In the Shadow of the Bat
Gotham And Hub City
Commissioner Gordon was a old cop, first and foremost. He might have given up the uniform or the cheap, off the rack suits detectives wore, but he was still a cop in his bones. That was why he was looking at the guns with a thoughtful, kind of wary expression.
Dana Fox was there trying to drum up business, on one of her annoyingly regular visits to Gotham. Wayne Enterprises had agreed to a deal where they funded her expansion for producing non-lethal guns, but Wayne himself was mother henning the operation a lot. He wanted absolute certainty the guns would stay non-lethal.
So in between visits with Wayne she decided to hit the police department with a sample in hopes of getting some interest going. The mayor was on board, tentatively, but she needed to get the rank and file on board, which meant seeing Gordon, especially.
"I like the idea, I think," Gordon admitted as he put the slightly odd looking pistol down.
"But?" Dana asked, hearing something in his tone of voice.
"Gotham has a large number of superhuman criminals," Gordon noted, "how effective would they be against them?"
"Reasonably," Dana said honestly, "normal criminals take one shot. A second will down a enhanced being. I would not recommend three shots, however."
"Overdose?" Gordon guessed.
"Actually, no," Dana said, "the drugs effectiveness is designed to be effected by concentration. A dose above two bullets will switch from a knock out to a intoxicant. You'd end up with a semi-drunk criminal."
Gordon blinked, "That's... could be useful, or could be unfortunate."
"Which is why I'm advising against it," Dana agreed. "But we needed a safe mode in case someone did use too many bullets, so..."
"Makes sense," Gordon nodded. He put the gun down, "I'm willing to suggest this as a weapon for the Gotham PD, but I'm not comfortable with it being a primary weapon."
Dana was a bit disappointed, but nodded. "Thank you for your support," she said as she shook his hand. She set a metal case on the table, "Here are some samples for your officers to familiarize themselves with the gear."
"I'll ask them to restrain themselves," Gordon noted dryly.
"The clips only go semi-auto, but yeah... keep them from blowing all the rounds in a day, maybe?" Dana teased a bit.
Gordon laughed, "Well, I'll try..."
Dana headed out of his office, her business suit clinging to her form but not cut TOO racy. Gordon was dating someone, the scuttlebutt said, but she didn't take chances. Besides, she wanted to sell her guns on their own merits, not with sexy clothes.
As Dana went through the main room of the police department, the passed a series of photos. Someone had put up photographs of officers who had either passed away, or had left the police force. Her eyes ran over it casually, then she stopped as she recognized one.
"Yes?" Gordon looked at her curiously.
"That's Renee Montoya," Dana noted, "right?"
Gordon blinked, "Yes, you know her?" he asked, looking at her thoughtfully.
Dana wasn't quite sure what was up with the odd look. "Actually, I was looking into contacting her for a business matter," she admitted.
"Ah," Gordon looked faintly relieved. "Well, she runs a private detective agency in town," he offered. "I had a card, but..."
"I can track her down," Dana smiled, then carried on. "Uhm... I understand she's a lesbian. Did that have to do with why she left?"
Gordon shook her head, "No it was... well, not a personal issue. It's not really my place to talk about it."
"Fair enough," Dana willingly conceded. As she left she added, "Thanks again for your help."
She got out her Lex-tel smart phone as Dana headed out of the station, checking online directories. She really should have thought of doing that earlier, but looking for Montoya was a impulse thing anyway. She had no idea if the woman could even help her.
Dana didn't have any issue with her being gay too. Why, she herself had some a certain amount of... experimentation in the exclusive all girls school she had attended. Of course, first rule of school lesbians was that you didn't talk about school lesbians. Besides, what were the chances of ever running into Kate Kane again, anyway?
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
Dana looked at the very amused Kate Kane and wondered if the gods were taunting her or something. "Long time no see," the sexy redhead purred, her house coat NOT hiding the swell of breasts or the fact she was in a nightie.
'And only at eight in the evening too,' Dan mused wryly. "Yeah, the last time I saw you was when I walk in on you going down on another woman." Dana noted.
Kate shrugged, "You never SAID we were going to be exclusive."
Dana grit her teeth, then forced herself to calm down. "My apologies for dropping in like this," she said, "I was looking for Renee Montoya. She lists this as her primary residence?"
Kate looked intrigued, "Yes. Come in, I'll go get her."
Dana entered the well decorated living room as Kate slinked off. 'Did I interrupt something?' she wondered as she took a look out the window at a incredible view of Gotham's skyline. It was prettier than Hub City, but that wasn't saying much. A garbage dump would be prettier than the Hub.
Renee emerged from the bedroom, also in a hastily thrown on robe, her reddish brown hair falling into her eyes. "Miss Fox," she nodded briskly as she belted her robe, "I don't think we've met?"
"We haven't," Dana agreed, "I run a company out of Hub City, and I wanted to contact you because of your friendship with Vic Sage."
"Vic?" Renee looked a bit startled by that.
"Yes," Dana agreed, "as you may know, Sage was a popular reporter and champion of the underdog in Hub City." She paused, "And he was the superhero the Question."
That made Renee raise her eyebrow slightly, "Really?"
Dana sighed. "It's not that he tried all that hard to hide it, Ms. Montoya."
"Renee," she corrected her. "All right, so what does this have to do with me?"
Dana leaned forward in her seat, "Now, I have my suspicions about who the new Question is, but I won't go into that. What I would like to do is hire the Question to come to Hub City as a full time local hero."
THAT did surprise Renee, interestingly. "I thought the city HAD a local hero now? Paladin?" she asked thoughtfully.
Dana did her best not to react to that. "We do," she conceded, "but she's a mercenary, pretty much. I don't feel she's committed to helping the city."
"Yet you want to hire the new Question?" Renee noted dryly.
"True enough," Dana conceded, "but I feel she might be interested in completing Vic Sage's work in Hub City."
"Considering he pretty much gave up on the city...," Renee shrugged. Briskly she continued, "I'll pass the message on, at least. Do you have a contact number?"
Dana passed a card with her number, email and so on over to her. "I'll hope to hear from her," she said neutrally as she got up to go.
Kate followed her to the door as she added quietly, "I AM sorry, for how things turned out back then."
"Oh?" Dana had to ask.
Kate winked as she closed the door, "We could have had a threesome."
"Grrr," Dana growled as she hurried away.
As she headed down to the street Dana tried not to be too disappointed. It had been a long shot, appealing to Montoya to bring the Question back to Hub City. She had hoped to get a replacement for the Paladin, but now that seemed unlikely.
'Not that I want to quit being Paladin, exactly,' Dana admitted to herself as she hailed a cab, 'but it'd be nice to have some backup.'
"Where to, mac?" the driver pulled up and asked.
Dana gave her hotel then sat back. "And step on it," she added.
He pulled into traffic, then took a wrong tern. Dana frowned but waited to see if he'd correct his course... only for him to take another turn into a alley and stop.
"What are...," Dana started.
"This is a stick up," the driver turned, gun in hand as he glared at her.
"Oh, you picked the worst person to rob," Dana muttered as her eyes swept over the gun, realizing it's safety was on.
"Huh," he started before Dana ripped the gun from his hand. Smoothly she reversed it as she flipped off the safety. "Ack," he managed she she put the gun to his head.
"Now, the only reason I'm not shooting you is that I can't believe you were dumb enough to try to hold me up with the safety on," Dana noted conversationally. "So, talk."
"My family needs money, bad," the clearly terrified man stammered.
Dana debate a moment, then while keeping the gun levelled at him got out of the car. "Don't try this again," she ordered, "if you are really desperate for cash, come to Fox Munitions in Hub City. We need workers."
"You nuts?" the driver said nervously, "That place is worse than Gotham."
Dana sighed, "Just get the heck out of here before I change my mind." He drove off in a squeal of tires even as she casually disassembled the pistol and dumped the pieces in various garbage cans. "Even Gothamites think Hub City is a dump..." she grumbled as she headed back to her hotel, this time on foot.
To be continued...
Notes: May not jive exactly with DC canon, but I'm amused by the idea Kate was a bit of a wild child at one point.