Chapter 27: Everlasting Peace
FAIRFIELD DRIVE
Bruce was only dimly aware that the lights on the Arkham Knight's armor were slowly beginning to blink back on.
But he was still completely enraptured by what had just happened. Bruce was amazed by how long he had been in every last sort of pain because, here and now, he did not feel it anymore.
"The virus I infected her with is getting eaten by her armor's failsafes," Black Bat said. "Dad, go!"
Bruce couldn't move.
However, the sudden appearance Black Bat was enough to blow at least some of his wife's faculties back into her.
Selina grabbed Bruce's elbow and started dragging him out of the alley.
"Beat fuckin' feet, Sailor!"
He wanted to stay and help. But he remembered that the crux of Ra's al Ghul's plan was keeping Cassandra alive. She might have been in for a world of hurt for a stand-up fight, but Black Bat was not in any mortal danger.
Bruce and Selina, on the other hand, very much were.
He staggered after her into the gray light of the street, and then she dragged him to the left down the sidewalk. She got her phone out with her other hand.
"I'll call Cullen," she said. "Let's hole up somewhere until he gets here and we can go back to the house."
"Okay," Bruce said, feeling a weird moistness in his voice. "But shouldn't we go to the hospital?"
"The hospital?" Selina asked. "Are you nuts? Hospitals mean ques-"
Selina turned to look at him mid-sentence, and immediately stopped, affixing him with a strange look that he couldn't immediately identify.
"What?" Bruce asked. "What is it?"
Bruce had to squint through cloudy vision before he determined what the look on his wife's face meant. The wet mask of blood upon her visage obscured it somewhat, but Selina was looking at him with sheer, dumbfounded shock.
"What?" Bruce asked again.
In reply, Selina simply took the index finger of her right hand, dabbed across his left cheek, and showed it to him.
There on her fingertip, along with a smear of red dust from the exploding Irish pub that they had narrowly escaped, was a bit of moisture turning it into paste.
Bruce was just as surprised as Selina to discover that he was crying.
As Black Bat watched Bruce and Selina turn the corner out of the alley, she felt an iron grip on her shoulder, and the electronically distorted voice of the Arkham Knight in her ear.
"You… little… bitch!"
Her lower back exploded in pain as the Arkham Knight kneed her in the spine. Then her other hand wrapped around Black Bat's right leg as she was picked up…
...and thrown through the wall to her left.
Black Bat's high tech armor was built to shrug off anti-tank rounds, but the Arkham Knight was much slower than that. The armor kept her alive, but it didn't shield her from pain. And there was a lot of it.
She shook her head loose of the cobwebs amidst the shattered brown brick to find herself on the black and white tile floor of a kitchen. It was relatively small, one for a mid-sized restaurant made for families and tourists.
Black Bat got on her back and watched as the Arkham Knight entered through the hole in the wall.
The lenses of Black Bat's cowl immediately went to work analyzing the structure and operating system of the Arkham Knight's armor.
Of course, the problem here being that the analysis could take a while.
She could play evasive. She wasn't as strong as a heavily armored Astrid Arkham, but she was a damn sight faster.
This had its own problem. Evasive action meant taking her eyes off the Arkham Knight, making the analysis take longer.
She only had one card to play. The Arkham Knight couldn't kill her.
This meant that Black Bat had to go for the Stephanie Brown Special.
She was going to have to tank an ass-kicking.
Black Bat got to her feet and went for a running kick. Slow and on purpose so she could prepare herself.
The Arkham Knight extended her arm and caught Black Bat with a lariat across the collarbone that flipped her over. She landed face first on the tile and instantly tasted blood.
Yet another iron grip on Black Bat's shoulder as the Arkham Knight lifted her up and off her feet.
Black Bat ate a right that sent her flying to the stove in the middle of the kitchen. She melted to the floor, infused with pain. But she still kept her eyes on the Arkham Knight, letting the lenses in her cowl do the work.
"You know," the Arkham Knight said, "Ra's al Ghul told me that the one thing Bruce tries to drill into the heads of all his child soldiers is… 'Don't Make This Personal.' But let's run down the past few days."
The Arkham Knight was upon her, and kicked Black Bat in the gut so hard that she skidded a good five feet into the wall.
"I turned your ex-girlfriend inside out and made her puke blood," the Arkham Knight said.
She bent over and grabbed Black Bat by the arm, flinging her into the far wall so hard that the plaster cracked and dented.
"I shot the first Robin in the back right in front of the man he looked at as a father," the Arkham Knight said.
She bent over and grabbed Black Bat by the ears of her cowl as she was struggling to her feet. She whipped Black Bat past her, causing her face to collide with the unforgiving metal of the stove top.
"I walked into Wayne Manor and bitch-slapped every last one of you," the Arkham Knight said. "Hell, I even took a sandwich out of the fridge in the kitchen just because I could."
The Arkham Knight grabbed a handful of Black Bat's cape. One wrench, and she brought Black Bat over her head and spiked her face into the floor. It was like she was swinging a sledgehammer to bust up some particularly tough rock.
"And oh yeah," The Arkham Knight said. "I shot the only man you ever loved out of the sky like I was hunting a pheasant."
The Arkham Knight clutched Black Bat by the back of the neck and lifted her up off her feet. She brought her in, so they were face to face.
"So I have one question for you, Cass…"
She brought Black Bat in closer. Were they unmasked, and one of them not the manifestation of pure evil, they might have kissed.
"Is it personal yet?"
The Arkham Knight slammed Black Bat's head into the stove. More blood coming out of Cassandra's mouth beneath the mask, and now some from her nose.
WHAM!
"Is it personal yet?"
WHAM!
"IS IT PERSONAL YET?"
The Arkham Knight flung Black Bat to the other side of the room. She collided with the wall ribs first, and as she slid to the floor, Black Bat could have sworn a couple of them were at least bruised, armor or no armor.
The right lens of her cowl had developed a small flutter. It was still functional, but it needed repair.
Hold together, she thought as she got to a sitting position.
"This is the part of the game where you try to appeal to my better nature," the Arkham Knight said as she began her slow advance. "Where you say I don't have to do this, I don't have to be a killer, I'm better than I think I am, yadda-yadda-yadda. So come on, Cass. Let's hear it."
This gave Black Bat pause. The eyes beneath the mask fixed on the Arkham Knight.
She now had the opportunity to unload upon the Arkham Knight some pure, unvarnished truth.
Given how the last few days had gone, that would be a refreshing change of pace.
So Black Bat looked the Arkham Knight in the yellow eye slits of her gleaming blue helmet and said:
"No."
The Arkham Knight stopped her advance.
"You and I, we started in the same hole," Black Bat said. "Bent by the people responsible for us toward taking human lives. The big difference is, I stopped when I found out it was wrong. I escaped. You didn't. You don't have the depth, Astrid. You don't have the imagination. You couldn't do what I did, and the sad part is, it never even occurred to you."
Black Bat slowly got to her feet. "Dick and Conner aren't dead because you're strong, Astrid. They're dead because you're weak. Too weak to do the right thing. I'm not gonna pretend it would have been easy. You'd have had no resources and people looking under every rock trying to find you. You'd have spent years on the street dumpster diving trying to survive. I know because the same thing happened to me, and I have a disability on top of all that. But I made it out on the other side. I was strong. I endured. Because I'm better than you, Astrid."
She took a step toward the Arkham Knight, her lenses still continuing their analysis.
"I hope all this violence stops," Black Bat said. "I hope you get the help you need. But before that happens… I am gonna fuck you up."
The Arkham Knight's arm shot out, clutching Black Bat by the throat. She couldn't breathe.
"Ra's al Ghul needs you alive to bear his son," the Arkham Knight said in a flat monotone. "He never said anything about you being in one piece."
As she was struggling for air, Black Bat saw two words flash on her cowl's Heads-Up Display.
ANALYSIS COMPLETE
Well that's great, Black Bat thought. Now she needed a way out of here. All of her skills for evasion were useless with a metal grip around her throat.
She knew she needed a miracle.
But Gotham City was known for those every now and again.
For a woman's voice sounded from the hole in the wall.
"Yo, CHUDmuffin!"
Stephanie Brown had been following Black Bat all night.
She'd gotten a grapnel gun and a pair of binoculars from Selina's stash in Wayne Manor (with Selina's approval of course), and kept a steady distance through Black Bat's uneventful night of patrolling.
In fact, this rumble between Black Bat and the Arkham Knight was the only action she'd seen since the Battle of Wayne Manor.
She stood atop the rubble in the hole in the side of the restaurant as the Arkham Knight had her hand around Black Bat's throat. Stephanie decided upon a ladylike greeting taught at charm schools the world over...
"Yo, CHUDmuffin!"
...and put her hands on the hips of her jeans.
The Arkham Knight looked over at her, and dropped Black Bat to the floor. Stephanie could hear her struggling to get her breath back.
"Stephanie Brown," the Arkham Knight said.
"The one and only."
"I don't think we've been formally introduced."
"I know who you are," Stephanie said.
Then she reached into the inside of her pea coat, and pulled out the Sig Sauer P365 XL that she had bought here in Gotham in case the deal for the Shadow Density bullet went awry.
She pointed it at the Arkham Knight's head.
"You're the bitch I shoot until six million dollars falls out."
The Arkham Knight threw her head back as she laughed. "You-You think that little pop gun scares me?"
Stephanie did not, in fact, think that her little pop gun scared the Arkham Knight. She'd gone toe-to-toe with Black Manta and whupped his ass. Fine as the craftsmanship by the good folks over at Sig Sauer was, this was the wrong tool for the job.
However, it was downright perfect for shooting out the metal gas line over on the far wall, which just so happened to be connected to the stove by which the Arkham Knight was standing.
But she was going to need Black Bat's cooperation in this little venture.
She couldn't come out and say it, of course. Oh, if only there was someone in the room who could read body language.
"You're the one near and dear to our little Cass' heart, aren't you?" the Arkham Knight asked. "Being as our mutual friend here can't die until she pumps out an al Ghul heir, I think I'll spend all nine months torturing you right in front of her."
Stephanie rolled her eyes…
...which brought them to the gas line in the wall…
...and twitched the hand holding the gun slightly.
C'mon, Cass, I hope you get this…
From what she could see, Black Bat got it. She nodded slightly, and then pulled her cape above her head.
Stephanie opened fire.
She couldn't hear the gunshot for the heavy FWOOM! Of the wall erupting in fire.
The flame enveloped the Arkham Knight, and the exploding stove blasted her back. The heat made Stephanie slam her eyes shut. The last thing she saw was Black Bat firing her grapnel gun past her.
She was lifted off her feet. First by the concussion of the blast blowing her back out into the alley, then by the arm of Black Bat, reeling her away from the fire faster.
They both hit the pavement of the alley. Black Bat whipped her flame retardant cape over Stephanie's head as the fire erupted and the restaurant fell into rubble.
With her ears ringing, Stephanie saw Black Bat pull her cape back and get to her feet. She yanked her grapnel hook out of the wall and aimed it skyward. Black Bat held out her hand.
"Way ahead of you," Stephanie said, though she barely heard her own voice. She put her gun back into its holster beneath her pea coat as she got to her feet, and yanked Selina's grapnel gun from her belt. She aimed it for the lip of the building's roof and fired.
Stephanie and Black Bat were both reeled upward. Stephanie was only a little bit worried that the Arkham Knight died in the blast when she heard an electronically distorted scream of fury and anger sound off from the rubble as she ascended.
They made it to the roof, and Stephanie followed Black Bat to the other edge.
For a split-second, the existence of which she would deny even under pain of torture, Stephanie Brown was eighteen again.
Black Bat extended her cape as she jumped off the other edge of the building, the wind beneath it buffeting her descent. Stephanie, for her part, had to fire the grapnel gun into the roof before she jumped.
As she descended, Stephanie heard a loud BOOM! and saw the Batmobile decloak beneath her.
Once she was on the ground, Stephanie saw the roof of the Batmobile retract, and Black Bat hop in the driver's seat.
"Get in," Black Bat yelled. An order for which Stephanie needed no repetition.
The roof extended, the engine came alive, and the one thing on Stephanie's mind came out of her mouth.
"This is the first time I've ever been in the Batmobile."
Black Bat didn't say anything as the dashboard readout helpfully informed Stephanie that the Batmobile had recloaked.
"Jesus, Harper got to ride in the Batmobile on her first night with us. Yeah, she had a concussion, but…"
Black Bat still didn't say anything. She was smeared from the ears of her cowl to the bottom of her boots with soot and the powder from pulverized bricks. And she was tap-tap-tapping on the controls of the Batmobile with her right index finger.
With that, Stephanie knew that wherever they were going, she was going to get The Talk. The talk about how she had stupidly put her life in danger. The Talk about how she needed to be less reckless and watch herself more.
Stephanie and Black Bat traveled in silence until they got to Wayne Tower, which was halfway across the mainland. Black Bat retracted the roof of the cloaked Batmobile and got out. Stephanie followed.
She knew where Black Bat was going.
Back in the day, when Stephanie Brown had been Spoiler and Cassandra Cain had been Orphan, the two of them used to grapnel race to this balcony on the eightieth floor that was free from the prying eyes of any potential Wayne Enterprises employees within the building.
Yeah, they usually did it in the dead of night, but if Black Bat didn't care this morning, then Stephanie didn't care either.
Black Bat won, like she always did, though Stephanie made it to the balcony a couple of seconds afterwards. She hadn't done this in fourteen years, and her shoulders were sore.
Once she got there, Stephanie saw Black Bat pacing back and forth in agitation, before she turned to Stephanie…
...and collapsed.
Stephanie couldn't stop the "OH, SHIT!" from coming out of her mouth as she rushed to her side.
She pulled off Black Bat's mask, and Cassandra' Wayne's face was a mess of blood.
"I'm-I'm fine," Cassandra said with a wobble in her voice.
"No you're not," Stephanie said. "Hold still."
Stephanie liberated a sealed wet nap (which she always carried with her for just such an occasion) from the pocket of her pea coat, and started swabbing the blood off of Cassandra's face. There were no cuts and nothing appeared to be broken.
Once she was done, she held up four fingers in front of Cassandra's face.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Four."
"Who's the President of the United States?"
"Sue Dibny."
"You'll be fine."
As Stephanie chucked the wet nap to the side, Cassandra, using her considerable skill, reached into the interior of Stephanie's pea coat, unholstered the pistol, and rolled back to her feet.
"Oh, you little shit," Stephanie said as she rose.
"A gun?" Cassandra asked.
Stephanie didn't say anything.
"You followed me all night, and decided at the tail end to go up against the Arkham Knight with the next best thing to a fucking water pistol?"
Stephanie thought that was rich coming from someone who planted a tracker in this very pea coat and followed her to an arms deal, but Stephanie continued with her silence.
"You walk blindly into a situation you aren't prepared in the slightest for, and you use this to do it. You knew better when you were a kid, Steph, why don't you know better now?"
Finally, Stephanie opted to break her silence. She stood up straight, looked down her nose at Cassandra, and said:
"You're doing it again."
Cassandra just blinked at her, and tilted her head.
"What?"
Stephanie just repeated herself. "You're doing it again."
There was still some confusion on Cassandra's face. Stephanie sighed and folded her arms.
"I made my way fourteen years across five continents kicking ass and taking names," she said. "I don't walk into a situation I don't know how to walk out of. Including this one. I came in, saved your life, and made it out without a scratch. You don't have to like what I did, but I'm not Spoiler anymore. I deserve your fucking respect, and you will give it to me."
"Astrid wasn't going to kill me."
"You wanna bet the family fortune on that, Miss Wayne?"
Cassandra looked down. If Stephanie weren't paying attention, she'd think Cassandra was simply pouting.
But Stephanie was paying attention. To the dark circles under Cassandra's eyes. To how the whites of her eyes weren't whites anymore. They were pinks.
She didn't want to say it… but she had to say it.
"You're cracking," Stephanie said.
Cassandra fixed Stephanie with a furious glare.
"You are," Stephanie said. "You've spent fourteen years against mobsters and gangbangers. You haven't seen anything like this in a long time, and when you did, you weren't the one in charge. You haven't slept. I don't want to place bets on the last time you ate. And it's less than twenty-four hours since Astrid Arkham killed the only man you've ever loved. Go home and sleep."
Unblinking, Cassandra took a step forward.
"You have no idea what I'm capable of."
"You're right," Stephanie said. "I don't. But that goes more than one way, and I don't want to see you at your worst. Go. Home. And sleep."
Cassandra fumed at her. "Go back to the hotel, Steph."
Stephanie didn't even blink when she shrugged her shoulders. "Fine by me. It's not like Wayne Manor is safe. Judging from the looks of the woman protecting it, it's even less so. Go home and sleep."
Cassandra, apparently at her wits end, looked down at the gun she was holding, before she held it up.
"I'm keeping this," Cassandra said.
She picked up the Black Bat mask, shook the blood out, and put it back on.
Black Bat ran to the edge of the balcony, extended her cape, and glided off.
Back in the old days, getting down was a cinch. Spoiler had a cape.
Stephanie Brown, in the here and now, did not.
Which meant she'd have to break in through the window and take the elevator down. What was security going to do? Stop her? She knew the CEO.
WAYNE MANOR
Cullen picked Bruce and Selina up forty minutes after she had made the call.
Bruce was still crying.
"Are you okay?" Cullen had asked, more than a little pale at the sight of all the blood.
"It looks worse than it is," Selina said.
"Not that," said Cullen as he pointed to Bruce's face in the backseat. "That."
He couldn't say anything.
Once they got back to the manor, Bruce and Selina went to the bathroom just off the master bedroom, shed their clothes, and went into the shower to clean each other off as Cullen left new sets of clothes for both of them outside the door.
They cleaned the blood and powdered brick off of each other beneath the running water. Once they were clean, Bruce applied stitches to his wife's hairline.
And Bruce was still crying.
Selina had a strange look on her face all the while, and he kept trying to avoid her gaze.
They had only just gotten dressed and left the bathroom when they saw Cullen in the hallway, telling them the cops were here.
Bruce and Selina answered questions from two plainclothes officers from the GCPD in the foyer for what must have been forty-five minutes.
Why did you flee the scene?
We were scared and we didn't know what to do.
Do you know why this person tried to do this to you?"
Not a clue.
Do you know who this person is?
Even less of a clue.
And all the while, Bruce Wayne was still crying.
It wasn't undignified blubbering, not now nor had it been. It was silent. Just tears spewing down his cheekbones into his beard.
"Are you okay?" the lead officer had asked.
"I'm fine," Bruce replied.
To which Selina had to embellish by saying "It's been a rough couple of days."
After the police had left, Bruce did something that he felt he needed to.
He went to the study, turned the grandfather clock to 10:47, and descended into the Batcave.
And there he stood, in the middle of the large concrete circle where the Batmobile once sat… and stared at the field of display cases that contained all of the old outfits that he and his confederates in justice had worn over the years. The armor that they sweated in, bled in, even died in.
He beheld the one in the middle. His old Batman armor.
And still… still… Bruce Wayne wept.
So transfixed by his armor was Bruce that he did not hear Selina come up behind him.
"When I was, oh, twenty-one or so," Selina said, "I got food poisoning. Don't know what it was from, but some terrible stuff was coming out of both ends. Went on for days. I was sitting on the pot on day three with no end in sight wondering, in earnest, whether or not I was dying."
Bruce turned to her. She pointed at his face.
"So, uh… You dying there, Sailor?"
Bruce rubbed some of the slickness off of his cheeks, and said "No."
To which Selina reacted with horror.
"Am I dying?"
Bruce laughed…
...and laughed…
...and laughed.
"It, uh… It wasn't that funny," Selina said, trying to make herself heard over Bruce's laughter.
Which was news to Bruce. He didn't know what was coming over him, and needed to apply thought to himself as he busted a gut.
This wasn't some bolt of laughter against his will, which had comprised most of his laughter for the past four-and-a-half decades. Only now, at the age of fifty-one, did he realize that laughing was easy, and he wanted to do more of it. It was fun, and it felt nice. And here he was, indulging himself.
The laughter subsided, and Bruce looked at his wife as honestly as he possibly could. He could feel his eyes widening, and a smile, so foreign to him before, spreading across his lips with no resistance whatsoever.
"History does not repeat itself," Bruce said, "but it does on occasion rhyme."
"You said that this morning," said Selina.
"It's been on my mind recently," said Bruce. "I was under the impression… for so many decades… that life is a series of patterns, repeating themselves over and over again."
He stepped away, moving his shoulders as he tried to assemble his emotions into words. Bruce was not one for the symbolic, for the metaphorical, but the profundity of the day's events had thrust him to a level to which he was unaccustomed. But this plateau of the unknown was not scary for him. It was exciting.
"I trained for years," Bruce said. "I put on that armor. And when I did, I knew that the one thing I wanted more than anything in the world was the one thing I couldn't do. Batman could not save my mother and father."
He huffed, and wiped some of the slickness off of his cheeks.
"I spent forty-three years chasing an impossibility," he said. "But today… Today I caught it. The pattern broke. Everything I thought I knew was proven wrong."
"I'm, uh… I'm not getting it," said Selina.
Bruce put his hands on Selina's shoulders and smiled as a new wave of mist overcame his eyes.
"Someone pulled a gun on Mister and Missus Wayne today," Bruce said. "They tried to shoot the Waynes in a dark alley, and at the last possible moment… Batman saved them. Or at least something Batman was responsible for. Don't you see? The cast changed, but the story was the same until the final instant when a happy ending presented itself."
He took his hands away from Selina's shoulders, turned, and looked at the armor again.
"I've saved countless families over the years the same way we were saved today. And it never sank in. I needed to be told in the bluntest possible terms that what I set out to do worked. I made a difference. The world is better because I was in it."
He smiled, and felt more of those irritating, damnable tears slide down his face.
"I was a good man in the end," Bruce said. "I existed, and I mattered."
He took Selina's hands. "My parents are gone. And Alfred. And Dick. And it hurts so much. But maybe… maybe if I can miss them like this, then there was some good in me after all. Something to build a life around all this time, and not just anger at the world, at myself, because they were gone. I spent so much of my life trying to avenge my mother and father, but I think… I think finding out what I know now is the one thing that would have made them proud."
Selina breathed in, and it caught in her throat. Her eyes went glassy, and she tried to blink it away. Bruce put his arm around her shoulder, she put his arm around his waist, and they both looked at the Batman armor.
"You asked me this morning," he said. "Would I be Batman again."
"You have an answer?" Selina asked in a watery voice.
Bruce nodded. "I won't. It's not a matter of thinking I shouldn't, or that I can't. I… I don't want to anymore. I did what I set out to do. There's always going to be crime in Gotham City, but I started something special that will be there to meet it. From now until the stars go out. Mission accomplished."
He took a deep breath. "A stranger wore that armor. Someone who was more anger than man. Someone who pushed everyone away and had to be convinced of the good in anyone. I don't know that man anymore. He's lost to me. And I can't help but think, overall, it's good that he's gone. He had his time, but he served his purpose. He can slip away."
"Well," Selina said, "he wasn't all bad."
Bruce smiled. He took his arm away from Selina's shoulder, and looked her in the eye.
"This is the first time in forty-three years that I've been Bruce Wayne. I… I have no idea what he's like. I hope he deserves all this. This house. This family… You…"
Selina put her hands on the side of Bruce's face, got on her tip-toes, and gave him a kiss into which he dissolved.
It answered his hopes.
In a manner of speaking.
THE GOTHAM CITY SEWERS
Afternoon fell to nightfall as it always did, and the streetlights of the dying city made the fog around them bloom. It lent the mainland and the three islands of Gotham City a kind of magical grandeur that no one who counted themselves among its citizenry thought it even remotely deserved. It was like using confetti and streamers to make a landfill more exciting than it actually was.
Below the ground, however, things were more lively.
In the sewers beneath an empty lot on the corner of Sycamore and X, men in black were shining flashlights upon a truck that had been stolen by Gotham City's greatest thief… and promptly lost by her one-time sidekick.
One of the men, wearing a gas mask like every last one of his compatriots, lifted a canvas cover off the back of the truck. Inside were twelve blue barrels.
"This is it," he called out. "This is the Venom. Gas masks on at all times. You don't want to breathe this stuff in."
These men in black were not the Squires of the Arkham Knight.
These men in black were trained members of the League of Assassins.
They were all armed with swords, they were all deadly…
...and they were all being watched.
From a catwalk above the sewer, which led to and from separate large outflow pipes, Oracle surveyed the scene.
What had ever happened to the barrels of Venom from the Great Gotham Team-Up twenty-one years before had been a steady curiosity to Barbara Gordon. But it was always one of those things that she'd always meant to follow up on, but never actually did.
Time marched, so did technology, and Oracle was ashamed of herself that it took the death of Dick Grayson, the sacking of Wayne Manor, and the death of Superman for her to use her cloaked mini-drones to scour the sewers and find the Venom.
Bruce said that the Venom, when combined with the chemical amplification reagent stolen from the STAR Labs truck the day before, was unable to be dispersed. If that was the case, then why did the League want it so badly?
Oracle had spent most of the past thirty-six hours in a weird state of guilt. She had harangued Bruce in an attempt to get him to become Batman again, and she had displayed so little faith in Cassandra that she would be able to combat this menace that it shocked even her.
But seeing the League of Assassins beneath her, going through the Venom truck and proving her theory correct, washed away her guilt and her doubts with the sweet satisfaction of vindication.
Oracle arose, scratched the green holographic mask she wore out of habit, and turned to the dark outflow pipe behind her.
"Are you ready?" Oracle asked softly.
From the darkness of the pipe stepped a woman with blonde shoulder-length hair, wearing a black leather jacket and black fingerless gloves. Beneath the jacket was a turtleneck bodysuit that might generously be described as a one-piece women's swimsuit. Beneath that, however, were fishnet stockings that hugged the woman's rigid, muscular legs like cellophane around tree trunks.
Oracle had to admire a woman in her late thirties who could rock fishnets that well.
"For Dick Grayson," Black Canary said.
On Black Canary's right emerged someone else from the darkness.
She was a black woman, the curls of whose hair wreathed her resolute face. She wore a purple domino mask beneath a purple hood that extended from similarly purple armor that had a white cross pattern upon it, belying a Catholic faith.
Though Helena Bertinelli had essentially retired, giving her superhero identity to her one-time protege (the former Misfit, Charlotte Gage-Radcliffe), she figured she could dust off the old uniform for at least a night.
She loaded a crossbow before she spoke.
"For Dick Grayson," Huntress said.