"Close", as it turned out, meant "in name only." Like many old buildings, there was a crawlspace underneath the foundations of Sionisis Hall that had vents connecting to outside air, and, like many old buildings, the crawlspace underneath it was absolutely disgusting.
It smelled like all manner of things had up and died in there, even through Spoiler's mask that she'd hurriedly put on after they walked through the campus without incident. She kind of wished she hadn't ditched her backpack outside the building: every time she bumped up against the foundations and felt crumbs of cobweb, or granite, or dried who-knew-what fall onto her neck and sometimes get under her jacket collar, she felt a wave of pure disgust crash over her. Cass had pulled off her sweater-disguise and pulled up the cowl, which left her in a seamless full-body suit, which probably meant she was not experiencing the same bone-deep revulsion as Steph. Steph was, at the very least, deeply thankful that she'd remembered to grab her winter gloves, even if the thickness would make any fine work difficult.
Under the building, they'd lost all cellular service, which meant Steph's contact with Oracle was gone. Cass still had some kind of unobtrusive earpiece - she'd showed Steph, letting her tuck back a piece of soft black hair to reveal the small earbud in her left ear - but even still, without the ability to look in on the situation, there wasn't much Oracle could help with.
Perhaps Steph was being a bit unfair. Oracle had found architect's plans for the Hall they were under, and was directing them through to the nearest stairwell: she'd also figured out that the administrative records were all held on the second floor, and therefore the most likely point of interest for Cluemaster would be up there. Steph still thought that that was all information that could be found with a brochure map of campus and a call to the university student helpline, but hey, her way would have taken fifteen minutes, and Oracle took five. Every minute, Steph had very harshly learned last night, could count in these sorts of things.
Cass paused in front of her, then twisted around so Steph could see why. There were pipes leading up to what she presumed was the first floor: this must be their entry point. Steph got the hint and shined her flashlight at Cass's hand. Cass signed "Bring knife," and pulled out her own wickedly sharp knife. Steph reached into her boot and pulled out the trusty switchblade, springing it open and apologizing in her head for the property damage they were about to inflict on this esteemed university. Then she stabbed at the plastic piping and slowly sawed down, aiming to get a teen-girl sized hole in the thing.
It took them another ten minutes for the whole piece of plastic to be loose enough to get pulled off like a door. Steph's knife had been dulled down to the point where she wasn't even sure if it could be used to cut fruit, let alone people. She closed it back up again and stuck it in her boot anyways since it had already proved its worth as a blunt force weapon earlier in her illustrious vigilante career. With her other hand, she picked up and shined the flashlight at Cass's hand again, waiting for her to say something. Cass had done the same through their methodical sawing, though the only thing Steph had to say through the whole affair was "Gross," every time she had to touch the mildewy side of the plastic with her gloved hands.
"You go first," Cass signed after putting her own flashlight away, then pointed up as if Steph could mistake her meaning. Steph nodded, handed Cass the baseball bat she insisted on bringing, and tucked herself into a ball as she tried to shimmy into the hole they'd carved open: teen-girl-sized, while small, was not quite as small as the hole they'd made. Her shoulders had a tough time folding in on her enough to get her through. Once fully inside the thing, Steph shined her flashlight up and winced. There looked to be a solid eight or nine feet of vertical piping before the vent went horizontal again, turning into traditional metal vents along the walls of the building. Even if she stood up on her tiptoes and stretched her arms as high as they could go, Steph wouldn't be able to get her fingertips to even touch anywhere near where it leveled off. The curse of being average-female-height.
There was nothing else to it. Steph sighed as she slowly levered herself to her full, average female height, then tried bracing one foot against the pipe wall. There wasn't too much room for her to go. Steph thought, in the back of her head, of Harper and her physics problems: not enough leverage to apply decent sliding frictional force. She let her head drop back again, staring up at the cavernous black void above her. Nobody ever told her that being a superhero would come with thigh workouts from hell.
It took almost another ten minutes, a lot of muffled and inventive swearing, and absolutely killer aches in her legs, but Steph finally managed to leverage herself up to the horizontal grate and bellyflop onto it, cherishing her momentary reprieve in the fight against gravity. She slowly swung herself all the way around, looking down just in time to see her beloved stolen baseball bat being thrust up from the pipe like a knight giving his jousting lance to his fair lady to kiss, or however Cass saw Steph right now. Steph gratefully grabbed the thing by the top, pulling it safely to her side and watching with a solid amount of awe and a decent amount of jealousy as Cass easily spider walked her way up the pipe in less than a minute. Steph scooted a little, making room for Cass to perch precariously on the edge of the vent, one arm braced against the top to keep herself from falling backward.
The other hand came up, and Steph dutifully turned her flashlight to it.
"Vent opens in middle of lobby. Should be careful on way out. Stairs will be on right."
Steph frowned. "Where is front door relative to vent?" She reached inside her jacket pocket and fished around for the Sharpie she knew she'd left in there at some point. Finding it, she scooted a little further back and sketched out the general 'L' shape she knew Sionisis Hall looked like from the outside. "I'll mark it with O."
Cass studied the rudimentary diagram for a bit, her flashlight in one hand. She quietly whispered to herself: "Where is the front door?" and waited for Oracle's response. Then, she tapped her finger against the middle of the longer wing. Steph dutifully marked where she tapped with an O. "Vent?" Cass whispered again, and paused. She tapped the side of the longer wing again, this time on the wall opposite the front door and midway between the door and the corner where the two wings joined. Steph again marked it with an O, then added the annotation "vent" to it, just in case.
"Stairs?" she whispered at Cass, pen at the ready. Cass repeated it, then tapped at the furthest edge of the shorter wing from the rest of the hall. They worked quietly like that, mostly speaking with their hands, passing the Sharpie back and forth as Oracle started filling Cass in on other details. After a few rounds of that, they had a decently passable layout for the first floor. Steph leaned a little forward and picked the Sharpie up with her right, signing with her left hand instead.
"First time, there were 13 men," she spelled awkwardly, moving to tap the capped end of the Sharpie against the O where the front door was. "Assume that's the upper limit on how many goons dad can pay." He would have gone all out on the first few clues: there was no way he'd let himself be foiled early. That meant hiring as much protection as possible.
Cass nodded, studying the layout herself. "Would put more on 1st floor," she signed, "so no-one can get in."
Steph held up two fingers and pointed at the front door again. "There were 2 guards at door at factory." She marked two X's right behind the O.
"Leaves 11," Cass signed, opening and closing her free hand twice to mark out ten, then leaving her outstretched finger hanging on the eleventh. "1 is driver."
Steph nodded, studying the outside of the hall. "Cluemaster won't be here right now," she signed, and could not think about how she felt about that. She didn't want to know if she was relieved she could put off a confrontation with her father for another day, or frustrated that he'd get away again so he could make another move in this awful game. "He and driver only stay for set up. This wasn't a long set up. The show starts at 3," she spelled with the absolute certainty of a child haunted by the ghost of a decade-old event.
Cass looked at her for a very long time, then nodded. She broke eye contact, and Steph felt like she could breathe again. "Leaves 10. O says there are 15 administrators with offices on floor 1. 2 called in sick today. 13 hostages. Probably 3 guards in," and she spread her hand over the latter half of the long wing, where Steph had scrawled "OFFICES." Steph dutifully marked out three X's there.
"He'll probably also have two on the stairs," Steph signed and added X's there. "8 left. How many do you think will be on 2nd floor?"
The second floor was almost all offices: there would be twenty potential hostages, not to mention that that was where the administrative files were held, and therefore where the real target was.
Cass gestured for the Sharpie, and Steph handed it over. She marked four X's out on the side of their first floor plan and signed, "2 guards, 2 on bomb."
"Leaves 4," Steph frowned.
"Assume worst," Cass signed, and pointed to the first floor office wing. "You free the hostages on 1st floor. Be prepared for 3 to 7 fighters. I will take 2nd floor."
Steph studied their rudimentary layout for a little while longer. The vent would open halfway between the stairs and the front door: they'd start out sandwiched between both groups of goons, if their guesswork was right. Steph had no doubts about Cass's ability to take them all down with one arm tied behind her back, though if she was right about them having both guns and hostages, it would be critical to get both sets of hostages out of the building as fast as possible.
They slowly crawled forward in silence, and Steph used that time to try to beat down her rising claustrophobia, fear, and anxiety before it could overwhelm her again. There were thirty-three innocent people in this building. Thirty-three more people whose lives might be upturned irrevocably by her father's tantrum. She had to keep it together for them.
Steph had no illusions about her own ability to hold up in a fight. She was still sore and slightly crispy from her exploits last night, and there was only so much she could do with mace and a baseball bat against grown men who'd weigh two of her. Her best strategy would be to hang back behind Cass at first.
By the time they had reached the opening grate of the vent, Steph had gone over every possible permutation and configuration of guards that could possibly be there. She'd even thought of a game plan for at least four of them. The simple act of shuffling pieces around in her head, if nothing else, did help calm her down in a deeply repressive way that she'd maybe need to pick apart in therapy, assuming she'd ever be able to afford therapy. She'd only left something like a hundred sixty-one other possibilities unaccounted for, too. Those, she figured the plan of action would be "go for the kneecaps and pray."
They arrived at the grate. Steph had let Cass go up ahead of her, so she could only tell they had reached the end when Cass turned around and motioned for Steph to click her flashlight off.
"Ready?" Cass signed back, illuminated only by the grate. Steph held up a hand and bobbed it from side to side, the universal sign for "as I'll ever be."
Then Cass shifted around and kicked the grate at just the right angle for it to come flying out and the world to explode. It did that a lot around her.
Batgirl came out swinging like, pun intended, a bat out of hell. Steph hung back slightly, listening to the sounds of violence - and thankfully no rapport of guns - and watched Cassandra twist and move in the kind of constant ethereal motion that reminded her of angels: the kind that had to open with "Be not afraid."
Cass took a sharp right and disappeared down the corner, presumably to deal with the guards on the stairs and up to the bomb. The sounds of violence followed her, acting like a sort of echolocation tracker for her position. Pun still intended. She'd also thankfully dealt with the two guards that they'd predicted would guard the entrance earlier, which left anywhere from three to seven guards on the left-side offices for her to figure out.
Steph listened intently for the sounds of footsteps and squeezed her bat and her mace tight, tensing up on her back leg in preparation. She heard a gruff male voice and the buzz of a radio, but the structure of the vent meant she couldn't hear clearly what he said. However, she could judge based on the volume of the voice that he was walking, not running, ever closer: possibly cautious after seeing Batgirl's earlier display. Steph would be too.
She waited, unwilling to even breathe in case she gave away her presence, with only a clear view from the ground floor of the wall across from her. She didn't have to wait long - soon, a booted leg and heavy workman's jeans over an otherwise unprotected shinbone entered her limited line of vision. She saw the opportunity and she took it.
Her bat connected with his shin with a very loud and worrying crack, though Steph figured that since there weren't any essential organs in the leg, he'd be fine. Just a fractured tibia - or fibula, she didn't quite remember. Either way, he was down for the count.
"Crime doesn't pay," she muttered, "but I hope you get workman's comp anyways."
"Wh-" the man spluttered, sprawled on the ground. "Batgirl?"
"Appreciate the comparison," Steph said, twirling her Louisville Slugger, "but only technically."
Apparently, she wasn't the only one who learned from her mistakes: the guard was wearing a gas mask, probably to render her preferred incapacitation method of mace ineffective. She weighed the odds of irreparable damage from blunt force trauma with a baseball bat, then erred on the side of caution and spent a precious few seconds to reach down and rip off the guard's gas mask. She gave him a full blast of sparkly purple pepper spray. That would hopefully not kill him, but it would probably leave him blind and burning from the nose for, at the very least, fifteen minutes. Which was good. He had another four friends with him, and they were all running towards her, knives out. At least she was right: no guns.
"Little unfair," Steph yelped, dropping the mace back in her pocket in favor of a two-handed grip on her bat. "Mine's so much bigger."
She swung straight for the hands first, hoping to at least break a few fingers and make her job easier. While that was too much to hope for, she did at least manage to get the first man to drop his knife. She did, but now all four men had managed to converge on her with three knives between them all, and those odds weren't quite good.
Steph stopped, dropped, and rolled with the sort of precision that came from doing disaster drills in the Gotham public schooling system since she was in kindergarten. On her way, she kicked at the dropped knife, letting it skitter far down the hall toward the corner. Rolling back to her feet, she got herself in a rooted stance one more time and swung up, clocking the nearest man upside the chin. It got him stumbling back, but it only clipped him, leaving him still in the count.
Steph took several steps back towards the vent, her brain working double-time: treat it like a game of chess, or something, and maybe she'd trick herself into strategizing. She'd never survive a four-on-one or even just two of them on one of her: the only way she'd win this fight was if she could find some way to fight four one-on-one fights, but something told her honor among thieves and chivalry didn't extend to them waiting around for her to finish whaling on one of their coworkers to start on them.
She had the longer weapon, which gave her the advantage: even with the smaller reach she had on account of being at least six inches shorter on average than the men, the baseball bat had at least a good foot on the knives the other men were wielding. The hallway they were in wasn't particularly wide, and the floorspace there was to maneuver was severely hampered by desks and chairs tucked along the side full of half-done paperwork.
Steph had a plan. She turned and ran.
Well, first she bought herself a little time to run by grabbing the chair nearest to her and flinging it underhanded at the knot of men. In her experience, not many people were ever prepared for a chair to the face. Then she made a mad dash down the hall, yanking on desks and rolling chairs with her free hand as she went. She'd make it up to the school later: for now, she had bigger things to worry about. She also nearly tripped over the kicked out vent grate and the previously tied up body of a goon Cass had already taken care of, which she hoped didn't ruin her street cred.
She took the corner wide and scrambled back against the wall, getting her hands back into a grip on her bat and her feet solidly planted and shoulder-width apart just in time for the first lucky winner of her impromptu obstacle course to make his own way around the blind corner himself. Him, she hit hard enough in the knees to take out for the count for the rest of the fight. She really hoped her dad didn't skimp on the healthcare insurance.
She hopped over the man's prone body and came out swinging for the next one, notably emo-haired and surprisingly skinny, catching him right on the shoulder. She waited until mini-MCR stumbled back, putting most of his weight right on his back foot on a pile of upturned papers, before lashing out again with her bat. She hit him again in the shoulder like she was wielding a lance, unbalancing him just enough for him to topple, though he still had a knife and a willingness to stab her in the ankle.
"Jesus," Steph swore, leaping backwards and instinctively smashing her bat down on MCR's knife hand like it was a spider. "Stay down or that's gonna be your face next."
She kicked the knife away again, letting it skitter underneath an upturned desk, and bent to retrieve a stapler that had been knocked off when she jerked the desk onto its side. She reared back and lobbed the thing at the next man, who was halfway across the last desk between Steph and her recent victims. The final - and naturally, biggest - man was not far behind him, angrily shoving a rolling chair to the side on his way down the hall. The stapler hit the shorter and closer one straight in the forehead, but only stopped him for a few seconds. He swore a blue streak at her: calling her, unimaginatively, a cunt. The banality was nearly offensive.
Steph shrugged at him and grabbed a mug full of pens to toss next. She missed cunt-guy - sue her, this was stressful and pitching a mug wasn't quite like pitching a softball - but the thing still shattered against the faux-wood siding of the desk he was climbing over, scattering the cylindrical pens right where they would be the biggest problem for where he could possibly put his feet. With that hopefully keeping him occupied for a little longer, Steph dropped into a squat and turned her attention back to the hurt but not out-for-the-count man still more or less at her feet. She grabbed his gas mask and ripped it off, then aimed her pepper spray right up MCR's nose. She was feeling vindictive about the knife thing.
She left him to splutter and cough. Sir Swears-A-Lot, only a few inches taller than her but at least fifty pounds heavier, had crossed over the desk and he was only a few feet away from her by now. Steph cautiously stepped around the man on the floor: MCR was crying, but luckily not twitching too hard. She needed to keep Stapler-Head from remembering that he could just team up with his coworker and beat her up that way. She had to say something that would get him to come at her angry.
"Bring it, little bitch," Steph said because she already used up all her good trash talk at this point.
Luckily, it worked. He came running, his eyes on her, and not the ground he was thoughtlessly putting his weight on. He skidded on one of the stray pens, and Steph took the opportunity to push forward, mindful of her own step.
She slammed her bat one-handed into his upper shinbone, where it met the knee. It didn't have quite the power behind the blow that it would have two-handed, but a metal pipe hitting the shinbone would hurt regardless of how much force was applied. He doubled over involuntarily and Steph rushed forward to meet him in the middle with the heel of her palm to his nose. It didn't crunch, but she felt the cartilage of his nose give with a little wet noise, and she could guess that she'd at least drawn blood. That made three down.
She rolled her shoulders and turned to face the final man. He had to be at least twice her size, well over six feet and with the powerful build of a career henchman. Steph was fairly sure he'd be a bit harder to beat down over the shoulders, like she'd done with the one who'd called her a cunt. The legs were probably still a viable strategy: the bigger they are, the harder they fell, and most men's centers of gravity were higher up and easily toppled, so long as she aimed right.
There wasn't anything in the vicinity for her to chuck at him, so she settled for twirling her bat and waiting for him to come to her. She hoped the wreckage and the prone bodies she'd left behind were suitably intimidating, though she doubted it would inspire any hesitance.
She was right. The career henchman barrelled forward, instinctively avoiding most of the papers and pens that made it a minefield for Steph herself to navigate. He clearly also had the experience advantage on her.
Steph reared to try and swing her bat at his face, hoping to knock the gas mask off of it, only for him to parry with his knife. Stellar. Rather than try and push against him - their size difference was nearly comical - she suddenly slipped the bat down and let the now uncontested force of his arm swing the knife out and away from him. She got a quick cheap shot in at his gut, which probably only made him angry rather than hurt but also did distract him for the few seconds it took for her to back up several steps, dropping her mace back in her pocket on the way. She gripped the bat two-handed and prepared for the best sliding lay out of her life.
She did not account for her father's cussing crony to have recovered from a maybe-broken nose fast enough to have gotten up to grab her from behind. He wrestled her down to the ground, pinning her with a knee to the back. Shit.
"God," the uncouth underling said, a wet aspect to his tone that made Steph a little smug. "This fucking bitch." The career henchman simply walked forward.
"Good job, Tony," he said, and Steph had to snort at the thought that popped into her head: he's 5'6, probably nicknamed Tiny Tony by the boys. "Get her hogtied, we'll toss her in with the hostages."
Tiny Tony didn't move. "Hold her face still," he said to the career henchman. "Eye for an eye, I want a nose for a nose."
Every muscle in Steph's body tensed up. She was still gripping the bat and the mace, but she didn't have any leverage, and as hard as she tried, there was no dislodging the hundred-seventy pound weight bearing down on her. It wasn't true that she didn't have a choice, but there was only one choice worth making.
She dropped her mace and made a fist. Slammed the ground with it three times. Open hand against the ground three times. Fist against the ground three times. The sound echoed and her fist smarted: she'd hit as hard as she could, hoping the sound would carry.
"What the fuck?" Tiny Tony said. "Is she trying to tap out or something? That's not how real life works, sweetch-"
He was cut off by a shadow slamming into him. Steph knew the exact moment because she could suddenly breathe again - one second there was all consuming weight pushing her down, the next, there was nothing. By the time she pulled herself up onto her hands and knees and sat back on her heels, the two men were themselves face down, zip tied thoroughly, and Batgirl was sitting perched on the edge of the upturned desk.
"How did you know," she fingerspelled, having to enunciate the hand motions more now that she was Batgirl and wearing gauntlets, "that I knew Morse code?"
Steph smiled under her mask. "There's no way Batman's kid doesn't know Morse."
She grabbed her mace again, putting it back in her pocket. Then she turned and surveyed beyond Cass's shoulders the pure destructive mayhem they'd wreaked and the offices that lay beyond.
"Hostages at the end of this hall?" she asked Tiny Tony. He groaned, and Batgirl kicked him in the side: hopefully lightly, but he did curl up a lot more than he already had been doing. "Hey, Tony, talkin' to you. Hostages at the end of this hall?"
"Yes," he moaned out. "God, I'm gonna get fired."
Steph snorted. "That's what you're worried about? Relax, you'll get demoted at best. Take a pay cut." Cass had already lept to her feet to go take care of the hostage situation.
"Well, actually, it's a labor mon-op-sony, you see," the career said. "You gotta pay everyone the same rate, even though Greg over there was just guarding the door and I'm always the one stuck making the bombs before we transport: and we're both only getting seven an hour!"
"Sure," said Steph, slightly bemused.
"So, if the Riddler wants to buy me out from Cluemaster, he doesn't have to pay any more out of pocket. They just compete with their benefits packages. He just says, hey, Cluemaster only has you guys on a 401k, but instead of that, I can cover 100% of your health insurance, out of pocket. And neither of them ever raise the minimum wage! It's a racket!"
"You know," Steph said, "if you got a real job, the state minimum wage is ten an hour."
"Yeah," said the career, "but the retirement benefits on this gig are pretty sweet."
Steph inclined her head and thought about who Batman really was. "Between the two of us, if I knew a way to get you like, three thousand bucks wired to your account, bonus, would you tell me anything else about what Cluemaster has planned?"
"Sorry, kid," the career said, and he sounded genuinely sympathetic. That, or three grand was way more than what Cluemaster promised in hazard pay and bonuses. "He's a paranoid bastard, won't let anyone in on the master plan."
"Figures," Steph sighed. "What was the clue, then, this time?"
"He didn't have time to leave one," Tony piped up. Steph straightened up.
"He what?"
"He only comes in and puts the clue in at the last second. Some point of pride shit for him," Tony said, shrugging while still tied with his hands behind his back and his face to the ground.
"Huh," Steph said. "Well, that makes this significantly harder."
She made eye contact with Batgirl, who was emerging from one of the rooms with a whole gaggle of office worker hostages in tow. She jerked her head, betting Batgirl would hear her loud and clear: Let's get out of here.
Later, after they'd fully changed and Cass walked her to the subway - lightly teasing her in that mischievously smirking way of hers about her reliance on notoriously unreliable public transport - they had the rest of their conversation.
"You dropped your weapon," Cass spelled, and something about the way she did it made it seem like sacrilege.
"I needed a free hand to call you," Steph spelled back. Her eyes were firmly on Cass's right hand, careful not to note her expressions in her peripheral.
"How did you know I would come?"
"Easy," Steph spelled and closed her hand into a fist, waiting until Cass's eyes moved up to hers to give her the smile she wanted to. "'Cause you're a hero, Cassie."
a/n: steph is a disaster bi. cass seems, on the surface, a dignified lesbian, but secretly? she's a chaos lesbian. this chapter was primarily written on labor day, hence the on theme discussion of the goons and their goon union (goonion?). today marks the end of mahalaya (i think? i live in a time zone 12 hours away from west bengal) which means today is also for hindu lady shiva and culturally-hindu-cass rights.