them."
Buffy looked between the two men and wisely kept her mouth shut. Nowadays she tend to agree with Alfred. But as long as Bruce went out there she intended to be at his side so that he would come home alive, despite Alfred's belief that she and Bruce both wanted to die.
Bruce shook his head. "One man's tool is another man's weapon."
"In your mind, perhaps," Alfred said. "But there aren't many things that you couldn't turn into a weapon."
"Alfred, enough," Bruce said impatiently. "The police weren't getting it done."
"Perhaps they would have," Alfred persisted, "if you two hadn't made a sideshow of yourselves."
"Perhaps you're upset you were wrong." Bruce said.
Alfred looked puzzled. "Wrong?"
"You thought we didn't have it in us anymore," Bruce said.
Alfred returned the capes, cowl and mask to their respective closets where they belonged. "You don't," he said. "You and Ms. Buffy led a bloated police force on a merry chase with some fancy new toys from Fox." He called their attention to the ghastly security footage on the main monitor. "What about when you two come up against him. What then?"
On the screen, Bane murdered a roomful of security guards with terrifying speed and brutality.
"We'll fight harder," Bruce said. "Like we always have."
"When you two had something to fight for," Alfred argued. "What are you both fighting for now? Not your lives or Dawn's."
Bruce frowned and moved to switch off the screen. Alfred stopped him.
"Take a good look," Alfred said. "At his speed, his ferocity, his training. I see the power of belief ... of the fanatic. I see the League of Shadows resurgent."
Bruce stared at Bane.
"Dawn said he was excommunicated," Buffy whispered.
"By Rā's al Ghūl," Alfred said. "Who leads them now?"
"Rā's al Ghūl was the League of Shadows," Bruce insisted. "And we beat him." He sat down at the computer and killed the security footage. "Bane's just a mercenary, and we have to find out what he's up to." He took the USB drive from Buffy and plugged it into the computer, then pecked at the keyboard and streams of text scrolled across the screen. He scrutinized the data.
"Trades of some kind," Bruce realized. "Coded."
The text vanished, replaced by a scanned image of a thumbprint. Bruce scowled.
"Is that—?" Buffy began.
"Mine," Bruce confirmed. "Courtesy of Selina Kyle. Where is Dawn I need her working on this?"
"She's unconscious in her bed," Alfred said.
"What?" Bruce and Buffy said as they looked at Alfred.
"I did as you instructed, Ms. Buffy," Alfred said. "The moment the ball was on the base of her neck, she screamed and passed out. She has yet to reawaken."
"I'll call Willow and Giles," Buffy said as she headed for elevator. She looked back at Bruce and Alfred. "Maybe you should get the drive to Lucius, see what he can do."
Bruce nodded as he handed the USB drive to Alfred.
"I'll get this to Fox," Alfred said gravely halfway between Bruce and Buffy, who stood at the base of the stairs. "But no more." Something in his tone got Bruce and Buffy's attention.
"I've sewn you up and set your bones, Master Bruce," Alfred said. "I watched as Dawn herself wound up paralyzed. I have buried members of this family and by extension those that were considered family by those present in this cave now. But I won't bury the two of you."
"You'd abandon us?" Bruce asked.
"I don't know about Ms. Buffy, not for sure. But I only see only one end to your story, Master Bruce. Leaving is all I have to make you understand: you aren't Batman any more. Just as you are not Huntress anymore, Ms. Buffy. You two have to find another way. Master Bruce, you used to talk about finishing. About life beyond this awful cave."
"Rachel died knowing we'd decided to be together," Bruce said bitterly. "Dawn was injured beyond the possibility to walk again. That was my life beyond this cave and I can't just move on. Rachel didn't. She couldn't."
"What if she had?" Alfred asked. "What if she wasn't intending to make a life with you?"
Neither Bruce nor Buffy saw the point in speculating. Their friend was gone. "She was," Bruce said. "I can't change that."
Alfred shifted uncomfortably, and a strange look came over his face, as if he was wrestling with something. "What if," he said finally, "she'd written a letter? Explaining that she'd chosen Harvey Dent over you." Alfred sighed wearily, as though releasing a heavy load. "And what if, to spare you pain, after what happened to Dawn, I'd burnt that letter."
"You're lying," Bruce accused him.
"I've never lied to any of you," he replied. "Except when I burned Rachel's letter."
The hell of it was, Bruce and Buffy believed him.
"How dare you use Rachel to stop me .. us?" Bruce growled.
"I'm using the truth, Master Bruce. Maybe it's time we all stopped trying to outsmart the truth, and just let it have its day." He gazed at Bruce and then Buffy sadly. "Both of you and Dawn are as precious to me as you were to your own mother and father, Master Bruce. As you Buffy were to Joyce and Hank. And I swore to them, all of them, that I'd protect all three of you and I haven't. I'm sorry."
"Sorry?" Bruce rasped. "You expect to destroy my world, and then shake hands?"
"I have to agree Alfred. It's been eight years. Why tarnish Rachel's memory now?" Buffy said.
"This was not meant to destroy your world or tarnish Rachel's memory." Alfred said. "I know what this means."
"What does it mean, Alfred?!" Bruce asked.
"It means yours, Buffy's and even Dawn's hatred. It means losing the person I've cared for since I heard his first cries echo through this house." Alfred paused. "Losing the young woman I have had the pleasure of watching grow up from an infant till she was thirteen years old, before she and her family moved to California." He paused again. "But it might also mean saving your lives. And that is more important."
Bruce glared at Alfred. Calmly, coldly, he said the worst thing he could say. "Goodbye, Alfred."
"Bye, Alfred," Buffy said as she walked back to Alfred and hugged him. "Take care."
"I will, Buffy. You take care also, find a life with Dawn outside of this cave, please." Alfred said and then he marched up the stairs.