Chapter 26: He Goes First
"Hey," Stephanie said. "I snagged you some protein bars."
Batman, who had not moved from his position in the dark corner of the living room since Selina went into the bedroom and Stephanie came back out again, saw the two small bars wrapped in red plastic on the kitchen counter. He walked up to them, picked them up, and spied the two dirty plates in the sink, still sticky with maple syrup.
He looked at Stephanie, who was stretched out on the couch, Isis on her stomach.
And she looked back.
She seemed to know what he was thinking.
Stephanie scowled, put some gravel in her voice, and said, in her best Batman impression:
"The Night does not eat waffles…"
Batman didn't know what to say to that.
"Why are you still here?" Stephanie asked.
"I'm waiting for my ride."
Stephanie was about to say something, when the bedroom door opened.
There stood Catwoman, spare Catsuit on her body, makeup freshly applied, sporting a look of defeat crossed with sheepishness.
Batman and Catwoman looked at each other for a moment or two, taking each other in.
He couldn't find the words. She couldn't either, though if it were a race, she'd have gotten there before he did.
"So," Catwoman said, looking at her feet. "Where are we going?"
Catwoman led him out to the front of the building. The sky above them was still blustery, but no rain seemed to be coming.
"Do you have a method of conveyance?" Batman asked.
"What?"
"A ride."
"Why didn't you just say that?" Catwoman asked. "Yeah, I have a motorcycle… I think. If one of the looters around here got to it…"
"Get it," Batman said, and he held up the two empty red wrappers form the protein bars he ate on the way down the stairs. "I need to find a trash can so I can throw these away."
"The city went to shit," she said. "Just throw them on the ground."
Batman didn't listen to her. He checked along the long row of abandoned cars clogging the street, looking for a trash can.
Catwoman, thinking Batman could not be serious right now, turned and stepped in between the cars to get across the street.
She walked a block to the storage unit, and found it relatively unmolested. She went to her unit, unlocked the sliding door, slid it open, and saw her black Ducati motorcycle.
If I ever have children, Catwoman thought, this would still be my baby.
She walked the Ducati back to the street across from the Harlow Street apartment building, and was gobsmacked by what she saw.
Batman was standing on top of an abandoned semi-truck, and above him, hovering silently, was the plane he had. She thought she remembered it being called "The Batwing."
Beneath it, suspended from clamps attached to the plane itself, was a motorcycle from a mediocre cyberpunk author's wet dream. Big wide wheels on the front and back, an enormous and dirty-looking engine beneath the seat. The Batwing dropped the Batpod onto the flat roof of the semi's trailer, and silently lifted off.
She saw him collect a spare utility belt from the seat of the Batpod, and quickly put it on the waist of his armor. He checked a black steel compartment hanging off the seat, and took something out. He scanned the area, saw her, and jumped off the semi and onto the roof of an old teal Geo Metro, trying to get to her.
Once he was on ground level on the other side of the street, he walked to her, and handed her what he was carrying.
It was a small bit of plastic with a little bit of metal webbing on the underside.
"Aww," Catwoman said, "but I didn't get you anything."
"It's an earpiece," Batman said. "Put it in."
Selina peeled off her cowl and goggles, and put the earpiece in her right ear.
"Batman online," he said. "Batman to all hands, report in."
A collection of voices sounded off in her ear.
"Penny One online."
"Nightwing online."
"Renard online."
Batman looked at her expectantly… and Selina rolled her eyes.
"Uh… Catwoman online, I guess."
There was a brief moment of silence that carried its surprise well enough over radio waves. It was not broken until the voice that she knew belonged to Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred said:
"My word!"
Nightwing actually sounded excited when he said "Hi, Selina! Wait… Oracle didn't chime in."
The guy who called himself Renard said "She'll be with you soon."
"Catwoman and I have transpo," Batman said. "We're en route to the location."
"I'm already there," Nightwing said. "I'll be waiting."
"Good," Batman said. "Hold tight. Batman out."
Batman started to walk back to the semi where the Batpod was located, when something occurred to Selina.
"Hey," she said.
Batman stopped and turned around.
Selina pointed to her ear. "You've dreamed of the day you'd give me one of these, haven't you? Actual, literal dreams."
"Stick to the sidewalks," Batman said. "We'll get there quicker."
As Batman and Catwoman traversed the empty sidewalks of the Gotham City mainland on their motorcycles to get to The Cauldron, The vivid images of what Batman saw on social media kept foxtrotting into and out of his brain.
He had a photographic memory.
They would be with him forever. Every drop of blood, every gleaming knife, every slack-jawed and dead face.
All wearing his symbol. All wearing the thing that, emblazoned on a cloud in the night sky, was supposed to tell them they were safe.
I have failed…
This was the one thought that was slowly dripping down the rest of his mind. Working itself into the dark corners and the forgotten crannies. He knew he had failed the city that was his home, the city that he loved, but as to what he was to do going forward? He didn't know.
But he felt he was on the cusp of knowing.
And he feared what that would tell him.
The Cauldron was an irredeemably crummy part of the mainland that was so foul that not even the beat cops ventured there. Less a center for criminal activity, The Cauldron was more a magnet for it. Completely disorganized, undeniably petty, intractably foul, The Cauldron was the flypaper upon which degenerates too violent and scatter-brained from mob work or henchman duties got stuck.
But help was coming. Wayne Enterprises lobbied the city for construction permits to erect low-cost housing in The Cauldron, in addition to setting up community centers in the area, so that the general, free-floating scumminess of the neighborhood might one day stabilize, and eventually recede.
Bruce Wayne himself was at the groundbreaking ceremony for the first building, and it was at that construction site that Hill, Talia, and Black Manta had apparently used as an entry for their underground lair. There was a walled-off tunnel near the site that…
...that led to an old network of tunnels from the turn of the twentieth century. Gotham's first stab at a subway line. That's where they were.
A bridge almost a quarter of a mile away from the site was one of the only stretches of street in Gotham City that wasn't clogged with abandoned cars. All that was there was Nightwing, leaning up against his Nightcycle.
Batman's Batpod and Catwoman's Ducati slowed to a stop on the sidewalk a few feet away from him. They both got off their bikes and walked to him.
"If we live through this," Nightwing said, "remind me to tell you about Tim Drake."
"Who's Tim Drake?" Batman asked.
"The kid who gave us this lead."
"A kid…? "
Catwoman walked up to Nightwing, cutting of the rest of the conversation the two men were having. "So you're the first Robin."
"Huh?" Nightwing asked.
"It's alright," Catwoman said. "Bruce told me."
"Who told you?"
"Br… Oh, yeah, I guess I know that, too."
Nightwing looked over Catwoman's shoulder to Batman. "Any other surprises you want to tell me about?"
Batman looked for something to say, before settling on plain, boring "No."
Nightwing looked back at Catwoman, and held out his hand. "Believe it or not, I've actually been waiting eleven years to introduce myself to you properly. I'm Dick."
"Well, you've been a pretty nice-Oh my God, that's embarrassing."
"I'd say it makes me a hit with the ladies, but…"
"Oh, I'm pretty sure there are six or seven other things about you that make you a hit with the ladies before being named 'Dick' would," she said as she shook his hand.
"What are we looking at?" Batman asked Nightwing.
Nightwing walked over to the side of the bridge and pointed to the site.
"About fifty henchmen, not counting the ones who must be inside the tunnels. A small fleet of helicopters, and a few crates of weapons. Have a plan?"
Batman stared at the site, and said "I'll tell you in a minute."
Catwoman looked back at Nightwing. "I'd ask if he's always this vague, but I've known him for over a decade and just found out his first name yesterday."
"The monster."
"The absolute cad."
As Catwoman and Nightwing talked to each other, the images of the dead of Gotham came back to him. Dozens of them. All dressed as Batman.
The people of Gotham visited death upon each other and dressed them in his garb after the fact to save themselves.
Batman walked to the edge of the bridge and put his hand on the rail.
The answer was coming to him.
No.
He knew the answer all along. But even the Batman feared it.
Barring a three year interval, Batman had been doing this for thirteen years, and… while it wasn't for nothing, he knew, knew in a certainty that was spreading from his heart outward, that he did it wrong.
Thirteen years of broken bones. Thirteen years of rended skin. Thirteen years of blood. Thirteen years of death. Thirteen years of horror. And he bore it all. He took the guilt upon himself, and let it bury him further and further, until something emerged that not even he would recognize as human.
But guilt was useless. Without the will to change, his guilt was just simple vanity, bringing himself to a place of prominence that he did not deserve. Without the will to change, his suffering was performative, playing to a paltry audience of one.
It crept upon him, ever so slowly, that the amount of pain he was in impressed no one. And his willingness to cling to it at all costs, shoving everyone out of his life to preserve it, his suffused into his every thought, his every action, until it touched the people who lived in the place he swore to defend.
He was the wrong messenger, sending the wrong message.
Looking out at the site where the henchmen of The Undying milled, his eyes lost focus as his thoughts consumed each other. They chomped and devoured, until only one remained, and that one thought dominated him. It reigned over him without a single shred of mercy.
Batman could not fight Hill, or Black Manta, or anyone until he finally and at long last gave voice to the one thing he feared was right about him. The one thing he was terrified of having to admit.
He had to come to grips with it.
He had say it.
And he had to say it now.
So as he looked over the bridge, as Nightwing and Catwoman joked with each other, Batman said it, only loud enough for the others to hear.
"I can't do this anymore."
Nightwing and Catwoman stopped talking.
Batman raised his hands and unlocked the plates of his cowl. Bruce Wayne took it off, and dropped it on the pavement.
"Bruce," Nightwing said, "if you're quitting again, so help me God…"
He turned to look at them with unfocused eyes. He could feel his hands shake, his pulse quicken, his mouth open.
"An eight-year-old boy shot me on a rooftop last night," Bruce said.
Nightwing squinted, and looked at Catwoman.
"That's who shot you?" Catwoman asked. "A little kid?"
"Diana was right," Bruce said. "A city… it reflects back on people like us. People who protect it."
Bruce rubbed his face. "When I was that kid's age, my parents were murdered by a mugger right in front of me. And last night… that kid's face was so familiar because it was mine. In his fear, in his anger, he got his parents' gun, and tried to kill me. And…"
He looked down. He took two of the kind of deep breaths that makes a person puff out their cheeks.
"And the people of Gotham City have been killing each other for the past few days. Dressing the corpses up in Batman costumes trying to fool The Undying into letting them go. And… I'm to blame for it."
"Bruce," Catwoman said, the concern in her eyes warring with utter incomprehension, "you seriously can't blame yourself for what complete strangers do when they're scared."
"I can," Bruce said. He looked at Nightwing. "Why do I do this? When you asked me years ago why I was still Batman when the man who murdered parents went to prison, what did I say?"
"You wanted to be The Symbol," Nightwing said. "You wanted to be the one they feared when they went to bed at night."
"Right," Bruce said. "And they do fear me. They fear me so much that they will murder each other to sell me out. And if that's what they've learned, then I've been doing this whole thing wrong. I can't just be The Symbol any longer. I have to be something more."
"Like what?" Nightwing asked.
Bruce looked at him with a fire he could feel in his eyes.
"The Example," he said. "The one they look to so they can see they can protect one another, and not just the one who leaps from the shadows and punishes the guilty."
He looked up, over them, at the enormous city that wrapped around them.
"Every night I go out there, I go out there with my rage. I go out there with my guilt. I go out there with my sadness, and… and the whole city's been paying for it ever since. My anger and despair are being rubbed in my face, and I've done nothing about it because I thought that's what I needed to do this. I pushed everyone I loved away because I thought being alone gave me an edge, and after I realized that was a lie, I did it because I thought they'd be better off without me. And that was fine, because I thought that if I was the only one getting hurt, then that was a small price to pay for what needed to be done. But look around you! I'm not the only one getting hurt now!"
He looked down at the pavement. He felt the steam leave him, until only the truth remained.
"There are… so many things wrong with me. More than I care to admit. And… And I know I can't fix them myself. For the sake of my home, for the sake of everyone I love, I have to change… And I need to start now."
Bruce slowly looked up at Nightwing. He looked nervous. This was so unlike Bruce, and Bruce knew that. He felt he need to step slowly toward Nightwing, so that he knew he wasn't going to freak out and try to hurt him.
"Dick," Bruce said. "I'm in a place right now where I'm questioning every little thing I've done, and I'm not liking the answers I see. All of it… Except you. You're exactly like me, but without all the problems, and I still don't know how you pulled that off. And I've tried-I've tried so hard to be the one you look to to try to be a good man, but I have to look to you now. Because I'm hanging by a string, here, and I am terrified."
Nightwing was visibly and audibly looking for something to say to that. Bruce tried not to think of a chicken with a sore throat trying to cluck, but now that was all he could think of.
"Uh, well, y'know, hey," Nightwing finally said. "I didn't get here on my own, and uh… I mean… as far as mentors go, I had a good one."
Bruce unblinkingly locked eyes with Nightwing.
"You're my son."
Nightwing stopped looking for something to say. All that was left was what Bruce could only call a kind of still shock.
"I don't believe in God," Bruce said, "but I'll have Him as a witness when I tell you I'll spend the rest of my life trying to deserve that."
Nightwing finally blinked.
And then…
...Bruce finally turned to Catwoman.
As he slowly walked toward her, she took off her cowl and goggles, placing them on the seat of her Ducati. She was the opposite of Nightwing. In fact, Selina Kyle's green eyes lit up in curiosity of what Bruce might say.
He stopped until he was mere inches from her.
"Selina…" he said.
After that, nothing. He looked into her eyes and just… kinda got lost.
Selina raised her fool-spotting eyebrow, and said:
"Well, go on Goddamm-"
He gripped her face in his hands, and pressed his lips to hers.
This was the opposite of what the movies told him. No score swelling. No fireworks popping off in the distance.
Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle were center stage when the world itself, finally and at long last gaining a sense of fairness, turned down the house lights and cut the volume to the speakers. A long calm. A great silence. All light in the gray sky faded. The population of Gotham City dropped from nine million to a mere two.
The only thing tethering Bruce to the here and now… was Nightwing trying to be quiet while talking into his ear piece.
"Alfred… Dude… Bruce is totally kissing Selina right now!"
Their lips finally parted. Thy still had their eyes closed as they rested their foreheads on each other, each slowly expelling their held breath into each others' mouths.
"I'm late," Bruce said, his eyes still closed. "I'm eleven years late, and I'm so sorry."
Selina worked her left arm around his waist. Her right hand worked its way into his thick black hair.
"Sailor," Selina said, "you got here just in time."
Her right hand tightly gripped Bruce's hair, and brought his head back down for more. She pressed herself so hard that their teeth clicked together. He was surprised when her tongue tentatively found it way into his mouth, but he did not, for one instant, open his eyes. He did not let go.
Bruce couldn't have expected Selina to be a Disney Princess about something he knew she'd been waiting eleven years for. Pushed to the end of all things, Selina Kyle was always going to be Selina Kyle.
It's one of the reasons he loved her, after all.
When the pocket eternity they both occupied finally expired, and they finally broke their second kiss, Selina pulled her head back, and let her breath out. She blinked a few times, under a condition remarkably similar to shock. Once that was over:
"Stubble and protein bar breath," she said. "Not a good look for anyone except you. Don't know why that is."
Bruce smiled.
And he only stopped smiling when he heard the whine of a jet engine off in the distance.
It was the Batwing.
And it was carrying something huge and black underneath it.
Nightwing, Bruce, and Selina stopped what they were doing and just stared at it.
"What the hell is that?" Nightwing asked.
Bruce only smiled.
Not the kind of smile he just had when Selina picked on him a second ago, no, this was an altogether different kind of smile. The kind of smile one has when the last piece of a plan has finally come into place, and one is certain that one's adversaries have something less than a prayer.
"That," Bruce said, "is my new Batmobile."
Within the Batmobile being held aloft by the Batwing, Batgirl felt as though she was about to puke.
The ratio of nervousness to the Batwing's jostling of the vehicle in which she was sitting was hard for her to parse.
Looking out of the large wrap-around screen that served as the Batmobile's windshield, she saw that the ground was getting closer a whole lot faster than she was comfortable with.
And the one thought she had in her head came out of her mouth as though it were a mantra or a prayer.
"Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit…"
The Batwing carrying the Batmobile was getting closer to the bridge. Batman and Catwoman had quickly put their cowls back on, and now they just helplessly stared at the plane bearing down on their position.
The plane actually buzzed their position, causing them all to duck before pulling up at the last second. With a loud THUNK! the Batwing deployed the new Batmobile, sending it plummeting to Earth, its trajectory making sure it landed right in the middle of the construction site.
Immediately before the Batmobile landed, the earpieces of Batman, Catwoman, and Nightwing bloomed with a loud, thrilled woman's voice screaming two words that hadn't been heard in Gotham City in years.
"BATGIRL ONLINE!"
And as the Batmobile finally made impact with the muddy center of the construction site, Nightwing put his finger to his earpiece.
"Wait, who online?"
WHUMP!
The Batmobile landed in the middle of the construction site, and Batgirl almost got whiplash from the impact.
The henchmen of The Undying paused for a second, all staring at the monstrous hunk of metal that just kicked up about a half a ton of mud when it fell from the sky.
Then the second passed, and they all unslung their AK-47s from their shoulders and started firing at the Batmobile.
Batgirl recoiled, for as evidently safe as the Batmobile was (the bullets each making a Ping! Sound as the bounced futilely off the Batmobile's plating), no one gets used to the site of someone firing automatic weapons at them.
She bore down on the PS4 controller's L2 trigger, and the Batmobile slowly crawled backwards out of the crater that its landfall had created.
"Renard," Batgirl said, "you said this thing has a Combat Mode?"
"R3," Lucius said in her ear.
Batgirl pressed down on the right thumbstick of the PS4 controller, and the four wheels of the Batmobile spread out, the car itself squatted lower to the ground, and two separate cannons sprang from opposite side of the Batmobile's roof.
Her own voice came from a speaker in between the two seats.
"Combat Mode engaged."
A small targeting reticle appeared in the center of the Batmobile's windshield.
"R2 fires rubber bullets," Lucius said, "and L2 fires the beanbag cannon. Go nuts."
There are times, when one is granted a certain amount of power, where a certain strain of people try to handle said power with dignity and grace.
Barbara Joan Gordon… did not belong to that strain of people.
Batgirl smiled an ugly smile, and successfully verbalized the emotion that she was feeling at the moment. And it sounded an awful lot like:
"Mwahahahahahahahahahaha!"
Chaos down in the tunnels.
The remnants of The Undying's forces scurried about the main terminal, collecting whatever weapons they could find from where they had been stashed.
Hamilton Hill, still in his gray suit, and David Hyde in his wetsuit stood in their midst.
"What the hell is going on?" Hill asked.
"Up on the site," Hyde said. "The Batmobile's tearing through everyone on the surface."
"He's here?"
Hyde nodded.
Hill scanned the terminal. "How many do we have left down here?"
"Thirty-five tops."
Hill smiled.
"No more resources go up top. Get them all on the train. If Batman's here, he's not alone. I take off as soon as he arrives, and we divide and conquer."
He stepped to Hyde.
"You stay here and guard the witch. Nothing gets past you."
Hyde leered. "Nothing ever does."
As the Batmobile tore around the construction site, the THOOM! of its cannon and the DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH! of its gun knocking The Undying's henchmen all about, Nightwing stood on the bridge, arms folded, frown firmly in place.
"She's driving the Batmobile… I never got to drive the Batmobile… Bruce, if we don't all die, can I drive the Batmobile?"
Batman, who had gone to get something out of the Batpod, had come back.
"Here," he said, and held out his hands.
He was holding what appeared to be four sets of brass knuckles. Except they appeared to be silver instead of brass, and the glowing blue lights, or… whatever the hell they were in the actual knuckles themselves. He handed two a piece to Catwoman and Nightwing.
"What are they?" Catwoman asked.
"They're concussive knuckles," Batman said. "If we have to face Black Manta, you'll need an edge."
"He shouldn't be too hard," she said. "Didn't you beat that guy at a hotel a few days ago?"
"In a fight he threw," Batman said. "Do not, under any circumstances, underestimate him. We're going down now. Stay on the edges of the site, and wait for Batgirl to blow the door to the tunnels. Stay out of the lines of fire. Good luck."
Batman turned to walk to the Batpod. Catwoman walked after him.
"Hey," she said. He turned around.
"I'm only ever gonna follow your orders if you follow mine."
She grabbed him by the neck of his cowl, brought his head down a little bit, and gave him a quick kiss on the lips.
"Come back to me, alright?"
And immediately, Catwoman felt like the girl in every old movie wishing her soldier boyfriend goodbye before they inevitably got maimed on D-Day. All sappy and trite.
"Because," Catwoman added, "you are way too good a kisser for someone who hasn't been laid in eight years."
There. All better.
Stiffly smiling, Batman said "We're going to get through this. When the sun finally shines on this place again, we'll be alive to see it."
"Is that hope coming from you?"
"In Catwoman and Nightwing?" Batman asked. "No. Not hope. Certainty."
"You do have this annoying habit of being right about a lot of stuff," Catwoman said.
"I picked you , didn't I?"
And Catwoman genuinely didn't know what to say to that.
As Batman turned around, she called out again.
"Just what do you see in me, anyway?"
He turned back to her, and she saw a warmth that she was not used to seeing in the blue eyes behind the cowl.
"You make me laugh," he said.
THOOM!
The beanbag cannon knocked a female henchman ass-backwards into the side of a forklift.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH!
The rubber bullets dropped one of the guys to his stomach, his AK-47 flying from his hand.
Batgirl saw a few henchmen run toward a helicopter at the west edge of the site.
"Does this thing have EMP capability?"
"That would be the triangle button," Lucius said in her ear.
Batgirl wheeled the Batmobile around, focusing the targeting reticle on the chopper as its propellers started spinning.
She hit the triangle button.
A fat gob of blue light fired from the grille of the Batmobile, and toward the helicopter. Once it made contact, she could see the lights inside the chopper immediately switch off, and the propeller blades slow back down to a halt.
The two henchmen inside quickly escaped the helicopter and made a break for it off to the side of the site.
Batgirl's eyes widened.
"And where do you think you're going?"
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH!
She laughed as she saw them drop to the dirt, writhing in pain.
A female voice said something through her earpiece. "Uhhh… Batgirl?"
Batgirl blinked. "Selina?"
"Yeah."
"Wow," Batgirl said. "I thought you were unaffiliated."
"And I thought you were reti-SHIT!"
BOOOOM!
The entire Batmobile rocked around her. Catwoman's deeply impressed voice filled her ear.
"That thing can tank a rocket launcher?"
"Who's got the rocket launcher?"
"Your six," Nightwing said in her ear.
Batgirl swiveled the Batmobile a hundred and eighty degrees to see one of the male henchmen, standing behind a bulldozer for cover, reloading a rocket launcher.
THOOM!
The beanbag cannon was powerful enough to knock the blade of the bulldozer back about six inches. Enough to collide with the henchman, knocking him into the mud, and sending the rocket launcher from his hands.
Batgirl cackled.
"Hate to rain on your parade," Catwoman said, "but could you open the Goddamn door, please?"
"Oh," Batgirl said. "Right."
She swiveled the Batmobile. She lined up the targeting reticle with the massive, circular wooden door that capped off a sewer tunnel built into the side of a retaining wall beneath street level.
Three quick blasts from the beanbag cannon, and the wooden door was demolished.
"You're all clear kid!" Batgirl said, "now let's blow this thing and go home!"
And the last thing she heard from the three superheroes on their motorcycles before they disappeared past the blasted wooden door and into the sewers was Nightwing screaming:
"NERRRRRRRRRRRRD!
The sewers reeked.
Catwoman was on her Ducati, next to Nightwing on his Nightcycle, with Batman on the Batpod taking the lead.
They traveled for three stinky, stinky minutes, until she saw Batman slow, and gently creep the Batpod through a hole in the left wall of the sewer. Catwoman and Nightwing followed suit.
Through that hole in the wall was a set of antique tracks in an ancient tunnel that had no interior light. All three switched on the headlights for the bikes.
They went down…
...down…
...down deeper into the tunnel, the dirt on the walls eventually giving way to white tiles that had been so starved for light that they hadn't even yellowed in the hundred twenty years since they'd been installed.
They passed under a sign in the dark, ornate and old, done in the art nouveau style that was vogue at the turn of the twentieth century.
GOTHAM CITY F LINE.
"There's a light down there," Batman said, his voice coming into her earpiece.
Catwoman squinted, and she began to see it as well.
All three sped up.
Catwoman pressed the side of her goggles for the magnification function. Her vision zoomed down toward the light.
In the light of the F Line main terminal, she saw the rear car of a small, compact train.
Hamilton Hill was standing the window. Almost like he saw them coming.
He waved.
"The Undying is taking off in the train," Batman said. "You two stop at the terminal. Find Zatanna, and wait for instructions from Batgirl on how to power down what she's hooked up to."
"We're on it," Catwoman said.
Nightwing chimed in next. "Good luck!"
As the Batpod sped up (Catwoman had to wonder how fast that thing could go at top speed), the Ducati and the Nightcycle slowed down, until they were finally at the main terminal where the train had been.
It was abandoned. There wasn't even any dust on the floors for how old it was. No clutter at all, save for a couple of trash cans filled with fast food wrappers and the odd beer bottle. The floors were white marble with veins of black running throughout, and every few feet there were pillars plated in white tile, leading up to the vaulted ceilings above them.
From beyond the terminal, footsteps echoed.
They were deep, methodical, and heavy, so heavy that Catwoman could almost feel their impact tremors in her teeth.
From beyond a pillar at at edge of the terminal, Black Manta entered.
Catwoman had never seen him before, and she was momentarily shocked by how… big he was. His black armor glinted from the generator-powered lights above them. His helmet shone silver, and the lights in that helmet, the two red ones that acted as eyes and weapons, were dark as headlights that weren't switched on.
"Well," Black Manta said, his voice coming from his helmet in a deep, electronic rumble. "I've been sent the pretty ones."
He pressed a button on his suit, and the low drone of something powering down came from his armor.
"I'll go half on this one," Black Manta said. "Killing the two of you is going to be fun. I'm gonna make it last a while."
Catwoman looked at Nightwing as she lowered her goggles. The look of steely determination on his face matched her own. She looked back at Black Manta, and clenched her fists around the concussion knuckles that Batman had given her.
"No jokes?" Black Manta asked. He looked at Nightwing. "You're learning."
Nightwing and Catwoman charged him.