Chapter 27: The Fantabulous Emancipation of One Selina Kyle
The Batpod trailed behind Hill's train, accelerating fast. The lights of the F Line terminal faded out as he passed, and he was plunged into darkness again, the interior lights of the train and the headlights of his vehicle providing the only illumination.
Batman took a hand off the bike's handlebar, and reached for his utility belt. He brought out his grapnel hook and tried to steady his aim.
He readied his legs.
Satisfied there would be no curves to the tunnel, in one swift motion, he jumped so that his feet were on the seat of the Batpod, and fired the grapnel gun.
The hook sailed through the air and shattered the glass at the back of the fifth train car, and it embedded in the car's floor.
Batman's cape spread out behind him, and he glided in the air behind the train as the Batpod, now driverless, flipped and crashed on the tracks.
He figured there wouldn't be damage to the Batpod after a crash like that. And if things went well, he'd be in great need of it.
Batman slammed down on the grapnel gun button that reeled him in. He brought his head down and straightened his body out, so the cape narrowed, and he sailed through the air at a blistering speed.
He crashed through the window of the fifth car, rolled into the impact, and quickly got to his feet.
Ten very impressed henchmen with either swords or pistols were waiting for him.
Batman got a smoke pellet out of the quick-release dispenser on his utility belt, and threw it to the floor. The car immediately filled with smoke. One of the henchmen fired their pistol into the roof in a panic.
He moved among the henchmen, and dispatched them quickly, handing out elbows to the temple or knees to the bridge of the nose like an earnest college kid hands out climate change pamphlets.
Ten goons.
Twelve seconds to disarm them all.
He'd have to go easy on the smoke pellets. Batman only had two left.
He opened the door that led to the fourth car, and took the small step over the little hitch that connected it to the fifth. Once he was across, he immediately knelt down next to the windowless door on that end of the fourth car. He procured a small tube of explosive gel from the back of his utility belt, and smeared a small dollop of the beige gel onto the hitch.
He brought up his cape to protect his face, and pressed the button on the dispenser.
With a muffled Boom, the explosive gel destroyed the hitch, and the fifth car started falling behind as it lost speed with nothing pulling it along.
Even if the unconscious thugs in the car came to, they'd have no choice but to walk back the way they came, having to go through Batgirl, Catwoman, and Nightwing.
He didn't like their odds.
Batgirl fired another EMP burst into the fifth helicopter on the site.
That was the last one.
The remaining henchmen, she had to guess about fifteen, were starting to scatter, heading off the site and into the rest of Gotham City.
And the quicker they did so, the quicker Batgirl herself could get down into the tunnels.
As she swivelled the Batmobile around, she heard something-some one -scrabble across the roof.
And what kind of host would I be if I didn't open up?
"How do I retract the roof?"
"The third red button on the dashboard," Lucius said in her ear. "Why?"
"I'm expecting company."
She hit the third red button on the dashboard, and the roof of the Batmobile slid back like a guillotine in reverse.
One of The Undying's henchwomen, a blocky one with short blonde hair and blue eyes, brought half her torso down through the roof, stabbing blindly with a Yemeni janbiya dagger.
Batgirl caught her by the wrist with her right hand. The two locked eyes.
"You have three seconds to drop that dagger and get off Batman's car," Batgirl said.
One…
The henchwoman was well-trained, broad, muscular. She strained against Batgirl's wrist, trying to bring the dagger down. Sweat was forming on her brow. But Batgirl was showing very little strain at all. In fact, she was openly smiling.
Two…
Ever since The Joker took her legs from her, Barbara Gordon had gladly, almost obsessively, been working out and developing her upper body, in particular her arms. And now, after four years of hoping, she was finally… finally… in the arm wrestling match she'd been waiting for.
Three.
"Suit yourself," Batgirl said.
She wrenched her hand to the right, and the henchwoman screamed and dropped the janbiya as Batgirl shattered her wrist with a low, muffled snap.
Batgirl yanked the rest of the henchwoman inside the Batmobile, which allowed her to savagely bring her cowl up under the henchwoman's chin as she fell.
Annnnnnd she's out.
It took a little bit of maneuvering (an a lot less strain than she imagined), but she finally got the unconscious henchwoman into a sitting position in the passenger's seat.
Batgirl strapped her in.
"Now," she said as she examined the underside of the passenger's seat, "where is… here we go."
She found a red button on the underside of the passenger's seat, and she pressed it.
Barbara Gordon remembered the long sessions in an impromptu sound booth that Batman had constructed in the Batcave, reading every last word in Webster's Dictionary so that all of the Bat-doohickies that needed a voice had one.
So it came as no surprise when her own voice came back to her through the speaker in between the seats, and said:
"Passenger ejection in five seconds. Press the button again to override."
Batgirl most decidedly did not press the button again to override.
Five seconds silently passed. Then a loud hiss came from under the passenger's seat, and the seat itself launched out of the Batmobile.
Batgirl knew that a chute would deploy once the ejected seat reached the apex of its journey to wherever it was going. She smiled.
"When she wakes up, she's gonna be so confused."
"Company left already?" Lucius asked.
"Yeah," Batgirl said, looking down on the passenger's side floorboard at the janbiya the henchwoman had dropped. "She was rude, but she gave me a present."
Batgirl hit the third red button on the dashboard to close the roof, and then pressed the right thumbstick on the PS4 controller again to bring the Batmobile back into traversal mode.
She kicked up globs of mud in the Batmobile's wake as she headed toward the tunnels.
BWOMMMM-M-M-M-M-M-M!
Catwoman's left fist and Nightwing's right (each bearing the concussion knuckles) made contact at the same time with Black Manta's helmet.
He skidded back about six feet, only stopping when the jetpack on the back of his armor collided with one of the terminal's pillars, sending up chunks of tile and chalky white dust.
"You brought some toys," Black Manta said as he righted himself. "I brought some too."
His back erupted in a cloud of steam, and Black Manta leapt forward powered by his jetpack, and came down between them, his feet leaving cracks in the marble.
As Catwoman leapt away, she tried to assess the advantages she and Nightwing had over Black Manta.
Speed was the big one. No matter his other attributes, Black Manta was just a guy in a big suit of armor, and that put him on the slow side.
His helmet could be a liability as well. It was big enough and unwieldy enough that he couldn't go for kicks, lest he tumble over. No matter how good a fighter he was, physics was a bitch.
But more than his armor or whatever powers that armor provided, the biggest advantage Black Manta had over the two of them at the moment was range.
Because as soon as he saw Nightwing bring out his escrima sticks, Black Manta's retractable blades emerged from the wrists of his armor. Nightwing went for a swipe, and Black Manta slashed with his right arm, sending the electrified top of the escrima stick flying, and rendering it useless.
In the battle of Atlantean steel against an unbreakable polymer, Atlantean steel apparently won.
Before Nightwing could even counter with the other stick, Black Manta brought his left blade around, and over the top of Nightwing's left thigh.
Catwoman was shocked to see that Black Manta's blade could slice through kevlar, as that's exactly what it did, sending a small gout of blood into the air around Nightwing's left leg. Nightwing's yelp of pain was cut short as Black Manta sent a shoulder into his chest, knocking him into one of the pillars. His back made a nasty sound upon impact, and the back of his head thudded off the tile.
Without thinking, Catwoman reached into the pack on her left shoulder, and came out with a glass vial of Poison Ivy's nasty corrosive goop, of the same kind she used to get into the book depository days earlier.
The wind-up…
The pitch…
The vial shattered on impact with Black Manta's jet pack. The gray gunk started smoking immediately, and sparks from the jet pack's circuitry started flying.
She smiled.
This was not a wise decision.
Black Manta, quicker than she could have anticipated, retracted his blades back into his armor, and whirled around to give her a right cross to the face.
Her mind howled in pain as she felt her left cheekbone splinter. Her vision blurred and went gray.
Oh God, please don't black out.
Reversing course, he sent his left fist hard into her stomach, which knocked her off of her feet and onto her back.
She struggled to get her breath back. She hadn't made a list of the times she'd been punched hardest, but she reckoned that this one had to be up there. He hit her so hard, she could have sworn his fist bounced off her spine from the front.
From her position, she could see Nightwing run up behind him and drive his fist into Black Manta's back, the sound of the concussive knuckles deafening as he skidded helmet-first into the wall.
Catwoman tried to get up, but she stopped.
She could feel her hands shaking, and she felt the blood drain out of her face. And her stomach felt like it housed angry hornets.
Something's not right here…
Car four…
Batman had already dispatched four of The Undying's goons into the realm of unconsciousness when the fifth one decided to pull a gun.
Those aren't effective in such tight quarters when you're surrounded by your own guys, Batman thought. You'd think they'd have learned that by now.
Batman swatted the hand holding the gun to the left just in time for the Glock to put a hole in the side of the car. He brought up his right foot and brought it down on the hapless henchman's kneecap, and Batman could hear the guy's screams intermingling with the sickening crunch of pulverised cartilage.
He brought his hand up, took a handful of the henchman's hair, and rammed his head into the side of the car with a loud DWOMMMMM!
Batman dropped the unconscious henchman, and turned his attention to another henchman with red hair, reaching into the pocket of his jean jacket.
He reached for his utility belt.
It was a quick-draw contest.
Batman won.
He had the grapnel gun aimed and raised before the redheaded henchman had gotten his pistol put. Batman fired, and the hook from the grapnel gun lodged the the henchman's right shoulder.
The redheaded henchman bleated in pain as the line to the grapnel gun reeled him toward Batman at breakneck speed, sending him on a collision course with the forehead of Batman's cowl.
It was like colliding with the Rock of Gibraltar, and just as likely to put a person in the hospital.
The redheaded henchman dropped, and as Batman put his grapnel gun back on his utility belt, he saw two more goons advancing: another man with a gun, and one of Talia's leather-clad honor guard brandishing a sword.
Batman took one step forward, grabbed a handful of the side of his cape, and swung hard.
The tips of the serrations at the bottom of his cape were both sharp and weighted with ball bearings. The lash across the faces of the two goons left them with slashed faces and one broken nose.
The two dropped their weapons and clutched their faces, blood seeping through their fingers. There weren't unconscious, but they wouldn't be up to fighting for a while.
Which just left the two honor guard at the rear of the car, swords out and charging.
Batman raised both of his gauntlets and pulled back his wrists.
Two taser darts fired from the wrists of his gauntlets at hit the two sword-wielding henchwomen at center mass. They dropped their swords as thirty-thousand volts of electricity rooted them to the spot. After the two second charge of the taser darts expired, they both collapsed.
Batman stepped over them, and opened the door to get to car three.
And as he applied the explosive gel to the hitch connecting the two cars, Batman considered that the point of this gauntlet may have been to make him tired and force him to run out of gadgets.
If so… It was working.
Black Manta struck Nightwing in the chest with the nearest object he could find.
That object just so happened to be Catwoman's entire body.
Holding her by the ankles of her boots and swinging her like a cudgel, Black Manta swung her back into Nightwing's torso, and let go, sending them both flying after the impact. They rolled to a stop on the marble floor next to one of the terminal's pillars.
Nightwing looked over to Catwoman as he got up. Her face was white with dust from displaced tile and chipped marble, but… that wasn't it.
Despite all that, the only color on her face was the swelling from Manta's first punch to the head, and some blood coming from a split lip. She was getting paler and paler, which was the opposite of how one's face was supposed to look during a fight.
He saw Catwoman's brow lower, her teeth bare, and she came to her feet with a roar.
She charged Black Manta and savagely swung at him with her concussive knuckles…
...and missed.
He brought his right, armor-clad fist into Catwoman's mouth so hard that Nightwing winced when he saw it. A heavy arc of blood flew from her mouth as he grabbed a handful of her Catsuit and flung her into the nearest wall. She dropped in a heap.
Then he advanced on Nightwing, his heavy steps kicking up dust. Nightwing got to his feet, judged his distance, and swung his fist.
Black Manta caught him by the wrist with one hand, and used the other one to grab the top of his head.
Despite his struggles, Black Manta marched Nightwing to the pillar behind him. He brought Nightwing in close, then brutally slammed the back of his head into the pillar.
Nightwing's vision went white, and the blunt force of the pain caused him to groan. He feebly grasped at Black Manta's wrist.
WHAM! A second time, and Nightwing went limp, the entire weight of his body suspended above the floor by the vice-like grip Black Manta held on his head.
Black Manta pulled back a third time… and then dropped Nightwing.
He looked up to see that Catwoman had jumped on Black Manta's back, and was running her claws down the wires that Poison Ivy's corrosive gunk had exposed. She was screaming, and in her bloody maw, Nightwing could see that, between the top and bottom rows, Catwoman was missing at least four of her front teeth.
Black Manta reached behind him, grabbed Catwoman by the neck, and flung her over his helmet, throwing her to the marble floor so hard that she bounced when her back made landfall. Nightwing could hear her screech as she tried to bring air back into her lungs.
As Catwoman rolled out of the way, Black Manta bent over to further manhandle Nightwing.
But he stopped.
At first, Nightwing wondered why, but then… then he heard it.
A rumbling that had come into earshot.
Both Nightwing and Black Manta looked toward the F Line tracks.
There, on the ancient tracks, was the Batmobile that Batgirl was driving.
"Wanna see something funny?" Black Manta asked.
Black Manta readied himself as he turned his helmet toward the Batmobile, and Nightwing saw the giant eyes in that ovular helm glow a bright red.
Nightwing tried to scrabble up. "NO!"
But the lights of Black Manta's helmet dimmed again, as sparks erupted from what remained of his jetpack.
Whatever Catwoman did back there, Nightwing had to assume it worked.
"Hey Renard," Batgirl said as she clicked the right thumbstick of the PS4 controller, bringing the Batmobile into Combat Mode. "What do we have in the way of ordinance?"
"If you press the square button," Lucius said in her ear, "the beanbag cannon fires fifty millimeter rounds. Why?"
Batgirl pressed the square button on the controller, and she could hear a loud clunking noise to the left above her. The sound of one type of ammo being switched out for another.
"Oh… No reason."
"Aw, shit," Black Manta said.
THOOM!
A fifty millimeter shell erupted from one of the cannons on the Batmobile's roof, and hit Black Manta's armor right in the chest, knocking him into the rear wall of the terminal…
...and through it.
The wall collapsed as Black Manta flew into the darkness beyond, sending up a cloud of white dust, and sending down a cascade of shattered tile and plaster.
Nightwing looked toward the Batmobile. He waved it further down the tracks, and managed to collect enough of his faculties and his breath to yell "Thanks, honey!"
As the Batmobile shifted back into traversal mode and started driving further down, Batgirl honked the horn.
Nightwing struggled to his feet. As he finally stood, he heard footsteps behind him.
Black Manta stood in the newly created hole in the wall. His armor was smeared white with dust, and the center of the chest piece was dented inward.
And so it was Nightwing's turn to say "Aw, shit…"
"I'm not gonna lie," Black Manta said, looking down at the dent in his armor. "I'm a little upset right now."
Car three…
Batman had deployed the second of his smoke bombs for the seven henchmen in this third car.
Seven goons.
Twelve seconds to disarm them all.
But he'd poured his energy into fighting twenty people already, and this combined with the fact that he was still low on blood from getting shot the night before slowed him down some.
He had only dispatched five by the time the thirteenth second rolled around.
On the thirteenth second, one of Talia's female guard emerged from the waning fog, sword in hand, and struck.
The blade scratched on the side of his cowl, but manage to leave a gash on his cheek about and inch and a half long.
Blood pouring down his face, Batman took the woman's measure, and squared up.
The henchwoman rained precise slashes and thrusts on Batman, and Batman dodged them all deftly.
She came in with a broad slash at shoulder height, and Batman raised left gauntlet to block it. The clang of the sword against the armor cause the sword to bounce, and the henchwoman used the momentum to switch sword hands and come around with a spinning backslash with her right hand.
This maneuver would have removed the head of any other opponent.
So it was her most unfortunate luck that, at the present moment, she was facing Batman.
In the middle of the maneuver (which he had scouted), Batman kicked the back of her left leg, dropping her to her knees.
Once she was down, his right hand gripped her sword hand, his left hand gripped her left shoulder, and he drove his knee hard into the back of her head.
The henchwoman ragdolled and flopped to the floor, down for the count.
The final remaining henchwoman, sword unsheathed, rushed Batman, and stopped.
Batman was holding the other woman's sword, pointing it at her.
The henchwoman stared at him for a moment. Batman knew what she was thinking.
Batman fights with a sword?
Yes, Batman does indeed fight with a sword.
After the shock wore off, the final henchwoman charged. Eveyr thrust was dodged, and every slash was blocked.
The henchwoman raised he sword for a mighty blow, and that was when Batman thrust his sword at her body.
But he wasn't aiming for her body.
No, he was aiming for the scabbard hanging from the waist of her leather pants.
His sword firmly placed inside the henchwoman's scabbard, he took one hand off of the sword and sent it to his utility belt, while the other savagely whirled her around, so her back was facing him.
He produced a small syringe, about the size of the final joint on a toddler's pinky, and jammed it into her neck, before shoving her away.
The henchwoman turned around, looked down and noticed that Batman's sword was in her scabbard. She looked at Batman, smiled a sinister smile, and charged him.
She got about two feet before she froze in place.
Batman had injected her with a paralytic, and she would stay that way, teeth bared, sword above her head, and eyes widened in unblinking fury… for another two hours.
He walked past her, and put his hand on the door that led to car two.
And the Dark Knight, the World's Greatest Detective, the creature that struck fear into the hearts of the criminals of Gotham after the sun went down… just couldn't help himself.
Before he made his exit, Batman turned and looked at the petrified henchwoman.
"Hey, don't go anywhere."
Dirt and pebbles ground under the treads of the Batmobile's tires, as Batgirl kept pressing the circle button on the PS4 controller as she drove, utilizing the vehicle's sonar capabilities to look for lifesigns.
And she got seven hundred feet away from the site of the rumble Nightwing and Catwoman had had with Black Manta when she finally found one.
She stopped the Batmobile beneath the small bridge above the tracks, boxed in by windows. The sonar's display (which was of the holographic variety, projected onto the windshield) spotted a singular lifesign about a hundred feet beyond the bridge, upstairs.
Batgirl put a finger to the ear of her cowl.
"Nightwing, come in."
Nothing.
"Nightwing, do you read?"
Still nothing.
Don't tell me a fifty millimeter bullet from ten feet away couldn't incapacitate Black Manta. I didn't try to kill him, I just wanted to wreck his armor, but if he's still up and fighting, then…
She had told Nightwing herself a few nights ago.
"He can take hits off of Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Superman and still get back up and fight."
Eidetic memory was a bastard sometimes. She still remembered the panic she felt when he told her Black Manta was in Gotham. And it was only compounding the panic she was feeling now.
If Black Manta was still up and fighting, then… then…
No.
You don't get to think about that now.
Batgirl closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
The fact was that in order to save Gotham City, Zatanna had to be disconnected from the targeting system that kept track of everyone's heartbeat.
And between Batman having gone off to apprehend Hill, and Nightwing and Catwoman potentially…
No.
...then Batgirl, and Batgirl alone was the only one who could set all of this right.
She opened her eyes, looked out the windshield, and up at the top of the tunnel.
I am about to do something incredibly stupid.
Batgirl unzipped her leather jacket. The three different Batarangs were in her right interior pocket… and the grapnel gun was on the left.
She took out the grapnel gun, rezipped her jacket, and undid the safety harness that was holding her to the driver's seat.
Incredibly… Incrediblystupid.
She hit the third red button on the dash that retracted the Batmobile's roof. She looked at the ceiling of the tunnel, looked at the boxed in bridge above the track, and tried to do the math in her head.
She readied the grapnel gun in her right hand, and with her left, she fumbled under the seat for a button.
She pressed it, and heard her own voice come out of the Batmobile's speakers.
"Driver ejection in five seconds. Press the button again to override."
The next five seconds passed by at a glacial pace while Batgirl's heart did its damnedest to beat its way out of her chest.
Then a hissing started to sound beneath her. Her seat started to shake slightly.
And then she was launched into the air.
The driver's seat rose quickly, too quickly. She found herself having to fire her grapnel through the window and into the floor of the bridge instead of the ceiling.
The hook reeled in, taking her out of her collision course with the ceiling of the tunnel, and taking her right shoulder out of its socket.
Batgirl screamed in pain as she crashed through the windows boxing in the bridge. She had brought up her left arm to her face to protect herself from the broken glass, and she landed on the floor of the bridge in a heap, bad shoulder first.
She groaned, and heard a FWUMP! coming from the track below. The driver's seat that had ejected her had smashed into the ceiling, and then crashed to the floor, and it had only just now deployed its chute.
Distracting herself from the agony in her shoulder, Batgirl decided to fixate on the fact that hey, at least the parachutes work.
Batgirl looked down the bridge and noticed that it led to a hall of rooms with no doors, lit from above by plain white Christmas lights.
The bad news here was that she hadn't just taken out the window she crashed through, but every window on this side of the bridge.
Zatanna was a hundred feet past this bridge, in the hallway beyond.
And Batgirl was going to have to crawl through broken glass on only one functioning limb to get to her.
This was no longer a fight. Nightwing didn't even know if it ever had been.
This was a torture session.
On the floor, his vision blurred. He was fighting off nausea.
Concussion.
He raised a hand to his head, and even the briefest contact made him want to scream in pain.
And a skull fracture.
Nightwing's vision cleared enough to see Black Manta fling Catwoman into one of the pillars. Her back wrapped around it, before she fell to the floor, knocking one of the wastebaskets over.
A single beer bottle rolled a few feet away.
Nightwing could see Catwoman get on all fours, and try to crawl away. She was slow, and he noticed, even from this far away, that her face had somehow gotten even paler.
And Black Manta slowly walked up behind her as she tried to retreat and regroup.
Nightwing tried to get up to help her, but his legs were not cooperating with his will.
Black Manta lightly stepped on the back of Catwoman's knee, and she couldn't advance any further. She tugged slowly, soundlessly, pathetically, trying to get away.
Nightwing noticed that Catwoman's head was directly above the stray beer bottle.
"You know," Black Manta said. "You messed up the face of a woman I'm quite fond of… So now, then."
With lightning speed, Black Manta removed his foot from the back of Catwoman's knee and brought it down hard on the back of her head. Her face collided with the beer bottle on the floor, shattering it.
Catwoman shrieked in pain, and Nightwing, even in his own precarious situation, had to cringe. She curled up into a fetal position, and he could see way too much blood pooling around her head.
Then Black Manta set his sights on him. And Nightwing at least felt shame that that was what got him on his feet, and not the horrific plight of Selina Kyle.
He stumbled toward Black Manta, raised his fist to swing his concussion knuckles, and let loose with all the speed he could muster.
It was not enough.
Black Manta caught him by the wrist with his right hand. With his left, he punched Nightwing in the side.
WHAM!
The rib that had been cracked in his first encounter with Black Manta a few nights ago was now completely broken off from the rest of his ribcage, and floating around above his organs.
WHAM!
So was the one underneath it.
WHAM!
Nightwing couldn't breathe.
He knew exactly what had just happened.
Black Manta had driven one of those floating ribs into Nightwing's right lung, which was now in the process of collapsing.
Nightwing's mouth opened and closed, nothing coming in or going out, as Black Manta examined him.
"Got something in your throat?" he asked.
Black Manta slapped Nightwing's chest three times in rapid succession.
The blood that had been filling Nightwing's lung now emerged in a thick stream out of his mouth, spattering onto the marble floor.
Nightwing hunched over, coughing, letting it all out.
And Black Manta laughed.
"Man," he said. "Sucks when it goes down the wrong pipe, huh?"
Black Manta let go of Nightwing's wrist and unleashed a right hook that broke his jaw.
Car two…
Only five goons left.
Three women and two men.
And Batman needed to conserve his strength however he could, but he didn't see any other way past this besides savagery.
He brought up his gauntlets and slammed the knuckles of each hand together.
The six serrations on his gauntlet, three on the left and three on the right, ejected. They flew in an arc in front of him, and embedded themselves in the three women who were charging him. They stopped and screamed.
Batman needed to act fast.
He took the one on the right first. He unloaded a right cross into her chin, which spun her around. From there, he took her head in both hands. Batman drove a knee into her back to unbalance her, and then spiked her head onto the floor of the subway car.
From there, Batman kicked out with his right foot, throwing the one in the middle off balance, making her fall forward into the elbow he was bringing up. It caught her in the temple and shut her down.
Then he whirled, bringing his left foot up into the final henchwoman's face, hitting the sweet spot right there on the tip of the chin. Her head slammed into the window of the car, and she slid down as though she were Wile E. Coyote after he had flung himself into the side of a rock face trying to catch the Road Runner.
He turned his attention to the final two henchmen. They both had their guns drawn… but neither fired.
They were terrified.
Batman decided to use this to his advantage.
"You know I'll win," he said. "I made it through everyone else, and I'll make it through you. Give me your guns, and step to the other side of the car."
The two henchmen stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment, before the one on the left turned to the one on the right.
"That… That sounds good to me."
The one on the right nodded, and held his gun out to Batman. The one on the left did the same.
They walked past him, as Batman opened the door to the last car, and walked through.
He chucked the guns onto the tracks before he destroyed the hitch connecting the two cars.
Batgirl thanked God she was wearing leather gloves.
She thanked God her leather jacket was zipped all the way up.
And she thanked God, even if it was just in this one particular instance, that she couldn't feel anything from the waist down, because the only thing protecting her from where jer hacket ended to where her knee-high boots began, was the thin denim layer provided by her skinny jeans. She knew-she just knew -that crawling through all that broken glass had left a trail of rusty blood on the carpet behind her.
She found Zatanna in the third room down, and even with the pain in her shoulder, even haunted by the specter of the blood she had to have been losing, even terrified by the fact that Black Manta might be slaughtering the man she loved at that very moment, Batgirl still found it within her to gasp at what she saw.
Zatanna was skeletal. There was no other word for it. Her teeth extended from an open, drooling mouth. The collar of the loose Blackwell Academy t-shirt she was wearing had drooped down past her protruding collarbone to the second rib of her chest. Her cheeks were deflated. Her blue eyes were sunken deep into her skull.
Batgirl crawled toward the wheelchair in which Zatanna sat as fast as she could, letting out low, pained moans as she dragged her bad shoulder on the ground.
She made her way around to the back of the wheelchair, and Batgirl saw that she had, indeed, left a streak of grimy blood behind her.
I'll think about that later.
Batgirl reached up for the targeting system in the pouch at the rear of the wheelchair, and removed it, bringing it down to the floor on her eye level.
She examined the surface of the touchscreen, looking for some point of ingress where she could use her skills, when she glanced at the corner of the device, and was dumbfounded by what she saw.
Batgirl was under the impression that this targeting system was a LexCorp prototype, and prototypes, by and large, were not engineered or coded for ease of use. They were, after all, supposed to be handled by professionals, and idiot-proofing came later in the Research and Development process.
Nevertheless, there was a small circular icon in the lower left-hand corner of the touchscreen, right next to the map of Gotham City that tracked everyone's pulse that simply said:
"Off."
Batgirl stared at it a little bit more, and her thought was so loud that she didn't even hear it come out of her mouth.
"I crawled… through broken glass… to press a Goddamn off switch?"
She shook her head, and pressed the icon.
Though the lives of the people in these subway tunnels were very much in the gravest of doubt, with the press of a button, Batgirl had just saved the lives of all nine-point-two million people on the surface of Gotham City.
Batgirl threw the targeting system off to the side.
This still left the problem of Zatanna. She was still hooked to the Mad Hatter's porkpie hat that was controlling her mind. With no one giving her orders at the moment, Zatanna was just sitting there.
Batgirl reached up, actually having to put her weight on her bad shoulder to do so. Her fingers found their way around one of the handles of the wheelchair, and with the considerable might of her one good arm, she yanked down.
Zatanna fell backwards to the floor, the porkpie hat tumbling off of her head as she made impact.
She groaned, and Batgirl tried to get through to her.
"Hey," Batgirl said. "Listen to me, alright? You've been under mind control for God knows how long, and you're very weak. Uh… Say something backwards like you do, I don't know what, but just do it fast!"
Batman stood on the small platform that led to the final car, nothing behind him tracks and darkness.
He wiped his face. Blood and sweat came off on his gauntlet.
Batman felt spent. He had fought through so many people in the past God knows how long that he didn't even bother counting them.
He stared at the door in front of him.
Batman took a deep breath.
And another.
And another.
And on the fourth, he yanked the door to the car open, and-
BANG!
The bullet caught Batman in the stomach. He lurched back and almost fell off the car to the tracks below, but he reached out and grabbed the side of the doorway. He pulled with all of his strength, and wound up falling flat on his face in the interior of the train car.
He looked up.
There was only one person inside. Standing there in a gray tailored suit, smoking gun in one hand and a smart phone in the other, was Hamilton Hill.
Hill's face was blank as he studied the prone Batman.
"Hi," he said. "Aside from the fact that you got me impeached and tried to have me thrown in prison, we haven't been formally introduced. My name's Hamilton Hill, and in spite of everything, I'm a really big fan."
Batman got on all fours, and brought his cowl down to the floor of the car to try to see how his bullet wound looked.
No blood.
The armor must have caught it.
So even though it hurt like Hell, he was going to be fine.
Batman thought Hill didn't need to know this.
He looked up at Hill.
"I'm a fan," Hill said, "because I was The Undying for a second or two. I know what being someone like you takes. Big masked symbol and all that. So I have to ask…"
Hill crouched down. Too far away for Batman to actually do anything.
"What did you give up? To be Batman, I mean. Everybody's gotta give up something to do what you do… It was happiness, wasn't it? The price you pay for putting that cape on every night is that you have to be just… just a miserable prick. C'mon, don't be shy."
Batman looked at Hill… and smiled.
"This is the happiest I've been in almost thirty years," Batman said. "Just so long as we're being honest with each other."
Everything hurt.
She was so tired, in so much pain, that she couldn't even pluck the shards of broken beer bottle out of her face.
The only sounds she could hear, beyond her own breathing, were the sounds of metal hands punching meat, and blood spattering on the floor.
From what she could hear, Catwoman thought that Nightwing didn't even have it in him to groan in pain anymore.
Her stomach, which had buzzed since the first time Black Manta struck her there, was now on the verge of eruption.
And she was so cold.
Catwoman summoned everything she had to get on her hands and knees. With her eyes still closed, she opened her mouth and vomited.
It was mostly blood, save for the stray bit of partially digested waffle, and the front teeth that Black Manta had punched down her throat.
Even here, at the end of all things, Catwoman still had enough vanity and esteem for herself within her to make sure that when she fell, she fell on her side, so that she didn't land in the now-former contents of her own stomach.
Her impact with the marble floor sent a jolt of pain all throughout her body that made her lock up.
The monotony of raining blows and falling blood finally ended with a loud SNAP! and Nightwing finally groaning in pain.
A body landed right next to her, and Catwoman slowly opened her eyes.
Nightwing's face was swollen and doused in blood. His jaw was listing off to the right. His nose was smashed flat to the side of his right cheek, and where his nose used to be, a thin fin of smashed cartilage emerged from the flatness like a pathetic rhino horn.
That wasn't the worst of it.
His left leg below the knee was bent like a checkmark. There was a jagged edge of bone protruding from the shattered kevlar of his armor.
Nightwing couldn't stand.
If Nightwing couldn't stand, Nightwing couldn't fight.
And if Nightwing couldn't fight, Nightwing was going to die.
Just like she was.
He seemed to know it. He slowly raised his arm and put his finger to his ear. He spoke in a voice that was weak and watery.
"B-Babs?... Honey?... I… I'd really like to hear your voice right now."
Catwoman closed her eyes again, and waited.
For what, she didn't know.
But she didn't have to wait long.
She heard a voice calling to her clearly, speaking in a gruff voice that she had heard just a short time ago.
"I've told you more times than I can count that you're a good person with a lot to offer the world. Not to control you or manipulate you, but because it's the truth. And you keep proving me right, but you keep telling me I'm wrong."
And Catwoman's own thoughts arose in protest.
I am right. You are wrong. You threw me at a psycho in power armor and hoped for the best, and now here I am dead, or the closest thing to it. I don't have a last full measure to give. I'm giving up. I'm staying right here on this floor.
Then a short-lived nothing, before another batch of words came, this time garbled after having been buried in years.
"We're big. We're ostentatious. We draw fire. So the people down there never come to harm. The brightest and the bravest of us die, so the lowest and the meanest of them can live. We bury our own so they can go home at night."
And again, Catwoman's thought shook off their rust and fought back.
That's them. That's you. That's not me. This entire city is going to go up in flames because you stupidly bet on a professional thief. Blow your hero act out your well-sculpted ass and leave me alone to die, Sailor.
Nothing for a moment. But she felt the rumble of her own memories within her painfully throbbing head. What was coming next was going to be big.
It came to her clearly, not just in sound, but in vivid and clear sight. Sitting on a couch in a tiny apartment, head resting on her mom's shoulder, wearing a pair of jeans and the worn-out Care Bears t-shirt that her parents got her from Goodwill. Watching TV, a rapidly-thinning VHS tape that they had also bought from Goodwill spooling from reel to reel in the VCR beneath it.
One about wooden puppet trying to become a real boy, and the little bug on his shoulder telling him to straighten up and fly right.
And that little bug said, in a voice clear as a bell…
"Always Let Your Conscience Be Your Guide."
And Catwoman… really couldn't argue with that.
Alright. I'll get up.
She summoned her will, fought through the pain, and turned over as she opened her eyes. She slowly got to all fours, and sent a bolt of soreness and pain through her arms as she got to her feet.
Catwoman turned around at a glacial pace, and saw Black Manta leaning against the wall, arms folded over the dent in the front of his armor.
"Hello there," he said.
Catwoman just stared at him.
"You're dying," Black Manta said. "It was that first punch to the gut, wasn't it? Ruptured your stomach, I bet. Maybe opened up your intestines? I noticed you've been getting paler and paler, slower and slower. I figure you have… ninety minutes before you bleed to death on the inside. Two hours if you're lucky. But then again, if you met me at all, you haven't had a lucky life."
Black Manta unfolded his arms, and pushed himself off the wall so he stood up straight.
"Thing about cats is, when they're dying, they try to hide. Try to keep their suffering their own problem."
He took a step forward.
"Go hide, Selina. Die off in peace."
Black Manta craned his neck so that the dim eyes of his helmet set on Nightwing.
"I'll have my little fun with One Direction over there, give him that Columbian Necktie I told him he had coming to him, and I'll just sit and wait. Won't lay another finger on you. And if whatever passes for a God in this shitty universe decides he likes you enough, then you'll bleed out before your boyfriend in the Batsuit comes back and I drown him in a pool of his own guts."
Black Manta folded his arms again. "You can have two hours of your life, or two seconds of my respect. You can't have both."
Her head shook as she looked down at Nightwing, blood from the multiple lacerations on her face spatting on the front of her Catsuit, and dripping onto the floor.
The poor bastard.
Catwoman blinked.
And as she had her eyes closed during this infinitesimal fraction of time, something the size of a universe made itself known to her.
The truth.
At long last.
She was standing at death's door no matter what she did, and all the anger and self-pity she was capable of feeling at this moment vanished during that blink.
Why should she be angry?
Why should she feel sorry for herself?
She spent all thirty-five years of her life getting here. The sorrow, the beatings she took, the jail time she served, the pain, the loneliness, the waiting, all transpired so she could bring herself here to this old tunnel, so she could stand over a broken and doomed superhero and find the truth at the end of everything.
How much of the life of Selina Kyle had been devoted to self-deception? How many times had she tried to be a good person? How many times had she failed? How many times had she laughed? Played it off? Said 'I meant to do that' to all of her failures?
How much of the life of Selina Kyle had been spent waging a successful one woman war against who she was terrified to know she was? And why? So she could place herself in the same easy slots, give herself the same easy labels she gave everyone else?
Selina Kyle was going to die in this tunnel.
It was too late to lie to herself.
And so the blink ended, and once again, her eyes rested on Nightwing.
The poor bastard.
The guy lying there, at the same death's door she was standing in, hoping against hope that this Babs-Batgirl, most likely-would call him back on his earpiece. So he could hear the voice of the woman he loved before Black Manta yanked his tongue through a ragged hole in his throat, and sent him off to The Great Crossfit Class In The Sky.
Catwoman could let Black Manta slice him to pieces while she crawled off and died.
Or she could stand between them, shielding Nightwing from harm… and then get killed in two seconds, and then Black Manta would slice him to pieces anyway.
But that was two more seconds he got to live.
That was two more seconds of hoping Babs would call him back.
And who knows? Maybe she would.
Catwoman asked herself what her own life was against that.
What her own life was against hope .
And she had an answer.
As she beheld Nightwing on the floor, drenched in blood, gasping for air, one of the great mysteries of life was answered for her.
This is why he does it. This is why he goes out there every night.
Catwoman looked down at the floor and shuffled her feet to get where she was going, until she stood between Black Manta and Nightwing.
And then she looked at the man in the armor.
She struggled to stay on her feet. She struggled to stop shaking. She struggled to even keep her eyes open.
But the steel in her face? That took no effort at all.
It was just who she was. Finally and at long last, she found that out.
Catwoman took Black Manta's measure. Her tongue gingerly worked its way around a mouth that had a few less teeth in it than she was used to, and she spoke what she knew were the final words she would ever say in this life.
"You… Go… Through… Me…"
Black Manta cocked his helmet to one side. He raised his right arm, and that retractable blade emerged from his wrist.
"Respect it is."
Batgirl saw Zatanna's eyes come into a little better focus. Her lips quivered as she tried to speak.
"E...E...viv...er…"
"Yeah," Batgirl said, and he reached out for Zatanna's hand. "Yeah, that's it. Just concentrate. I have faith in you."
Zatanna took a couple more shallow breaths, until she held in the third, and closed her eyes tight.
"Eviver."
Zatanna was bathed in a gold light so bright that Batgirl had to shut her eyes. When she reopened them, Zatanna was still lying on the floor, but her cheeks had regained their regular plumpness. The clumps of her hair that had fallen out had grown back. Her skeletal frame had reverted to the state it had been in before she had been abducted, all curve and swell. And her eyes were clear.
She stood up, her bare feet mere inches away from Batgirl's trail of blood.
"I don't know how effective something like that is," the newly revived Zatanna said. "I should, uh… I should really go to the hospital after this."
Batgirl wanted to tell her what she missed. To what extent she'd been bent to nefarious aims. But… there was one thing that overrode any rational thought right now.
"You… own sweatpants?
Zatanna looked down at herself, and then back at Batgirl. The expression on her face was of one talking to someone who had just admitted that they used toilet water to mop their floors.
"Babs, do you seriously think I sit around my apartment in my work clothes? Speaking of which…"
Zatanna held her hands out in front of her and said:
"Krow Sehtolc."
It was like someone had poured Zatanna's work attire onto her from the bottom. Her sweatpants were replaced with black knee-high boots and gray nylons that led up to a pair of black lycra briefs. Her Blackwell Academy t-shirt was replaced with a white waistcoat, white tuxedo shirt, white bowtie, and an old-time tuxedo jacket with tails that had a white carnation in the left lapel. Her hands were covered with white silk gloves.
And atop her head appeared a black top hat.
To hear Zatanna herself tell it, she was a magician who wanted to dress like her own assistant.
"There," Zatanna said as she adjusted the cuffs of her jacket. "Much better."
"Where do your old clothes go, though?" Batgirl asked.
Zatanna sighed. "They dissolve, unfortunately. Such a shame. Kara bought me that shirt. Now let's see what's going down. Esnes."
A shimmer of transparent energy appeared around her head as she closed her eyes. When she opened them again, those blue eyes were wide with horror and fear.
She looked down at Batgirl. She opened her mouth, and then closed it again, repeating once again, trying to find the words.
Until finally, Zatanna threw up her hands.
"Aw, screw it, we don't have time right now."
Zatanna walked to Batgirl, knelt down, and put her hand on the small of Batgirl's back.
Batgirl's eyes went wide.
She knew what was coming.
"Wait, don-"
"Leah dna dnem."
Batgirl shuddered as a jolt of… something … went through her entire body. It wasn't entirely unpleasant, but it just… Batgirl didn't know what.
"Oh my God," she said.
She knew what had just happened.
Batgirl… wiggled her toes.
Her breath escaped her body. She curled her legs beneath her. There were no pins and needles, no soreness, no getting used to something she had gone so long without. It seemed Zatanna's spell had taken cared of all of that for her.
For the first time in four years, Barbara Gordon stood on her own two feet.
She looked down at her legs, and saw that her jeans had holes in them. At first she couldn't understand why, but then she remembered that she had crawled through broken glass to get into this room. She looked at the carpet and saw that the blood she had left on the carpet had vanished, presumably put back into her body.
So struck with emotion was she, that she hadn't noticed her shoulder had popped back into its socket.
Batgirl lifted up her shirt and looked at her stomach. There was no surgery scar. No bullet wound from The Joker. Just pale skin stretched over abdominal muscles threatening to go to washboard status.
Wait… No surgery scar… Did my appendix just grow back?
She dropped the front of her shirt, closed her eyes, and let the gravity of the situation fall on her.
Once it had, Batgirl looked at Zatanna.
And it was a look of the utmost, bone-deep betrayal.
"Don't look at me like that," Zatanna said, trying to put some stank on her voice while the rest of her body tried to cringe away. "Black Manta is going to murder Nightwing and Catwoman unless we get down there and do something!"
Batgirl's anger flared within her. "You don't-"
Then she stopped.
A voice, thin and hindered by something in its lungs, but nonetheless as familiar as the back of her own hand, came into the ears of her cowl.
"B-Babs?" Nightwing asked. "Honey?... I… I'd really like to hear your voice right now."
Batgirl could feel herself going pale. She could feel her anger filing itself away, to be dealt with later.
She looked at Zatanna, who asked her a very important question.
"You still remember how to kick people, right?"