Tama swings her hoverboard into a right turn and dodges through a tangle of causeways, doing loops and barrel rolls just for the hell of it. Zooming around on the hoverboard is one of the best things about this job. Not a lot of people have hoverboards – the only kind of control system that's feasible for such a vehicle is a synaptic control system, which is really expensive to make. Tama's is shaped like a surfboard, except without the fin at the bottom, and it's the same color as her armor (red or black, depending on which electropigment she's using at the time). Magnetic clamps keep her boots stuck to the board while she's flying, so she can't get knocked off of it. Even if she does, though, she has a magnetic harpoon and nylon tether in one of her gauntlets. Half her suit of splintmail is made of interesting little devices like that.
"Will you please stop doing that? You're making me dizzy over here," says a voice in her headdress. That's Alex, the guy who sits at the big computer at the local base, using the sensors in her suit and mask to look over her shoulder. He does all the complicated tech and intel stuff – monitoring police bands, getting building schematics, telling her where there's some trouble to deal with. She only met him a couple of weeks ago, and they're still getting used to working with each other. Tama obliges him by cutting the antics and flying at a slightly saner speed.
"Sorry. I'm just kind of wound up, y'know?" She passes over one of the roads that winds in and out among the high reaches of the skyscrapers, and waves to a truck driver who is gaping at her in astonishment. She hasn't engaged her black electropigments, so her bright red armor and white headdress make her easily visible. There's no need to be stealthy at the moment.
Then she hears a hovercraft engine somewhere behind her – it has that distinctive sound that's somewhere between a car and a jet plane. She twists around to look at it, making sure it's not a cop flyer or something else she should be worried about. And she wishes she'd been in stealth mode after all.
The sleek, black-and-red craft about ten meters behind her is more worrisome than a cop flyer. She could easily shake off one of those. But the Batmobile is piloted by someone closer to her own level. She feels her heart rate increase, and the cold tingle of fear in her abdomen and limbs. The black craft is maintaining a steady distance from her. Is he following her? She can't tell for sure. He must have noticed her by now, since she doesn't exactly blend in.
She turns her attention back in the direction she's heading and considers making a break for it. "Go slow," Alex tells her over the transmitter. "If you run, he'll definitely chase you." He had a good point.
"Well, if I shouldn't run, then what should I do?" she asks.
"Take the next left, go into blackout mode and descend. If he follows you closer to ground level, you'll have greater maneuverability on your side."
Tama follows his advice. She turns left, then depresses a button on the inside of her left wrist. Her board, armor, and outfit grow darker and duller until they are completely black. She can't see her own face, but she knows that her mask has gone completely black as well. Then she starts on a slow, leisurely descent, trying to stay in the shadows and looking up now and then to see if the Batmobile is tailing her.
It isn't. He hasn't even tried to follow her. This is a relief, and an encouraging sign. But Tama's not going to take any more chances. She's going to watch her back more carefully from now on.
~***~
"So she knows now?" Max's voice isn't exactly disbelieving, but it comes close. Terry can't see her face because she's on an audio linkup this time.
"Yeah. I'd been planning to tell her about it some time, but…"
"..but always later."
"Exactly. I wonder what the old man'll say."
"I bet he'll be surprised," Max predicts.
Terry doubts it. "I don't think so. He'll probably wonder why it took her so long to figure it out."
"You want to bet?" Max says mischievously.
"Do you mean it? Because I'll take you up on…hold on!" Terry's just turned onto Central Boulevard – or, rather, the airspace directly above the Boulevard – and has just caught sight of a person who has been all over the news, in amateur footage, hasty camera shots and police artist renderings for the past two days. Kitsune.
She's several meters ahead of him, zipping through the air on a hoverboard the same color as her armor. For a couple of seconds, she doesn't seem to notice him. Then she turns around and he can see her painted face and the two green, glowing slits of her eyes. Terry gets the feeling that she's looking right at him – but that's impossible, she can't see through the Batmobile's tinted windshield. Or maybe she's got some visual equipment in that mask of hers that lets her see through the tint. Either way, he feels that she's staring right at him, and he doesn't like it.
"What is it? What's going on?" Max asks him. Of course she can't see what it is.
Outside, Kitsune turns around again to concentrate on flying. On the next break in the buildings to her left, she peels away in that direction. Terry wonders if he should follow her, wonders what the old man would have him do, but then he remembers what Barbara Gordon said – I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt…unless she crosses the line. He decides, tentatively, to do the same. After all, if Mr. Wayne isn't around to give him advice, Commissioner Gordon is the next best person to turn to. So he doesn't turn to go after her, just looks to the left so he can see where she's going. He can't, though, because she seems to have vanished into thin air.
"Are you okay?" Max asks him, making him jump in his seat.
"Sorry. You won't believe who I just saw… "
"Of course I won't, if you don't tell me." Terry imagines her rolling her eyes as she says this.
"It was Kitsune. On a hoverboard. I think she was just as surprised as I was."
"Whoa. Where'd she go?"
"I don't know. She turned a corner and disappeared. Somehow I don't think she wants to talk."
"You mean you didn't follow her?" Max sounds utterly disappointed.
"The police commissioner is taking a wait-and-see approach right now," he explains. Max doesn't know that Barbara Gordon used to be Batgirl, or that she knows any other Batman-related secrets. He doesn't think that it would be right to tell someone about that without her express permission. Knowing Max, she'll probably find it out on her own one day, but that doesn't mean that Terry is going to do something that he considers a betrayal of her trust. "And so am I."
"Because that's what the police are doing, or because…I don't know, to show some professional courtesy or something?" Professional courtesy. That's a good one. It's practically nonexistent these days, and Terry doesn't think that it was ever a big thing with people in his line of work to begin with.
Terry hears the wailing of an ambulance siren up ahead and getting closer. He nudges the Batmobile to the right a little so that the ambulance will have plenty of room to pass by as it goes in the opposite direction. Once it's out of the way, shooting off behind him while the Doppler effect brings the sound of its siren down to a lower pitch even as it fades in volume. In a few seconds its swallowed up in the background of city noise. "None of the above. I'm leaving her alone because the old man says so."
"Shoulda figured," Max says. There is a brief silence, one which Terry doesn't fill because he can sense that Max is going to say something else, as soon as she can find the right words. "But if it were up to you…"
He has to think about that for a little bit, because the pros and cons involved are almost perfectly matched in his mind. There's just enough difference between them, though, for him to pick one. "I'd leave her alone. I didn't like it when the police were chasing me." Terry pauses for a moment of consideration, during which he looks down on the city below him. "It's the least I can do, since I've been there before. Let's just hope it turns out to be the right thing to do."