Traffic was heavy on the multi-lane road leading towards the New Gotham downtown area. A fast black car thundered onto the road followed soon after by a police car. The fast car swerves in and out of traffic, its single occupant obviously in a hurry to get across town.
Helena stared out the windscreen, her eyes darting from time to time up to rearview mirror catching a glimpse of her tail as it struggled to keep up. She was in trouble and she remembered it had all started so innocently this morning.
It was very early in the morning for Helena Kyle, bartender in the evening and vigilante by night. Usually she wouldn't even have considered getting up, if it hadn't been for her mentor and friend calling her at ass end of the morning and asking her to urgently come by the Clocktower before her mentor headed off to her day job. She yawned again as she walked into the Clocktower finding the Gordon's at breakfast.
"Morning, Helena, want to grab a bite," Dinah asked and offered her a plate with two pieces of buttered toast.
"Sure," she said and studied the teen as she walked over to make more toast for herself. Dinah had really changed a lot in the time she had known her, but never more than in the last two years. She had gone from regular thin and frail Dinah to trim and trained Dinah, because of her continued obsession with self-defense classes and generally working out. She and Barbara had repeatedly discussed if the obsession with self-defense was some kind of reaction to the hostage taking nearly two years ago. Helena had her own private thoughts on the matter that she hadn't revealed to Barbara for fear of her reaction.
Still all of Dinah's life didn't revolve around music or self-defense either. She had made new friends at her new school, most notably Gabby, another blond kid that she had seen once or twice when picking Dinah up from school or at other school events. Still their friendship wasn't like the one she had shared with Sandy or the one she had with Barbara, Dinah couldn't bring her friend home, she couldn't talk much about her life outside of school and Helena was sure it brought a certain amount of distrust to Dinah and Gabby's friendship. "So why did you call me over," she asked as Barbara appeared out of the corridor to the private rooms in her latest high tech wheelchair, which was controlled by her thoughts instead of the controls.
"I cracked the encryption on that CD you picked up at that murder case last night. It contained the layout of Daggett Chemicals outside of town and some instructions for some guy named Wyatt to bring a container of a catalytic resin over to an address in North Gotham. I've checked out the address, the goon who lives there just got out of prison for murder and he seems to favor explosives. Would you mind having the Huntress giving him a visit, before some chemical weapon or bomb goes off in town?" Barbara explained, not noticing as she did that Dinah was listening intently from her seat at the kitchen table.
"No problem, I'll head over there," she agreed. She didn't like the thought of someone, who liked detonating bombs, getting chemicals delivered by someone, who then got killed. It smelled of trouble.
Helena slipped the car in between a couple of trucks then quickly pulled up an off ramp. She hoped it would shake the traffic cops. She glanced down at her clock. She still had time. She wished that Barbara wasn't at work, but home at the control of Delphi, able to call the police or whoever was needed to prevent this disaster. But she was on her own for now and that meant getting there in time. The police flew up off the ramp, but before they could give chase as she drove back down the ramp leading back down on the other side, they rear ended at passing sedan and spun to a stop. She knew they would have called for back up, but it at least gave her a bit of time, before they caught up with her. She thought back to what had brought her to this insane race across town.
Sweat rolled down her nose. Not for the first time as she waited in the unusually blistering spring sun Helena wished that she had made a different choice, when she had helped Barbara designing her costume. Her heavy leather trench coat, while looking cool and comfy at night, was a like a heated black tent in the summer, and was now thrown onto the seat next to her. The mask, stuck to her face with some special compound made by the Batman group years ago, only added to her discomfort, but she knew that Barbara would crucify her, if she ever spent a second on the job without it. It was her one conceit to anonymity, the only one demanded by Barbara. And so it stayed on.
For hours now she had watched the empty house after checking it out and finding the owner not home. She wanted a word with this Wyatt fellow and she had reasoned that breaking and entering would have to wait until she was sure he was around. And so she had been forced to sit in an alley in the slim fast and air-condition-less black car that Barbara had provided her with, while her Hummer was being repaired.
A blue car pulled up at the house that she could just see out of her window. She glanced over and recognized the guy from the picture Barbara had showed her earlier. With a happy sigh she got up, while grabbing her coat and locked the car behind her. She donned the warm trench coat, while walking across the street. Meanwhile the guy was calmly unlocking his house doors.
Helena crossed the lawn in silence using both skill and metahuman instincts to move silently up behind the goon just as he opened to door to his home. She stepped up behind him, pulled back a fist and asked, "Mind if I come in?" He turned towards the sound of her voice.
Before he could fully spin around, Helena smacked her fist into his side. Her strength easily threw the guy inside. Walking as if she was completely unprepared for any kind of fight she followed him inside. He lay on the floor holding his side in pain. She hooked a foot in behind the door and kicked it shut.
Helena towered above him, still keeping out of reach of his feet incase he felt like being difficult, before she was ready to go at it. She looked down at his tattoos recognizing the style often common in prison gangs. "Nice tats, so did your boyfriend give them to ya? I figured you were his bitch, because you're sure as hell not tough enough to be anything else," she teased.
The guy got up still clutching his side. "You'll pay for those words, Bitch," he said and prepared to lunge at her. Usually she wouldn't mind throwing him out the door for such a stupid move, but considering that she needed information from this goon, she decided to keep the fight inside, where they could have some privacy.
He almost surprised her, when he decided to throw a punch instead. She caught it in her fist and gripped his fist in an iron vice. "Now it seems I still need to get your attention," she said and pressed harder against his hand. He looked at her in utter surprise and early hints of pain.
"My name isn't Bitch," she said and pressed even harder. The guy's eyes started to water and he tried to tear himself free.
"It is Huntress," and with those words she broke his hand. He yelled out in pain. She let go and he clutched his broken hand with his other one.
She walked towards him and with each of her steps he stepped away. She felt the feral playfulness that always came up in her, when she worked tease at her senses. She felt like throwing him around a little more, before asking any questions. But she knew from experience that those ideas and instincts came from a dark and dangerous place, where she had best not tread. "You can't do this… It is illegal for…" The goon stammered.
"For cops… Honestly do I look like a cop to you? No, Wyatt, I am not a cop. I am the Huntress. Does the concept vigilante ring a bell?" She asked and couldn't stop herself from smirking.
"Now Wyatt, while you feel like talking and you still have all your teeth in your mouth, why don't you tell me all about that little murder last night," she asked.
"What murder," he answered. She jumped forward, grabbed his shoulders and faster than he could react, jumped him and herself several yards across the room, hammering him against the wall.
"Wrong answer, the murder last night, Chesterfield and 22nd the guy was carrying a message about some kind of delivery to you and some floor plan on a CD. You have something to do with it. Now tell me or I'll beat you unconscious, wait until you wake up and start all over again," she explained.
He looked into her eyes. She let all her seriousness and playfulness show in her eyes and hoped it would impress her intent on him. "Alright, alright, I did it. The idiot saw something, he shouldn't have. It was as good as suicide anyway. We… I could let that kind of information out onto the street, I would go straight back to jail, when…" He stopped himself as if he suddenly realized that he was blabbing.
Quickly so not to lose the initiative she grabbed his privates in a vice like grip. "Don't stop now or I'll castrate ya," she said trying to sound as serious as she could.
With even more watering eyes the guy quickly nodded his assent… repeatedly, "I've been trying to blackmail the Daggett Corporation. They didn't want to play, so I have placed a special kind of chemical mix in their plant. It'll look like negligence on their part to the public," he explained.
"What will look like negligence?" She asked furiously not noticing that her eyes shifted to their catlike slits in her anger even if her now even paler prisoner did.
"The chemical spill, the chemicals I've left out there, will mix and cause a reaction, which will burn through several key pipes, causing a spill… an airborne cloud of very hallucinogenic gas," he admitted.
"Hallucinogenic? Are you insane? That plant is in the middle of the city, thousands will go nuts, the effects… Where did you place it?" She squeezed his balls harder, causing him to scream in pain, before easing up a bit.
"I placed it near tank-45 on the pipes, where section 511 and 47 cross. I've set the entire thing to go off at 13.45. Please I just wanted to make some money," he begged.
"Listen to me, you'll go to the police and confess to this. If I find out later on that you're still walking free in this world, I'll hunt you down, drag you out to that chemical plant, find the largest fucking vat of acid and drop you in it," she said through clenched teeth. She didn't have the time or the evidence to drop him off or do anything else. She needed to get across the city in less than two hours or the entire industrial area and depending on air conditions other parts of the city would be doused with gas. Absentmindedly she hammered another blow in the face of the asshole in front of her sending him to dream land.
Helena spurted out the door. She barreled right past two plain clothes men, which had been walking towards the door. "Wait, stop, police," they called out, but she just ignored their calls. The police was so damn slow. She couldn't really be bothered with them, especially when she didn't have the time. She slid across the hood of her car, seeing one of the detectives, she guessed, running towards her. She quickly got in, locked the door and put it in reverse, slammed the accelerator and sped backwards away from him. She swung out onto a street, turned, changed gears and thundered towards the wider roads heading downtown, which she could only hope were reasonably clear. Not long after she had picked up a tail in the form of a police car, which she didn't know if came from her escape at the house or from her really reckless driving through town.
She could see the chemical plant through her windshield, when a patrol car suddenly skidded into view just in front of her. "Shit," she yelled, and frantically adjusted her course to take her up over the sidewalk around the police car and back onto the road. Behind her she could hear the sirens begin to blare. She guessed that somewhere above her a helicopter had kept watch since sometimes around when she had shaken off the first patrol car.
The black car barreled towards the security gate. She could see that the security people of the plant were on duty and the way in was guarded by a barrier and a row of retractable tire slicing iron teeth embedded in the road. She swerved up onto the small footpath between the bar and the security house saving her right front and back tires as she hammered through the barrier. Behind her the security people starred after her in the surprise and then began alerting people. However the police made her smile as always. Set on catching her as they were they took what looked like the easy way in and had all their tires turned into rubber spaghetti.
The car was really hard to control, but Helena could only half focus on controlling it. The other half of her brain was hard at work looking at the many signs that graced the chemical plant. She was looking for tank number 45. "12… 14… 15... On the other side, ah, there is a system to it," she mumbled as she read the signs.
Finally she pulled over at tank number 45, which revealed itself to be what looked like a huge silo surrounded by a myriad of pipes leading in and out of it. She dashed out of the car, making sure that she had left nothing personal behind and ran towards a stairwell that led up into the maze of pipes.
A security guard huffing from running came down the stairs towards her, while keeping his hands on his still holstered gun. "Hold it right there," he yelled out. Helena felt bad for doing it, but she jumped up the stairs leading right in front of him, and delivered two precise strikes to each side of his fat neck, collapsing the guy to the ground. He would be out for a while, she reasoned after checking to make sure he would be alright before continuing up the stairs.
She was utterly lost. The security and probably the police guided by the still overhead helicopter wouldn't be far behind. And her wristwatch said 13.40. She had less than five minutes to find the chemical bomb or the city would be gassed the current wind blew towards downtown not a good thing at all.
Her fine tuned senses caught the sound of someone moving close by. Quickly she ducked around a pipe and found a technician working on some panel with a couple of earphones on. She reached up and pulled them out. "Hey, what the…" The man's angry words died on his lips, when he saw her.
"I need to find where section 511 and 47 cross. NOW! " She commanded.
"Alright," the guy said reluctantly and began leading the way.
"Fast or the city will be covered in a cloud of gas," she warned. The guy seemed to understand and he picked up his pace.
"It is down there," he explained pointed down to the bottom of a stairwell. Helena didn't have any more time to waste.
She jumped down the center of the stairwell landing with catlike ease in the blacked out area. Her eyes easily compensated using the ambient light.
Two canisters were strapped to a couple of pipes. A small digital timer was ticking down. Its red LED display was glaring at her with its two zeroes and low number of seconds as she reached for the canisters. She wasted no time with subtlety.
Helena tore the canisters of the pipes and while lugging their weight launched into a powerful leap taking her up again.
The counters were nearing ten.
She dashed towards the first glimpse of sunlight.
The counters were at 5.
She skidded to a stop and let go of the canisters letting them sail through the air with the remainder of her speed and the push her gave the chemical bomb with on the way.
It flew over her black car. Security people and police cars were closing in. The counters reached zero.
A massive thermal reaction splashed all over her car. The intense heat reached her all the way up at her position near the tank. Forethought or maybe luck made her jump backwards into safety. The remaining gasoline in the car couldn't dodge, so it ignited along with most of the car sending a fireball up past her former position.
Helena struggled to her feet and quickly sought a way out of the chemical plant, before the police or someone else came to ask any strange question. She wondered somewhere in the back of her mind, how she would explain to Barbara that she had destroyed the replacement car, when the other one was still being put back together from her last mission.
The shot glasses was flowing out of the bar in a steady stream and Harold the current manager looked rather happy with himself as the comfortable buzz of customers made the Dark Horse into a cacophony for her sensitive ears.
At least Barbara hadn't yelled, when she had finally finished telling about her adventure today, she had instead rewarded her with a congratulations and a night off from patrols. This was a welcome thing, when she had gotten up so early in the morning.
"I need 4 of beers and a bottle of water for table 7," one of the waitresses said. Helena quickly got the beers up and popped the caps off, then swung around and snapped a water bottle from the freezer. Table 7 was one of the big customers of the evening. A group of 5 young business men, looking like they were celebrating something, were buying and tipping like mad.
"Hey honey, why don't you give me a kiss?" A very inebriated customer suggested and grabbed her hand as she was handing him his drink.
"Let go of my hand or lose the fingers," she suggested through clenched teeth after stopping herself from instantly pounding the guy down. Her shift was ending in an hour, but she had a headache and she didn't feel like being nice anymore.
"No, I want you, and what I want I get," the black haired man suggested, while his breath nearly told her all about what he had eaten and drunk the entire day. She wrinkled her nose, grabbed his fingers and pressed them hard against each other. He let go with a surprised and pained look.
"Now scoot, before I get mean," she said and let go of his hand. The guy immediately took a swing at her, which he telegraphed by his entire upper body. She ducked out of it with ease and looked up to catch the eye of their bouncer. She didn't want to blow her cover by putting a guy to sleep Huntress-style in the middle of her workplace.
Charlie, the bouncer, quickly made it over to her, while she ducked around a couple more pathetic attempts at hitting her. He picked up the drunken customer, which his friends protested against, and carried him outside. The friends of drunken guy got up and made loud protests over their friend getting thrown out, which only led to Charlie giving them a rather pointed tour the same way their friend went.
The rest of her shift had gone fairly well, still she wanted nothing more than go home and put her feet into a hot bath, while enjoying a couple of TV shows recorded during the day and evening. She walked out onto the street and looked forward the short path leading home, when she became suddenly aware of eyes and people closing in on her.
All her senses went on alert and all thoughts of leisure disappeared from her mind. Someone didn't know it yet, but they were playing a dangerous game with their health. She looked behind her and found the drunken guy from earlier and his friends running towards her. She quickly rolled over the hood of a car, getting out of their way. One of the guys changed course and headed around the car to come at her alone.
She quickly kicked him in the stomach then used her foot in his stomach as support to launch a flip kick as she brought her other foot up, kicked him in the head, flipped over and landed on her feet. He immediately went down. Helena hoped this would cool down her attackers.
"We're gonna fuck you up," the guy that had grabbed her in the car yelled and pulled out a knife. Helena gave him a wide smile. She felt the adrenaline pump through her system. She was going to hurt these guys and she was going to feel good doing it.
They split up to come at her from both sides, but she decided to even the odds a bit more, so she jumped over the two guys coming at her from the right. She reached over her back, grabbed someone's coat and tossed him over her head sending him against the wall, before they could react.
She spun around, but still got the other guy's punch in her shoulder. Helena hammered a fist into his solar plexus sending him gasping to the ground, while she danced away to avoid a knife slash.
A hand grabbed the guy with the knife's shoulder spun him around and someone punched him solidly in the jaw. The guy staggered back towards Helena. She spun into a low circle sweeping his feet out under him and sending him to the ground. The last guy looked around and started running. Helena contemplated going after him, but decided instead to look at her mysterious rescuer.
He was a black man with a slightly more pale skin tone than usual. He was dressed in a very expensive tailored suit. She recognized him as one of the big tippers from table 7 that had spent the entire night drinking only water. He had both a kind of charm and a hint of inner pain in his eyes that she found interesting. "Thank you," she said.
"I saw, what they were doing. I had to step in. My friends have already called the police, so why don't we spend the wait until they arrive doing something pleasant like exchanging names," he suggested with a smile. Helena smiled at his cocky approach, but she wasn't about to fall for it. She did however realize that this time she had to deal with the police no matter how she felt about their effectiveness.
"Sure, Helena Kyle," she said and offered him her hand.
"Jesse Reese," he answered and gave her a warm handshake.
"You're a good fighter," he said and indicated the guys she had taken down on her own.
She realized that she might have gone overboard on the guy she threw, but hoped he would chalk it up to adrenaline. "I am a bartender in downtown New Gotham, I wouldn't have lasted a day in this job, if I wasn't trained in martial arts. Trust me, this is nothing, you should see, what our bouncer would've done to them," she explained, while thinking that she could take out the boxing trained bodybuilder they used as a bouncer with her left hand.
"True enough, there are way too many thugs in this town," he said, while they heard the siren approach.
The police had arrived and they gave their statements, while her attackers were carted off to detention. Finally she was allowed to go, so she headed over towards the door to her apartment, when she heard Jesse call out, "see you around, Helena Kyle." She turned around with creased eyebrows, but Jesse had already gotten into an expensive town car with his friends. She shrugged and opened the door.
Jesse Reese leaned back in his seat and stared out into the night of New Gotham. "So this is the town that your family used to rule," one of his associates commented.
"Yes, there hasn't been any kind of decent organization here, since the last syndicate was crushed by that Batman guy 7 years ago," another of his associates replied.
"Which is why the syndicate has decided to set up shop in town," he reminded them.
"We need to find out about the rumors that there are other interests also moving into town. There will be trouble with the remainders of Russian and Italian mobs. The gangs are used to autonomy and there is supposed to be metahumans in town," his third associate reminded them all.
"Positive thinking everyone, if this goes well for Jesse, he'll able to follow in his father's footsteps, rebuild his empire, and really move up in standing within the syndicate," the first one reminded them all. Jesse reminded himself to smile as if he relished this thought.
