Chapter 24: Plan B

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"Let me think, let me think."

Robin put his hands to his temples and held them there as the rest of us held their breath. After a minute, people started getting restless. Then Robin dropped his hands and smiled.

"Yes, that ought to work."

He fiddled with his headset. "O, this is R. We have no video, repeat no video. L planted a Trojan Horse on us."

Faintly, I heard Oracle's voice emerge from the headset speakers. "Shit, kid, what do we do now?"

"I need Z here. N will have to do without her. And tell N that he's on deck. What I've got planned is going to trigger a massive response."

"Got it. Good luck, pipsqueak."

Robin swiveled around to face us. "Okay, what we're going to do is...."

Zatanna appeared in a puff of smoke. She looked tired; the brief rest she had gotten earlier was clearly wearing off. She brushed a loose strand of hair back and tried to smile.

"Somebody call a cab?"

"Zatanna, can you 'poof'," he glanced around the room, doing a tally of some sort, "five people over to where Congress is meeting?"

"First of all, kid, I don't 'poof', I teleport; and second, five people, that's a lot."

"We need you, Zatanna. This is all going to go into the pot if you can't do this."

Zatanna smiled. "I seem to remember Batman saying something very similar. That's what got me into this mess in the first place. Okay, I'll do it, but I won't be good for much afterwards."

"I need you to 'poof' straight back here and then 'poof' Blood and me someplace. That'll be it, I promise."

The strand of hair had come loose again. Zatanna pushed it back impatiently. "I don't 'poof', I... oh, forget it. Yeah, I'll do it, but that will really be it. I won't have anything left after that."

"Great." He turned back to the rest of us. "Mrs. Ross, Ms. Lane, Congressman, Senator, I need you to go to Congress and tell them what you've seen. Make sure they know what's happening. Then stall the vote as long as possible. There will be one more witness, but it may take me awhile to break him free. Don't let them vote until he gets there."

"My husband," Lana began.

"I'll do what we can for him," I assured her.

"We all will," Robin added, "but if you don't do your part, it won't matter."

Lana nodded. Robin looked at Batgirl. "Your job is keeping them safe. Luthor is bound to have someone planted there against this possibility. I don't know how many there are, I don't know who they are, but you've got to stop them. Understood?"

Batgirl nodded.

"All right, boys and girls," Zatanna called out. "Cluster close around me. Good. STEL OG OT SSERGNOC!"

All six of them disappeared in a puff of smoke.

Robin looked at me. "Diana..."

"I'm going back for Gypsy and Batman."

He nodded as if he had known I would say that. Maybe he had.

"Sorry, Diana," Jason Blood replied. "You can't get out. You aren't a mage and only a powerful mage could get through the shield I threw around this room. I can't drop it for you without leaving the room unprotected. That is a spell that can only be cast once."

"I don't use magic," I told him, "I am magic. These," I held up my bracelets, "were forged from the Aegis of Zeus. I think they will protect me even from your magic."

"If you're wrong," Jason protested, "you could die."

"Everyone dies sometime," I told him, "even you. This seems as good a time as any."

Robin pulled out a familiar ring out of a pocket and handed it to me.

"This is the real kryptonite ring. We shouldn't need it with that shield of Blood's, but I suspect you will."

"Thank you."

I stepped up to the doorway and put my hand on the knob. Pain shot up my arm, which felt as if it were reverting to the clay I was formed from. I flung the door open, crossed my wrists before me and stepped through. The pain was indescribable. It shot up my legs, down my arms and reverberated in my head. I could feel my extremities turn back into clay and I took another step while I still could and then another. I wondered how deep this shield was. My legs were melting out from under me but I stumped forward.

And then the pain was gone and I staggered under the sudden release. My limbs were normal once more; I suspected the transformation had been psychological rather than physical. I looked around. There was no one in this corridor, but I could hear numerous voices. I suspected that, once I rounded the corner, I would no longer be alone. I steeled myself and stepped forward.

There were soldiers all up and down the corridor, moving forward by bounds while others covered them from every cross corridor. They opened fire at the sight of me. I crossed my bracelets in front of me, lowered my head and charged down the corridor, bowling over soldiers right and left. A plasma blast tore open my right shoulder; I ignored it. Another set my hair on fire, others bounced off my bracelets and back into the mass of soldiers. Their armor should protect them, I hoped, and if not – it was in the hands of the Fates. I would not stop for anything.

The fire slackened; I was in among the soldiers and the others could not fire without hitting their own men. One man stepped into my path; I backhanded him out of the way. Another tried to grab my foot; I stepped on him. One man fired from behind me, frying a man in front of me and searing my left side with pain. I kept going. Then the fifth cross-corridor opened on either side of me.

I turned left. There were fewer soldiers here and few of the soldiers in the other corridor could fire down it. I took to the air, dodging or deflecting the blasts of those before me with my bracelets. The blasts from behind me were wild and inaccurate. I zoomed down the corridor.

I still didn't know where exactly to find Batman and Gypsy. I concentrated on listening, trying to hear any sign of them over the whine of plasma bolts.

Suddenly, I heard Gypsy call out, "Diana, stop! In here!"

I stopped and looked around. Plasma blasts caromed around me. Where the voice seemed to come from was solid wall. I stepped up to it and then took another step. I went through.

Beyond was a room. There were gaping holes in the walls and what furniture there might have been was in rubble. Near the center of the room, Captain Marvel was flailing around at nothing. Gypsy leaned against a relatively intact wall. There were bodies everywhere, but only one drew my eye. In a corner, in a pool of blood, Bruce lay dying.

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The pounding on the magical shield grew steadily louder. Short range plasma fire or a Bizarro, Robin didn't know. It didn't matter. He finished unrolling the DSL cable and connected it to the laptop. Then he plugged it into one of the computers. He turned the laptop back on.

"Why do that?" asked Jason Blood. "Won't the virus just shut it down again?"

Zatanna, who had been sitting with her head between her knees, looked up.

"Sure, but now it's hooked up to the White House intranet." The laptop screen went blank and the letters "SUCKER" formed across its screen, and across every monitor in the room. Then all the computers turned off.

Robin grinned. "Luthor's virus just shut down every computer in this complex. Including those for the security systems. The White House security force just lost all their sensors. They're blind. And so is Luthor."

He looked at Zatanna. "So, Zatanna, do you have to know where someone is in order to 'poof' over to them?"

Author's Notes: Jason Blood is, of course, the human incarnation of The Demon and is over a thousand years old.