DC Infinity Presents
Batgirl # 8
Nature's War
Part 1
Out of the Bottle…
Thomas Wayne High School
"…and everyone remember, your work sheet is due next class," Professor Lutz opened the door and said, to the audible relief of most everyone present, "Dismissed!"
The school day finally over, some eighteen students all but ran out of the class room, eager to be anywhere but here.
Cassandra Cain, however, was the exception. She remained in the room, silently, using every last ounce of training she'd received at the tutelage of both David Cain and The Batman to remain unnoticed despite the fact that she was the only other person in the entire room, sitting in plain sight.
As a matter of fact, Cassandra might not have been discovered at all if she hadn't, consciously, cleared her throat only moments before the teacher had finished packing away his papers.
"Oh, Cassandra!" The Professor took a moment to compose himself, startled and more than a little surprised to find that he wasn't alone in the room and hadn't even noticed it, "I didn't see you there. How can I help you?"
Cass took a moment to swallow her pride, "I…would like to hand in…the sheet. Do the assignment. Please…?"
For a moment mixed with equal parts fear and pride, Cassandra could see how her teacher was proud of her. Though she feared failing the assignment, it did Cass' self esteem wonders that her teacher might actually be proud of her in some way, no matter how small.
But that moment broke, and Cassandra could see him answer no before the words left his mouth.
"I appreciate that you're willing to do the same work that other students are doing Cassandra, but that's not your education plan," explained the Professor, "finishing the assignment isn't what you need to be doing, there are other parts of your education you need to be focusing on more."
"But…I can do it!" Cassandra asserted, more out of misplaced pride than conviction.
"If that's true, then there's no point in you completing the assignment," observed Professor Lutz, "if I were you, I'd focus on my other studies so that you can do the assignments in the future, okay?"
"I…," Cassandra tried to come up with a counter argument, but that little bit of fear that she might actually win, and be required to finish the work sheet (and then fail amazingly) was all it took to keep her from creating even the most simple of sentences, "…okay."
Cassandra grabbed her backpack and slinked out of the room, shoulders slumped in defeat.
A big part of her really wanted to be allowed to do the assignment, to be held to the same standards as everyone else. Cassandra loathed the fact that she was held to a different bar than other students, but at the same time, she found it relieving. Could she, would she ever meet those basic standards?
"Hey Cass! Class is over, you're supposed to be giddy!" Josh Clark was all smiles as he strode towards his friend, "you wanna join me and Zoe in the library?"
Cass stole a glance at her watch, and saw that she had some time until Tatsu picked her up and little else to do, "…sure."
"How're your classes going?"
Josh asked casually, but Cass still felt too embarrassed to answer with anything other than, "Going…okay. Teachers are nice."
"Well, hopefully they'll get a personality soon," Josh remarked as they entered the library. He looked around for a moment before spotting their friend, and in a voice completely inappropriate for a library, yelled, "Hey good lookin'!
"…I swear I'll kill you one day," muttered Zoe. Though she was by no means shy, she didn't much care to be the center of attention either.
"Can you do it after you help me with my English paper?" Josh imitated a puppy dog expression half heartily, "pretty please?"
"Oh spare me," Cassandra slid into the farthest seat at the table, unnoticed as she intended. Pulling out her math book and assignment from that class (her math teacher actually allowed her to complete some assignments. She didn't know what to make of that, yet), she sat off to the side, listening to her friends talk.
"So, what exactly is your English assignment?" Zoe asked.
"I gotta write what I think about the whole 'Nature vs. Nurture' debate."
"Well, what do you think?"
A shrug, "Dunno."
"…thank you kindly for enforcing jock stereotypes for another two decades."
Cassandra found herself listening to the conversation despite the fact she wanted to very much be anywhere else but here, listening to her friends (unknowingly) debating and passing judgment on her life and potential.
"How extreme are the cases you're allowed to use as an example?"
"He said we could use any example we wanted or could think of."
"Well, I guess you could use some examples to chew on. Let's start off with an example of nurturing… to use the word liberally. There was this one case with this girl now called Genie…ya know, the whole bottle thing. She was locked up in a room by her father since she was twenty months old. She was still a baby when he basically shut her out of the larger world…"
Cassandra's discomfort with the conversation quickly sky rocketed. Unbidden, memories of her childhood slid past her conscious mind, all of them happy. But she was smart enough to know that's not the way things should have been.
"Wait, he locked her up in a room as a little baby?"
"Her dad was a real freakin' monster, yeah. Can you imagine any father who would do that to their own child? To completely seal their kid off from the world?" Zoe asked, completely rhetorically, "unfortunately, being a parent doesn't automatically make someone any less abusive."
Cassandra bit her lip and wished she knew a way to turn off the part of her training that made her listen to everyone and everything within earshot, now listening almost unwillingly. Images of David Cain hovered at the edges of her mind.
"Her father never really talked to her once, just barked at her like an animal and kept her locked in a small room until she was thirteen years old. He never talked to her, never allowed her mom or brother to see her, nothing. He kept her completely isolated, and she never learned to talk or express herself."
"I really don't think that's a good case to use."
"Well, like I said it's an extreme case," Zoe replied, "I mean, after that much abuse and parents as screwed up as hers, it's not like she had a lot of hope for a good life to begin with, unfortunately."
Cassandra, her self esteem already holding on by a thread and unable to bear the discussion a moment longer, stood up so quickly she accidently banged the table with her knees, instantly drawing her friends attention. Scrambling to put her things back, she squeaked out, "I have to go."
"Uhh…okay. Oh yeah!" Josh snapped his fingers, "girls basket ball try-outs are in two weeks, Cass. You ought to give it a shot!"
"Josh, she's busy enough as is!" Zoe snapped.
"Hey, it's not the SATs!"
"Damn it, Josh!"
Cassandra hurried away, the guilt of making her friends fight over her only compounding her misery. She exited the school and wondered around the school parking lot, waiting for Tatsu.
…who had already arrived, Cassandra noted sourly.
Cassandra made a point to approach with all possible stealth, and unsurprisingly managed to startle Tatsu when she grabbed the door and swung it open.
"You forgot to call," Cassandra said sharply.
"Slipped my mind," Tatsu replied evenly, well aware Cassandra could detect any lies, "have you completed your homework?"
"Yes," answered Cassandra, her voice revealing far more distress than she intended.
"Anything you'd like to talk about?" asked Tatsu, concerned.
"No, nothing," answered Cassandra vehemently.
"We'll talk later then," Tatsu reached into the backseat and pulled out a small laptop. Handing it to Cassandra, she said, "Oracle has a mission for you."
Cassandra's attitude brightened considerably as she flipped the laptop open, and saw Barbara Gordon's face looking back.
"Hey, Cass! How was school?"
"…fine."
"That bad, huh?" Oracle's voice was sympathetic, but Cass still didn't want to hear it right now, "well, I've got something to take your mind off it. Over the last couple of days, one Lexcorp building has been cutting back security guard shifts and cutting back on allowed overtime. By itself, that's not significant but this has happened several times in the past right before break ins…"
"Luthor allows them in," Cassandra knew instinctively that no one robbed a man of Lex Luthor's statue on a regular basis without his permission. He'd make object lessons of them on principle, "…but why?"
"Hard to say," Oracle replied, "Lexcorp's been dealing with secret, black-ops projects for decades now, but when Luthor was publically exposed, a lot of those projects were suspended by the government following inspections that are still pending."
"They want to avoid embarrassment," Cassandra said evenly.
"Right. And Luthor, in response, has been allowing people to break into his buildings and make off with classified projects," explained Oracle, "that's bad enough on its own, but something else popped on the radar that may be related. A meta-human corpse was found some ten blocks from Gotham's main Lexcorp research building. The DNA matched that of Paul Kirk, a deceased hero. The body was obviously a clone, and Paul Kirk clones were used exclusively by the Council as muscle."
Cassandra searched her memory and came up blank. Not wanting to start a mission without all relevant information, without the slightest bit of embarrassment she asked, "What are The Council?"
"Who are," Oracle corrected, "Or in this case, who were. They were a leftist extremist group built around eight scientists. They rescued a World War Two hero by the name of Paul Kirk, Manhunter, after a hunting accident and saved his life, even going so far as to give him an accelerated healing ability."
"They wanted him to act as…their agent," deduced Cassandra easily. While the motives of Gotham's sociopaths and themed maniacs sometimes eluded her, the working minds of professional criminals was second nature to her.
She was trained by one of the finest criminals alive, after all.
"Right. They also cloned him, using his DNA to create their foot soldiers. Manhunter eventually rebelled and along with Batman and some other allies, stopped the Council. Their base was destroyed and at the time, they were thought completely destroyed. However, they turned up again later, this time using clones of the villain Sportsmaster and employing a genetically engineered woman called Nemesis, who like Manhunter turned against them. This time, they were put down brutally by Nemesis' new allies, Black Adam and a few others about a year and a half ago."
"How did they survive?" asked Cassandra.
"We still don't know, actually. Batman himself even red marked the file, the first time around."
Cassandra hid her surprise. 'Red Marked' in the Batclan generally meant that the case was all but closed. Batman, or someone he trusted, had launched follow up investigations or examined the scene, and determined that the possibility of return was unlikely, even in the world they lived in.
Batman wasn't infallible, Cassandra knew that, but she was still surprised that an organization as large and influential as The Council had somehow returned without even Batman having a single suspicion of their return.
"So they may be returning again," Cassandra mused aloud.
"Or they've already have, and are dealing with Luthor," Oracle relied, "either way, we need to know."
"Anymore information about… the dead clone?"
"No, the medical examiner is amazingly slow putting his final reports into the data base. The preliminary reports indicate the killings were done with some skill, though."
"Understood. Name and address of the invest…investing…"
"Investigating detective," Oracle finished, "it'll be on your cave computer in a second, along with directions to his residence."
As the car pulled into the driveway, Cassandra could almost feel all her worries and weaknesses melt away.
&&&
Peter Akins hummed himself a little tune as the microwave prepared his popcorn. His shift had finished little less than two hours ago and he had an entire weekend to unwind, and being a Gotham City police officer, Peter knew he'd need every second.
True, the Detective still had dreaded 'Cape Case' hanging over his head, but he knew that beating his head against the wall, figuratively, wouldn't get him anywhere. He need some time to relax, unwind, allow his mind to wander and deal with something else.
That's why, in his small, two bedroom apartment, instead of having a guest room no one used, Peter had created his own entertainment room. Thirty Two inch TV screen, surround sound and a DVD collection that would be the envy of his local Video Warehouse, it was pretty damn good for your average cop, Peter thought to himself.
Once his popcorn was done, he popped in a DVD of 'Chinatown' with a young Jack Nicholson, sat back in his recliner and for the next twenty minutes, allowed the world to melt away in favor of a Hollywood-land created illusion.
Naturally, when he had just started to really get into the movie, there was a knock. Peter sighed, paused the DVD…and quickly realized that the knock he'd heard sounded wrong, somehow. Maybe it was his imagination at work, but it didn't sound like it came from the front door.
Removing his weapon from his shoulder harness (a good Gotham cop was never three feet away from his weapon, they said, and a great cop was never farther than a foot, according to his uncle), he walked into his living room, gun pointed forward…and saw a young girl dressed all in black, casually riffing through the reports he'd brought home.
"Freeze!"
Batgirl turned around casually, not the least bit concerned about the gun pointed at her.
"I'd like your help," said Batgirl plainly.
"Breaking and entering's a crime and I'm a cop, little girl," Peter spat, "hands up!"
"I'd like your help," Batgirl repeated, "the case you're working on…I'm investigating as well."
"Name one reason why I should help you," Peter growled, weapon still trained on Batgirl, "it was your people making an end run around my uncle that undermined him as commissioner!"
"Because I have training you don't. Because…I can go places you can't," Batgirl looked over the Detective with a critical eye, "and…I'll owe you a favor."
Detective Peter Akins carefully reviewed his situation. In all likelihood, she had already read his notes and though he held a fair opinion of himself, he knew that the chances of successfully arresting this girl were slim to none. Not without backup.
He quickly came to realize that the only way to turn this situation into something positive would be to actually take Batgirl up on her offer. He had nothing to lose… and perhaps something to gain.
"Alright," Peter swallowed his pride, holstered his weapon but left the safety off, "what do you want to know?"
"How was he killed?"
Peter looked at Batgirl with a critical eye, "I'd have thought you read the report."
"Reports rarely tell the full story," Cassandra said smoothly. It was a line Batman had insisted she memorized for situations like this.
"Right," Peter liked to think that his reports did in fact, tell the whole story, "as best as we can figure, our vic was killed by a professional. There was slight scar tissue around all his vital organs. He had an advanced healing ability, but that only did so much. The punishment his body suffered was enough to kill twenty men."
"You didn't find the crime scene, did you?"
Peter shook his head, "I doubt I'd find it without an army of CSI people and a search warrant for the entire twenty block area."
"Anything else?"
"Actually yeah, there is. The guy had all the right equipment, and at least looked professional…but there were virtually no defensive wounds that the coroner could find."
"The healing factor…"
"Even taking that into account, there were no tears on his suit that would indicate he fought back," Peter explained, "but at the same time, this guy didn't die an easy death and almost certainly had combat training. But whoever killed him somehow circumvented that like it wasn't even there. How, I've no idea."
Batgirl took in the Detective's thoughts, and in her mind, ran it past her briefing. Within seconds, she had an answer.
"Thank you," Batgirl turned towards the door, "you've been helpful."
"You know something, don't you?"
"I know many things," Batgirl replied casually, "this…you should know as well."
Peter blinked, wondering what Batgirl was talking about. Then, that proverbial light went off in his head, and everything clicked into place.
"His trainer killed him! Had to be! That's how he knew how to kill the vic, and how he could do it so effortlessly!"
Peter looked towards where Batgirl had been only moments before, and saw not a trace.
&&&
M and K Anderson Incorporated, on the surface, didn't look like a building that belonged to the world famous Lex Luthor. For one thing, the company sign was in big, bold neon letters, and the paint was only slightly chipped and weathered. Luthor buildings were kept immaculate, with bold, custom designed signs declaring to the world just who their owner was.
But at the same time, Luthor was no fool. He had no desire to announce his important holdings in Gotham. Though he didn't fear Batman more than a certain Man of Steel, Luthor knew full well of the madmen that roamed Gotham's criminal element. And though Lex was confident that he could crush anyone of them without too much effort, he also knew that his name alone wasn't enough protection to prevent a break-in in the first place. Instead, he relied on anonymity and ignorance to protect his Gotham installations.
Naturally, that safeguard was nothing to the Bat-clan, and even less to Oracle.
Batgirl stood guard at an adjoining building, steeped in shadows as her eyes scanned for anything out of the ordinary, anything amiss.
After thirty odd minutes, her vigilance was rewarded. A janitorial van pulled into the garage, but the men who stepped were anything but janitors. Their body language was tight, coiled like a snake readying a strike.
Four men stepped out, three of whom looked remarkably alike. Batgirl didn't need a DNA test to know that they were all clones. Their stances were that of practiced, skilled men of violence. They were aware of their surroundings, but not on edge. Their breathing was quickened, but by no means panicked. They were no doubt worried about the man who killed their comrade, but were still determined to see their mission through.
The young Bat saw the men talking amongst themselves, and she carefully balanced her options. The men were carrying dart guns, and emphasizing how they wanted no deaths (practicality, not humanity. Death always made things worse). Batgirl then saw one man remove a receipt from his pocket, and carefully place it under the front seat.
A false trail, Batgirl realized. They had no intention of returning to the van.
The disciple of the Bat took a moment to evaluate her situation and objective. Her mission was to determine if the Council had indeed returned and these men were her only link to them. If she stopped them now, The Council might pull up stakes and leave Gotham, which meant failing the mission.
Failing the mission was unacceptable.
Batgirl watched the four enter the building, taking note of how they walked and carried themselves. One carried himself with a sense of higher purpose, a mission. Of all of them, his body language was the most confident and assured.
The man with the scar hid a fire of rage underneath curt nods. He looked as if he might explode with the right provocation and not care who was hit.
The third man seemed to have little thoughts to call his own, following in his comrade's heels eagerly, like a puppy following its master. He deferred to the other men so completely it was plain to see, even when they gave him no directions.
The last man though, interested the young crimefighter the most. Beneath a casual calm, there was a slight murmur of deception and anxiety. This man had a secret, that much was plain as day to Batgirl.
Once the men were inside the building, Cassandra fired her grappling hook and swung over to the adjoining roof. From there, she reasoned that she'd be able to hear their getaway vehicle, or, if they left on foot she would be able to better spot them leave.
Ten minutes passed, and Batgirl waited with seasoned patience. She focused her highly trained senses towards the street below, listening for the voices she heard before, or the late night screeching of tires to indicate that the getaway vehicle had arrived.
So focused on the street, the Daughter of Cain almost missed the –whup! whup! whup!- of the approaching helicopter.
Almost.
Batgirl moved into action before she was even consciously away of the approaching helicopter, diving into the shadows behind the roof entrance. As the helicopter approached, she could hear men bounding up the stairs.
"Lets go, lets go, double time!" shouted one of the men.
The four piled into the helicopter smoothly.
Batgirl crouched down and crawled towards the helicopter, still concealed in shadows. As luck would have it, the rear of the helicopter didn't have any lights to dispel the shadows, making it the perfect angle for approach.
If crawling under a rotor blade spinning hundreds of miles per hour could be considered lucky, that is.
Batgirl stole a glance, then dove for the shadows at the end of the copter. The gravel of the roof helped her slide into place perfectly. Crawling quickly with her belly to the ground, Batgirl had just reached the helicopter before it got out of reach. She pulled an electro-magnetic hook, designed by Waynetech for special forces, though it hardly looked like an advanced weapon of any kind. Rather, it looked like what it actually was, just a large round magnet with a leather strap. Housed inside were powerful batteries that stored over eight hours of power. Affixing it to the bottom of the craft soundlessly, Batgirl held on and rose with the aircraft.
Once she was convinced that the men inside the helicopter didn't suspect that they had a hitchhiker, Batgirl took a wire out of her belt, and attached it to the magnetic hook. The wire ran through out her entire belt and allowed her to hang from the magnet without straining her arm by forcing her to rely on only that against the strong upper winds.
As luck would have it, the Gotham night was still and the thieves were taking their time returning to their headquarters, which meant the winds that battered Batgirl at such a height weren't nearly as bad as they could have been.
The ride was almost relaxing, in fact.
Sparing a glance downwards, Batgirl couldn't help but think how small, interchangeable Gotham City looked from the air. The city looked like Cassandra Cain always thought the world should be, one peaceful collection of people, living and working together.
A strafing of bullets across the rear of the helicopter brought Batgirl out of her day dream. Her instincts telling her that she hadn't been found, she scanned the skyline, and saw what looked like a modified helicopter with duel gun turrets approaching fast, silently.
And that was bad news for the helicopter Batgirl was attached to. Almost immediately, it began to list and stumble in the air, and she could hear the engines struggling to complete their job, and keep the aircraft aloft.
"We're going down, brace for impact!"
Even over the dying engines and fierce winds, Batgirl could hear the pilot yelling. Not that she needed to hear him to know the helicopter was doomed.
With only a split second to decide, Batgirl made the only choice she could. She didn't have the ability to help, and the pilot didn't need her extra mass holding onto the underbelly while he tried to make a controlled landing.
Severing the line with a button, Batgirl's hand went to her grappling hook while her mind went to those who had opened fire on the helicopter. They weren't amateurs, that much was certain. The ambush, the use of sound deafening technology, the precision targeting, all spoke of a professional operation.
They weren't amateurs, Batgirl reflected as she fell towards the ground, but they were definitely zealots (Nightwing taught her that word). People ruled by their passions and fears and not logic and reason. Batman reversed, was how Nightwing summarized them.
Firing her grappling hook, Batgirl knew this case was going to get complicated, fast.
&&&
Union Station, Washington D.C.
Martha Fisk was an oddity. She graduated top of her class, excelling with ease and mastering AP classes as if she were the teacher, not the student. With her impressive resume and glowing recommendations, she didn't have to work as a ticket clerk at one of the busiest cities in the world.
But she did it because she liked people, and because this job allowed her to stretch her imagination with every new person that approached her booth. A little bit of small talk was all it took for her to create an entire life for someone.
"One ticket for Gotham, please."
Martha took one glance at her new costumer, and knew she didn't need much of imagination to know that this young lady had had it rough.
The young woman standing at her booth had long, unbrushed, frayed blond hair, deep bags under her eyes, clothes that looked torn and frayed, as if they'd had days of service with no rest.
"That'll be twenty three dollars and seventy two cents," Martha replied.
She watched as the young blond woman reached into her gym bag and Martha's eyes widened as she saw a darkly colored cape and mask. The young woman saw this, and tried to shove the offending items out of view as she took her money out.
Plunking down twenty five dollars and asserting she didn't need any change, the young woman glanced around nervously as Martha printed up her ticket.
"Got friends or family in Gotham?" Martha asked, her curiosity getting the better of her, if only slightly.
The young woman took the ticket and with a sad smile, said, "A friend….I think. I hope…"
&&&
Batgirl pulled herself up over the edge of the roof, and took a moment to access the situation while her grappling gun reeled back in its hook.
The helicopter carrying the Council agents had crashed four roofs away. The men were struggling to pull themselves out as the attack helicopter came around for another pass. One of the men squeezed out, and armed with duel uzis managed to return fire.
To Batgirl's surprise, the man wasn't aiming to kill, but instead only seemed to want to ward off the attack helicopter. He focused his return fire on the underbelly of the cockpit, even as he took a few hits himself that might kill a normal man.
Batgirl took off in a dash as the helicopter peeled off. As she got closer, she could see that the crash landing had claimed the life of the pilot. He too was clearly a clone of Paul Kirk, but apparently his healing factor wasn't enough to fix shrapnel wedged in the heart.
One death because of those zealots already. Batgirl's heart seethed.
"They're going to come around for another pass!" yelled the uzi packing clone to his brothers, "get the goods out of here, I'll cover you!"
"Look out!"
Batgirl's foot crashed into the back of the man's head, but to her surprise, the man only staggered, dropping one gun.
"Go!" he yelled to the three. Batgirl knocked the gun hand upwards with her left hand, while she jammed the fingers of her right hand into the soft muscle underneath her foe's armpit. The pain made him release the gun, but he swung his left fist, aiming for Batgirl's head.
Batgirl leaned backwards to avoid the blow, but she wasn't fast enough to avoid the right kick aimed at taking her head off. Crossing her arms to guard her left, she spread her feet and grunted as the boot hit her wrists.
The Daughter of Cain had to take a step back to evaluate the situation. This man was faster and stronger than she was expecting, and that in turn threw her timing, offense and everything else. Glancing over the man's shoulder, she could see three men escaping with a canister of something (nothing good, that much she knew) and knew she couldn't follow them without leaving herself vulnerable.
Still, to the World's Greatest Martial Artist, this was only a minor obstacle. She met eyes with this clone, taking his measure.
"Wait…" The man's voice was barely above that of a whisper, and Batgirl's fist missed the man's face by an inch, "this isn't what it looks like."
A snap kick missed only by half an inch this time…
"I'm working for the government. I can't explain everything later, but you need to take a dive!"
Batgirl wanted to curse her luck as this case seemed to spiral out of control at breakneck speeds. Her ability to read body language meant that she knew that the man standing in front of her was telling the honest truth.
Batgirl threw a bad punch and tipped forward, off balance. Her foe capitalized on her mistake, bringing his knee up to meet her stomach and then nailing her in the face with his flattened palm. He pulled his punch, but Batgirl still saw stars for a moment as she went down.
The clone of Manhunter didn't spare Batgirl a second glance as ran in the direction of the fire escape, after his comrades. To his surprise, he saw one of his self declared 'brothers' at the fire escape, waiting for him.
"Damn it Peter, I said get out of here!"
"I can read lips, Kirk," Peter replied, his hand resting on the gun strapped to his hip.
Kirk's eyes widened, and his face went pale, "Now hold up, let me explain…!"
"I knew it," Peter's hand went to his gun, and Kirk realized it was a bluff only seconds before six shots tore into the chest. Kirk went down, clutching his bullet ridden chest and cursing himself for falling for such a simple ruse.
"You may have dressed like our father," Peter leveled his gun at his victim's head, knowing full well the man's healing factor couldn't regrow grey matter, "but you are nothing like him. You're nothing but a deviant stain on his DNA. On ours."
"I think…my goals are closer to his than yours," Kirk defended with a blood stained smile, "I'm also smarter. She took a dive, dumb ass."
Two batarangs sliced through the air, one knocking the gun from Peter's hand, the second one impaled itself in Peter's shoulder. The man fell back, and Batgirl could hear the man stumbling down the fire escape as she raced to Kirk's side.
"I'm fine, go!" Kirk waved her off, and Batgirl hesitated for only a split second. It wasn't in her nature to leave a dying man, but she could see his flesh knitting back together, staunching the flow of blood.
Batgirl took a look over the edge, and saw her prey racing down the fire escape. Batgirl began calculating her quarry's speed, the distance between them now and the speed needed to close the distance in her mind's eye as she leapt onto the metal rail with her back facing away from the building.
Taking a deep breath, Batgirl took a small, minuscule jump backwards and allowed gravity to do its thing.
One floor slid by, followed by another and another still. In her mind, the young crime fighter was count the tics of seconds for each story to pass by, measured against her momentum and where she expected her target to be.
When the take came, Batgirl stuck her legs out, catching the metal railing. Bending her knees and leaning in slightly, Batgirl bled off some of her speed before flipping backwards, her legs tucked into her chest.
Falling further downwards, Batgirl waited and then swung her entire body back towards the fire escape. Her swing was little more than a nudge towards the fire escape, but it was enough. Reaching out with her hands, Batgirl grabbed the bottom outer bars of the fire escape and pulling up her legs, swung inwards…
Peter, breathing hard, spared a second to look up as he sped down the fire escape. Seeing nothing, he sighed in relief and turned his head just in time to see ebony, steel toed boots swing into his chest.
"Ugh!"
The clone of Manhunter was thrown back against the wall, and in an instant a hurricane of violence descended upon him.
A right hook that bounced his skull against the stone wall, a steel heel that collided with his right knee, staggering him so that he fell into an uppercut, Batgirl's onslaught was unrelenting.
"Wait," Peter just barely managed to parry a punch aimed at his head, but couldn't stop another blow from hitting his liver, "we're on the same side!"
Batgirl didn't hesitate to punch her foe in the head for such a foolish statement. Sure, he believed that what he was saying, but it was just plain insulting that he thought she was so naïve that she'd believe him.
Right now, Batgirl knew that the only way she could make sense of this entire mess was to beat it out of the man standing before her and that's just what she intended to do.
That all changed when she heard automatic weapons fire. Not below her, like she would have expected (apparently Peter's friends were more concerned about their own hides than his) but from above.
Where she had just left a wounded man behind.
Peter didn't…couldn't see Batgirl's anger through the haze of pain he suffered, but he certainly felt it. A dozen more blows, and a single soft touch, fell upon him in less than fourteen seconds, and then Batgirl grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him down the fire escape stairs.
Peter expected her to come after him, but he wanted in amazement as Batgirl swung up towards the roof, to investigate those gunshots no doubt.
"Better him than me," Peter groaned. Clutching his side, he picked himself up and decided to make good on his getaway.
&&&
Batgirl wasn't the least bit surprised by what she saw as she swung up, which was as disappointing as it was infuriating.
The Manhunter clone was fighting a man in an all black uniform that sported a katana and a mask of a horned demon and standing off to the side, watching for an opening with a customized rifle (Batgirl didn't recognize it's make and considering how many rifles her father trained her on growing up, that was saying something) was a woman with fiery red hair and black body armor.
Batgirl immediately recognized them from the files as Asano Nitobe and Christine St. Clair, both close personal friends, who had dedicated their lives to caring on for their fallen friend.
Batgirl would have respected that ideal a lot more, if that hadn't translated into hunting down and killing all of Paul Kirk's clones like dogs in the street.
"That is enough!" Batgirl yelled with a ferocity one would never suspect in Cassandra Cain.
Removing a batarang from her belt, she threw it into the ground between Kirk and Nitobe. Batgirl was already moving as the weapon released a blast of blinding light, and as the two stumbled, trying to regain their vision Batgirl jumped between them and drove them apart with a scissor kick.
"This fight is over," Batgirl declared as she held a clenched fist at both sides.
"You have no idea what you're doing, little girl," Christine leveled her rifle at Kirk, "he's helping resurrect one of the greatest terrorist organizations ever! And to think you dared call yourself Manhunter!"
"You idiots!" Kirk shot back, "Yes, I'm working with people…"
"Clones!" Christine hissed, "of a better man than you could ever hope to be!"
"People," Kirk growled, "trying to resurrect the Council. But I'm infiltrating them, and was planning on bring them down when you shot me out of the air, and forced me to drop my cover!"
Batgirl glanced at Manhunter, and felt a shiver go down her spine as she saw the anxiety in his body.
"What was stolen?" asked Batgirl.
Manhunter sighed, and then narrowed his eyes at his accusers, "Oh, that? It's an experimental nerve gas created for population pacification control in prisons. At least, that's the official line Luthor has fed the Brass.
"But in actually, it's a mind control gas. In revenge for helping Paul Kirk defeat them, the Council has decided that Gotham will the source of their new army. And now that I've been exposed…I don't know how we can stop them."
Next issue: Batgirl, The Power Company's Manhunter and crew struggle to overcome their mistrust as they try to stop the Council from returning, but internal strife may end these allies before their enemies fire a single shot! All this, plus Batgirl learns a disturbing secret about her mentor in part 2 of Nature's War!