Chapter 24: But Ordinary's Just Not Good Enough Today
A STAR Labs armored truck made its way across the Gillian P. Loeb Memorial Bridge connecting the mainland to Bleake Island, its final destination being the Scientific and Technological Advance Research Laboratories facility in the old factory district.
STAR Labs had been founded by scientist Garrison Slate some fifty years ago now, and had enough locations worldwide to make it the McDonald's of scientific research. Though they had to pare their weapons development back quite a bit in the recent decades due to public outcry from the superhero community, and potential legislation by do-gooder American senators.
Didn't mean they couldn't develop chemicals, though!
The cargo in this particular armored truck was something called a "chemical amplification reagent." Reggie Tatsumoto, the man driving the truck, didn't know what the hell that even was. And he'd bet that the man riding shotgun with him today on this haul from Metropolis, one James KIymer, didn't know either. To Reggie, it just looked like clear goop in three see-through barrels the size of mini-kegs.
"So," James said as he wiped some doughnut powder off of his black uniform tie, "I look up while I'm filling my tank, eating a gas station hot dog, and I see this woman fly overhead."
"Wonder Woman?" Reggie asked.
James shook his head. "Huh-uh. Wonder Girl."
"Wonder Girl?"
"Yeah."
"Which Wonder Girl?"
"Huh?"
"Which Wonder Girl?" Reggie asked. "There were two of them. The brunette came first, then came the blonde."
"The blonde," said James.
"And that's the only superhero you've ever seen up close?"
"Lived in Gateway City all my life. That's the only one. How 'bout you?"
"I seen a couple," Reggie said. "I live in Metropolis so it's kinda hard not to. I saw Supergirl fight that Sea Daddy character. Superwoman swung by when the Sunshine Patriot and the Summer Soldier tried to blow up that African-American History Museum. Smacked the piss out of 'em. They were covered in swastikas and shit, so that felt good to watch. And, uh… And then there's Superman."
James looked at him, detecting the hesitation in the sentence. "What about him?"
Reggie took his hand off the wheel to scratch his nose. "Did, uh… Did you hear that internet theory about there being two Supermen? Super mans? Super men?"
"There's an internet theory about there being more than one Superman?"
"Yeah," Reggie said. "I mean, I seen him up close a few times. Y'know, flyovers, he was at the opening of that children's hospital my wife works at. And, uh… did he get younger to you?"
"I haven't paid attention. You're the one who lives in Metropolis."
"I know," Reggie said, "but back in the day, Superman was Superman. Then I see him on the news and it's almost as though he's this eighteen year old kid, right? And for the past fifteen years, he hasn't ag-"
BOOM!
The readout on the dashboard told Reggie all four tires on the armored truck had been blown out. But by the time he saw this, the truck was already mid-roll.
If one were to ask Reggie Tatsumoto how many times the STAR Labs truck rolled, he would not have been able to say. All he would have told you was that when it finally stopped on the patch of grass near the Bleake Island off ramp, it landed right side up.
He also would have said that he had a splitting headache, and he felt nauseous.
He looked to his right to see James in the passenger's seat, the red hair of his combover astray and a thin rope of drool extending from his mouth to his gray uniform shirt. He was unconscious, his chin resting on his sternum.
Reggie reached over and nudged James' shoulder. "James… Buddy… Wake up."
Thankfully, James' eyes fluttered open. He slowly raised his head, and seemed to look beyond Reggie in the driver's seat.
"Oh, shit…" he said.
Reggie followed his gaze out the driver's side window.
Three men were standing outside the door in black body armor and black balaclavas.
Reggie's hand immediately hit the security protocol on the dashboard. It was standard on STAR Labs vehicles. It sealed the door and sent out an automated distress call to 911, along with the truck's tracking code.
The man in the middle of the three, the tallest one, just folded his arms.
"I'll spoil it for you," he said. "Your call didn't go out. As for the door? Well… we brought these new plasma cutters with us? Top of the line, work better than blowtorches. Problem being, though, they can heat up a room real fast. Melt flesh off bone, if some flesh was in the vicinity."
The man leaned into the window. If Reggie had to guess, under that balaclava, the dude was smiling.
"So do yourself a favor. Open the back of the truck… and get the fuck out here."
The Batmobile was cloaked, weaving through the traffic of the outer mainland silent and unseen.
Being as the cloak had been installed after his time as Robin, this was Tim Drake's first time in the passenger's seat during a quiet, see-through run.
And he had never ridden shotgun when Black Bat was behind the controls.
She was all tension, snaking the Batmobile around motorcycles and in front of SUVs as the concrete and glass canyons of Gotham City passed by in a blur. He had a feeling that when the masked Cassandra Wayne took her hands from the controls, deep grooves where her fingers had squeezed into the rubber would be present.
Which wasn't to say that Tim himself was collected at the moment.
He was the man nothing got to, but this got to him. A crazy woman was going to try and kill his best friend. And this best friend was the other half of the longest relationship that the masked woman in the driver's seat had ever been in.
Tim reached into the pockets of his jacket. In his right hand he had his collapsible bo staff, and in his left, he held a pair of sunglasses, which he proceeded to put on.
Cassandra had a superhero identity to fall back on. Tim didn't, and in fact had not had one in almost fourteen years. This was as incognito as he could get at present.
Heart hammering in his chest, Tim asked Black Bat a question.
"Can this thing go any faster?"
Reggie Tatsumoto was dropped to his knees in the grass next to James Klymer. They both had their hands in the air.
In addition to the three men in black, there were an additional three who had arrived in a black Armored Personnel Carrier. Reggie didn't know military from milkshakes, but he would be good and thrice damned if the Army didn't have rides like those.
The other three had loaded the tire spikes with which they blew the tires of the STAR Labs truck into the back of the APC, followed then by the mini-kegs of chemical amplification reagent, whatever the fuck that was.
Once that was done, they were off, and Reggie and James were left to their captors.
Their apparent leader yanked both of Reggie's hands behind his back. He felt something being strapped around his wrist. Like a watch.
"Brother," Reggie said. "Just let us go. You got what you wanted."
"No," the leader in black said. "We didn't. Not yet."
A bolt of agony shot up Reggie's left arm as the leader bent his thumb back, viciously breaking it.
Reggie screamed…
...and Conner Kent heard it.
He was over at Lupe's Taco Hut on Miagani Island, just across the street from the Kino Theatre on Weston Boulevard. He opted to eat his two lime chicken tacos and his plate of shrimp nachos out on the open outdoor patio, gray sky and fog be damned. If it were going to rain, he'd have heard it in the atmosphere.
Conner had two fingers around a tortilla chip heavily loaded with oily melted cheese and a single miniature shrimp when he heard the scream.
But this was Gotham City. This was not his town, and if help was needed, he'd have been asked. It was like going against the natural instinct to breathe, but Gotham was well-protected, and whoever was in danger would be out of danger soon enough.
Underneath the scream, however, he heard the beeping.
Conner Kent was well-acquainted with this beeping. This was the beeping of a Superman Signal Watch, attuned at a frequency that only Kryptonians could hear without special equipment. Only a precious few had them, most notable among them current Daily Planet Editor-in-Chief Jimmy Olsen.
So Conner heard the beeping, put his chip back down on the plate, and sighed.
It was one thing to stay on the sidelines in a city of superheroes whose pride wouldn't allow him to interfere. It was an entirely different thing to ignore the telltale beeping of a Superman Signal Watch.
He was needed for one specific thing. That's all there was to it.
Conner looked around the open patio, weighing his options. He could eat his food with Super Speed. It would only take a second. But two many wandering eyes and open ears.
He sighed yet again, got his wallet out of his suit jacket, and fished out two twenties. He left them on the table, got up from his woefully uneaten food, and walked from the patio to the adjoining alley.
Conner's mind skirted around the thought…
Fuck this town.
...before it retreated.
Superman, after all, was not supposed to swear. He failed on occasion, but he always tried.
Safely secured in the darkness of the alley, Conner touched the holographic projector on the back of his head, hidden by thick, black hair. A good fifteen years instantly drained from his face, leaving behind the appearance of a handsome young man in his late teens. An appearance he had had all his life, ever since he was grown by Lex Luthor and Cadmus inside of a laboratory.
With that done, Conner took off his glasses and opened his gray button-down shirt, revealing the big red S that meant hope to billions.
The Arkham Knight stood atop the old Iroquois Plastics building on Bleake Island, the tallest structure on said island that was not a smokestack.
It was roughly half a mile from where the STAR Labs truck had rolled, and where her men had taken the chemical amplification reagent, and were now holding the truck's stewards hostage.
And the Arkham Knight was scanning the sky, looking for even the slightest trace of red and blue.
She had taken the Superman Signal Watch and the canister of Kryptonite gas from the Batcave. While she had given the watch to her men, she had kept the canister of gas for herself.
For, on this very rooftop, she had loaded the canister into a device that she had picked up during her test raids of weapons development facilities with her men. They had trained together, after all, and what better way to reward them than with spiffy new toys with which to play?
This particular device was called a "concentration matrix," and she got it from raiding a LexCorp lab over in Central City. It could harness any base chemical onto light, and send it out as a coherent beam.
The Arkham Knight's mystery caller told her that using the Kryptonite gas in its current form may not be the best way for the weapon to be utilized, for gassing Superman meant confining Superman, and there were no earthly means with which to do so, at least not with the current resources that the Arkham Knight and Ra's al Ghul had at hand. But maybe she could modify it a little?
Turns out, the Arkham Knight could.
For next to her was the concentration matrix, which could turn the Kryptonite gas into a Kryptonite laser beam.
The metal canister of gas, roughly the size of a can of paint, fit snugly into the chamber of the concentration matrix, which was about the size of a paint mixer. It was aimed skyward.
As were her eyes.
The Arkham Knight's helmet had magnification and motion detection. Moreover, it was interfaced with the concentration matrix. All she had to do to fire it was press a button on her gauntlet. As soon as he showed himself, he was at her mercy.
Beneath her helmet, Astrid Arkham smiled. She tried to think of a bigger boost to one's self-esteem than killing Superman, and such a possibility quite simply eluded her.
Tim watched the minor spectacle of Black Bat tapping on the Batmobile's controls with her gloved index finger…
Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap.
...while his heart hammered in his chest.
She was maneuvering the Batmobile down alleys and side streets as fast as she could on the way to the signal from the watch, which she had picked up on the onboard computer. It was a zigging and zagging path, but they couldn't have an invisible war machine stop at traffic lights or use turn signals.
Black Bat spared him a glance.
"You're nervous," she said.
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"How can you tell?"
Black Bat looked at him again, only it was a moment longer. Long enough for Cassandra's withering derision to seep through the mask and permeate his personal space like a particularly eggy fart.
"I'm breaking about a hundred and fifty traffic laws to get to that signal," Black Bat said. "We'll get there."
"You know the traffic laws?"
"Back to front."
"And you still can't drive a normal car?"
"Normal cars don't have radar, sonar, or cloaking devices," Black Bat said. "And you make small talk when you're nervous."
Tim sighed, and rubbed his face, working the index fingers of both hands good and deep into his tear ducts until he saw stars.
The pit in his stomach seemed to get big enough to the extent that he had its own gravitational pull. He could swear he could feel his ribs being pulled downward into the antimatter vortex, down there with his breakfast and all the gum he had swallowed since he was a child, or so his mother would have had him believe.
"I don't suppose it would help if I screamed in here to try and warn him?" Tim asked. "He's Superman. He'll hear me."
"No," Black Bat said. "He won't. This car has the same sound blanketing system as Batcave South. I'd say you could stick your head out the window, but the windows don't roll down. And even if they could, we're invisible right now, so it wouldn't be the wisest thing you could do."
"And we can't get out and stop?"
"Do you mean slow ourselves down and increase the likelihood of something horrible happening?" Black Bat asked, an edge gathering steam in her deep voice. "Why didn't I think of that?"
He sighed yet again.
Tim wanted to have faith in Cassandra.
But it was hard.
He opted instead for deflection.
"If you want to turn good intentions into an awful problem," Tim said, "nine out of ten doctors recommend Bruce Wayne's Paranoia."
Superman still heard the screaming. He still heard the Signal Watch. But he also heard the work-a-day folks of Bleake Island oohing and ahhing as he sailed through the air hundreds of feet above them.
His red cape fluttering behind him, Superman wasn't going as fast as he could, and there was a reason for that.
Over the past three years or so, the supervillain community had developed a kind of underground makeshift method of social networking with which they warned each other as to which superhero was in which town at any given minute. Initially, the Justice League and affiliated individuals and entities had brainstorming sessions as to how they could shut this system down. But as the days and weeks went on, they noticed something.
With an early warning system in place, sometimes these criminals would stop what they were doing and run away.
Because if someone was robbing a liquor store, and they heard Superman was in town, there was a realistic possibility that said person would put the money down, drop the gun, and attempt to vanish. A hundred and fifty bucks was not a cover charge for going toe-to-toe with the Man of Steel.
So Superman tried to keep a reasonable pace, but took his time, listening for the unholstering of a firearm coming from the direction of the beeping of the signal watch. If he heard that, then he'd make mincemeat of the sound barrier trying to get there.
But for now, Superman let Gotham see him…. And he let Gotham get the word out.
SNAP!
And Reggie screamed again.
The leader of the men in black had snapped his pinkie, then his ring finger, and then his middle finger. He felt the skin and small hairs of the first joint of that middle finger gently touching the back of his hand, bent in a way in which he knew it was not supposed to bend. This only made him more nauseous.
Once he screamed his lungs out, the leader felt the urge to speak.
"So," he said, "where you from, little man?"
"M-M-M-Metropolis," Reggie said, stuttering in agony.
"Metropolis," the leader said, oily sarcasm dripping off of all four syllables. "See, unlike my two friends here, I am a not-so-proud Gotham City native."
Reggie could hear the sound of boots shifting in the grass, and breathing in his right ear. The leader had stooped down to his level.
"See, when I was a kid, I was the world's biggest Gotham City Knights fan. Pennants, caps, posters on the wall. I begged my dad for an Ivan Ross jersey. Number 35, right on my back, and he got it for me."
The breath the leader took blew out Reggie's hearing for a second, before he continued speaking.
"I was watching Game Seven of the World Series with my dad on TV. Gotham was finally gonna win one for the first time. I hoped… I hoped it would happen. It got to the eighth inning and the signal cuts out. I hear the rumble throughout my apartment building, and all the glass breaks. Some asshole blew up the stadium, the blocks around it, killing about seventy thousand people. Game Seven. Motherfucker…"
The leader took a deep breath. As he let it out, Reggie could hear the shudder it held.
"You're gonna die today, little man," the leader said. "But I need you to hope. I need you to hope it doesn't happen."
It took all of Reggie's strength to keep himself from puking. If he was going to die, he was not going to die in a pool of his own vomit. He was terrified, but even in the midst of overwhelming fear, he still had some pride. It was recognizable, and Reggie knew that it was the only thing he could cling to.
But as he swallowed, he saw something flutter in the sky about a half of a mile off. The colors popped against the gray, and Reggie knew who it was.
Reggie Tatsumoto didn't need hope.
He had Superman.
The Arkham Knight saw him as well.
She kept Superman within the field of her helmet's vision, and let the VI targeting system in her armor do the work. It compensated for gradients in wind, velocity, flight pattern, and vector.
And it was hooked up to the concentration matrix.
She heard the device whir to life, the gentle mechanical keening of its business end slowly moving… aimed at Superman, above the water of Gotham Sound.
The Arkham Knight paused, savoring the moment. What she was about to do was going to set the world on fire, and she wanted to commit as much to memory as possible. So that one day, were someone to ask her what it felt like to kill Superman, then she would have been able to testify to the sensation honestly.
And finally, the Arkham Knight was satisfied.
She said…
"Bang."
...and pressed the button on her gauntlet.
Her helmet's magnification protocols were in place, so she could see, with great detail, the green beam hit the Man of Steel in that big S on his chest, see him veer off-pattern, and gradually go limp in his descent.
How did it feel to kill Superman, Astrid?
Well, it felt great, if we're being honest.
"Whoa," Black Bat said.
Tim looked at her. "What is it?"
"I just got a wicked energy signature coming out of Bleake Island."
Tim's brow instantly started sporting a layer of sweat. He forgot to blink, and he forgot to breathe.
"Tim," Black Bat said, nerves creeping into her voice. "Something just went off."
At the moment he saw the green beam his the blue and red dot on the skyline that was Superman, his vision blurred. His mind had seen it, instantly rejected it, and tried to shut his eyes down to reboot from the malfunction.
The beam was green.
Kryptonite was green.
Reggie Tatsumoto did not need a degree to figure this one out.
He saw Superman's flight began to zig, and he saw him slowly fall, and the full weight and history of being ringside for such a transformative event made him feel as though his heart was being crushed. And the only word that would escape his lips was:
"No…"
"'Fraid so," the leader behind him said. "All that hope you had that Superman would come and save you, and it did you just as much good as it did this town."
Reggie heard the slide of a pistol being yanked back, and he closed his eyes.
"Welcome to Gotham City," the leader said, and Reggie felt the barrel of a gun bore into the back of his skull.
BOOOOOOOOM!
Reggie opened his eyes.
It should be stated plainly at this juncture that both Reggie Tatsumoto and James Klymer ultimately survived their encounter with the Arkham Knight's Squires in Gotham City. And the following Sunday, once he was safely back home in Metropolis, he attended Sunday Mass at Saint Patrick's Catholic Church for the first time since his father had last dragged him to the establishment when he was fifteen.
For while Reggie Tatsumoto had his eyes closed, not knowing what else to do, he powered through the recesses of his brain for last second solutions before finally calling upon God.
And when he opened his eyes… the fucking Batmobile appeared out of nowhere!
The Batmobile decloaked.
"EJECT!" Black Bat yelled. "NOW!"
The roof of the Batmobile slid back, and both Black Bat and Tim Drake were launched into the air by the Batmobile's ejector seat mechanisms.
Tim had done this hundreds of times in his late teens. Muscle memory took over. He unleashed his bo staff and hit the pose as he and Black Bat landed in front of the three Squires holding the two STAR Labs workers hostage.
As the two drivers scurried away, Black Bat pointed up. Tim's eyes followed her finger.
A blue and red speck was moving down, down, down to the cloudy waters of the Atlantic off the coast of the mainland.
Superman fell from the sky that had, until now, held him up lovingly, and he impacted with the ocean waters below. Conner Kent's body was so far away that Tim could not hear the splash.
Then the eyes of Tim Drake and Black Bat slowly fell back earthward, toward the three men who were, at the very least, partly responsible for this calamity.
Like a quick-draw artist, Black Bat unsheathed a Batarang apiece from either side of her yellow utility belt and flung them at the two Squires on either side. They both got hit right between the eyes, and fell backward.
Which left only the one in the middle for Tim.
As Black Bat dealt with the other two, Tim advanced on the lone Squire. The corners of Tim's vision had begun to redden. He could hear his insistent pulse in his temples like the crashing of waves.
The Squire got his pistol out of his holster.
Tim, in the moment, found that the most appropriate way to deal with this situation was the abandonment of all pretense towards fanciness.
He choked up on one end of his bo staff with both hands, and hit a screaming line drive on the Squire's face that sent both him and the pistol flying.
At which point, Tim dropped his staff. His bare hands screamed for the blood of his best friend's murderer.
He bent down and grabbed the Squire's collar, bringing him to his feet. With his other hand, he wrenched off the Squire's balaclava to reveal the blocky white face of a man with a blonde crew cut.
Tim decked the Squire, sending him to the ground yet again. With what little faculties Tim Drake had left that were not under the governance of deep sorrow and blinding rage, he attempted to recall when he had last hit someone this hard, and failed. There was a dull ache spreading from his right hand all the way up to his shoulder, of which he was only dimly aware.
With his left hand, he brought the Squire to his feet for a second time. With his right hand, he savagely punched him.
And again.
And again.
The blows he rained down upon this foul bastard blended into one another. He just started beating this man. He had been beating this man since the dawn of time, forever in the act of punishing this being for a crime so foul that it dwarfed the Big Bang preceding it, and the inevitable Big Crunch to come.
And flitting about the periphery of pain both physical and emotional, like a passive-aggressive gnat, was… someone … saying something.
"STOP!"
"P-P-PLEASE!"
"I'M…"
Tim had to be imagining it. There was no other way in which it could be explained. It must have been like putting an ear to a seashell. One did not hear the ocean. One simply heard the distortion of all sound around them.
He was anguish. He was fury. He was the very rhythm and impact of bones colliding, of a hand beating a face into meat.
Until he felt a small, firm hand gently fall on his shoulder. And a woman's deep voice, watery and thick, saying:
"Robin… Enough."
Tim stopped.
He didn't know what did it. It could have been that he was addressed by his past nom-de-guerre. It could have been the prospect of meeting the rage of the former Cassandra Cain, at which point he would have been dissected as thoroughly and without shame as a med school cadaver.
But Tim stopped… and then he looked down.
He had painted the grass with the Squire's blood. What was left of the man's face was a sour crimson abstract painting that slowly gurgled in pursuit of breath. Tim looked down at the scarlet claw that was his hand and saw the bone of his own middle knuckle peeking up at him like a microscopic dallop of sour cream in the middle of a bowl of borscht.
He looked at Black Bat, feeling the tears stinging his eyes. Cassandra's shoulders were hunched, her head cast down, and though her face was masked, she radiated sorrow from her very skeleton.
And then he looked up.
Tim Drake fancied himself a rational man. Though he had assisted in a war against two Greek Goddesses of myth when he was eighteen, he didn't believe in God. Not that God. Not the one sold to children in church. No pearly gates, no Saint Peter, no clouds, no harps.
Which meant that in the sky above them, there was no Heaven to welcome someone as kind and decent and brave as Conner Kent inside.
But Tim Drake opened his mouth and screamed at those empty heavens all the same.