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DC Infinity Presents

Batgirl # 16

"Abyss."

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Gotham City

Noah Abel's hands were shaking as he thought about what he intended to do tonight. He was nervous, this being his official rite of passage into manhood, into being an adult and the perfect son he always strived to be. Noah stood five foot seven, and fairly was unremarkable to the casual passerby. He had an easily forgettable face, one you could see every day driving to work and still forget.

But he, much like the man who raised him, was anything but normal.

Noah sensed the rush of the crowd, and realized that he couldn't put it off any longer. Sink or swim, his time was now. And he'd be damned if he failed his father after they'd come so far now.

Noah waded into the crowd, his eyes searching for a face he'd burned into memory. As luck would have it, the man he wanted was walking right towards him, chatting with his family. Noah knew that his target always frequented this theater on this particular night, but he never thought he'd be this lucky…

&&&

Kyle Michaels was a family man at heart, even though he made a career prosecuting crime families with all the zeal and righteousness of a dog attacking raw meat. Nothing was more important to him than his wife and two children. They were his world, and more than anything he wanted them to spend time together.

That was why he insisted on taking them out to Gotham's classical theater every Thursday. His son and daughter loved the old black and white movies as much as him, and his wife loved it when her children were happy. They'd come to this classic theater so often that the manager recognized them, and swore that the family glowed with love after catching a classic.

Mr. Michaels, still reveling in the memories of the first time he saw the black and white Zorro with his father, barely noticed it when a young man bumped into him, even when he thought he felt his hand scratch against the young man's jacket. Such rudeness was a Gotham hallmark.

But Kyle did notice when his hand began to go numb. Not asleep, but numb, as if it'd fallen off his body altogether.

He tried to bring it up, to look and see if he'd gotten a cut from the jacket, when he realized he couldn't move his arm at all. Kyle turned to his wife, said something from the bottom of his heart that sadly came out only as gibberish, before he tripped and fell to the floor gagging.

Mrs. Michaels was by no means a stupid woman. When she saw her husband's mouth beginning to foam, she grabbed her cell-phone and called for help. She had no way of knowing that, even if her husband was suddenly transported to a hospital and surrounded by poison experts, he still wouldn't survive the next five minutes. His lifespan was now measured in minutes, not decades.

With all the commotion caused by a poisoned man and his terrified, helpless family, no one noticed the young Noah slip outside a side exit.

As the heart of an accomplished civil servant was slowing to a stop, young Noah beamed with pride. After all this time, his years of study, practice and patience finally paid off as he accomplished the perfect execution of his target.

He casually glanced around, as if he was taking in the sights of the street, to see if he'd been followed. Noah saw no one, and satisfied he was unobserved, he made his way to the safe house, eager to bask in his father's praises.

And as he strolled down Gotham's filthy streets, no one even gave him a second glance. He looked very much like he pretended to be, just another young man going about his business in the city.

No one noticed how Noah carried himself with equal combination of determination and precision. They wouldn't see the steel, the cool confidence that underlined each step and would never know how he examined them with a careful eye as they sauntered by, like a lion on alert for other predators.

Though far from obvious, Noah Abel was a well skilled and deadly individual. But even with all his skill, he had no way of knowing that he'd acquired a second shadow after committing his first defining act as an adult.

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Later

Noah tapped on the door three times, counted to four Mississippi, and entered.

He paid no mind to the fact that one of his fellow team members, Peter Till, was aiming an M86 sniper rifle at his head. Behind Till stood a human mountain known as Jimmy Samson, a large hunting knife in one hand. Noah pitied anyone who had to face those two.

Noah saw his father sitting at a work station they'd set up. The crew had been renting this warehouse for a while now, and they were a little more comfortable displaying their tools of the trade. Disassembled Desert Eagles and Berrettas lay side by side with building plans, disposable phones and their main, heavily encrypted mission laptop.

"So how'd the contract go?" Adam Abel never looked up at his son when he asked, his attention squarely focused on cleaning his sidearm, "any problems?"

"Not a one, sir," Noah beamed, "I don't think the target even realized what I'd done until I was gone!"

&&&

On the second floor of what had been the business office, the fire escape exit cracked opened just an inch. The person behind the door saw a wire connected to the top, and paused to snip it. The lithe figure then stepped inside and saw that the wire was connected to a shotgun installed on the wall. Had she opened the door all the way, the young woman knew she'd be dead.

The thought didn't bother her as much as it should have.

Down below, Noah was surrounded by his father's men, each one elated that he'd finally been ushered into their (as they saw it) sacred profession.

"Boy finally lost his cherry!" John Swagger, a dark skinned New Zealand sniper with a dozen kills under his belt, slapped the young man on the back, "thought this day might never happen!"

"Dude, don't even compare the two," Bill Jamerson, a former bagman for the Chigo mob before going freelance, blanched, "ain't nothing alike."

"Sure they are," Adam said, "you spend so much time anticipating it, yet when it finally happens, you're still the same person you always were afterwards. I'm proud of you, boy."

Noah's face lit up like a Christmas tree, "Thank you. I owe it all to your training, sir."

"Okay everybody, that's enough. We still have several more contracts we have to finish," Adam began, "but before start on those, we have to clean up all the evidence that's accumulated thus far. Guns, poisons, profiles, everything. Clean up as we go. Mr. Swagger, you're in charge. I want all the evidence destroyed, the weapons melted down and the CDs with the research slagged. We need to make this a clean sweep, people."

"Too late."

Before anyone could react to the new, foreign voice, the lights flickered and died.

Abel's men were professionals. They did not panic, they did not scream, they did nothing that betrayed their position while they waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness.

But before that could happen, the lights returned at full strength, and revealed a lithe young woman standing at their work bench, hands at her side. She was dressed in head to toe black, a cape on her shoulders and an empty bat symbol on her chest. Her eyes were covered, and the area over her mouth stitched shut.

Though the Bat emblem was made famous by a man, it managed to be no less terrifying on a girl.

For the longest second, no one dared move. They were like hikers suddenly confronted by a bear, frighteningly aware that the next move could be their last.

Batgirl was the first to move, looking first at Noah before turning her gaze to the elder Abel, Adam. Even with a mask covering her face, there was no mistaking that searing look of outrage, or missing how her posture went from rigid to stone.

"If you surrender now," Batgirl crossed her arms in front of her chest, fingers out. The crew of assassins watched and listened in amazement as she cracked her knuckles without even making a fist, "it will be far less painful."

The fact that she didn't say 'painless' escaped no one.

"Oh, hell with this!" Bill Jamerson was a combat specialist, one of the deadliest men alive when it came to edged weapons. He removed two seven inch blades from where they were strapped to his back. He held the blade in his left hand in a reverse grip, his right pointed at Batgirl's heart, and sauntered forward.

Bill swung his left blade, an experimental slash meant to gauge just how skilled Batgirl was. He was surprised as Batgirl remained as still as a statue as he came forward. Were the stories about her just that?

Bill learned the answer when Batgirl brought her right hand up and seized his wrist, stopping his knife a split second before would have sliced her throat. Precise pressure was applied, and the knife fell from his hands.

Batgirl caught it with her free hand, and then slung Bill towards the table. He slammed into the table, the edge of the table hitting his stomach was like a punch to the gut. Bill sucked in his breath, and when he looked towards Batgirl, he saw her lunging towards him, his razor sharp knife held over her head in both hands.

Bill screamed the second the blade pierced flesh, as it neatly sliced the flesh of his forearm and slid between the ulna and radius in his arm and sank into and then through the wood of the table. Batgirl then kicked the knife with her steel toed boots, bending the knife and making it impossible for him to remove.

"Oh God…" Bill whimpered as Batgirl looked down on him, his wrist in searing agony as he was now pinned to the table like a moth in a collection.

"You were warned," Batgirl turned to the gathered assassins. The young crime-fighter was now shaking, and they knew it wasn't from fear, "run. It should be…amusing."

The gathered assassins, with over thirty years experience between them, darted for the door.

"Dad… the evidence!"

Adam Abel just glanced over his shoulder as they ran, but even that cold gaze was like a knife to the gut for the younger Abel.

"That's out of our hands now, son," he replied gruffly, "our only chance is to hope that we can get out of here and it won't matter!"

The hired killers piled into a van that they'd stashed (and moved as needed) two blocks away. Adam took the driver's seat, Sampson was in the passenger's seat and the rest piled into the back.

"Weapons check!" Adam shouted as he turned the ignition and peeled rubber out of the parking space.

"My back-up baby is here!" reported John Swagger as he flipped open the wooden case that held his M82A1 SASR sniper rifle.

"Still got my knives," Sampson stated, "that's all I've ever needed."

"Yeah, just like Bill," Peter Till spat, "still got my side-arm."

"We have two Berettas and five spare mags," Noah offered, "that's going to have to be enough, sir."

"It should be," Adam replied, "we're just trying to escape one very good operative, not fight our way past a police blockade."

"Why'd she let us run?" Noah only said what they were all thinking, "she didn't even make us drop our weapons!"

"She's just cocky," Peter Till answered unconvincingly. They all saw how effortlessly Bill was taken down, and Batgirl's fluid motion was anything but sloppy.

The thought hung in the air uncomfortably, like humidity on a summer's day. They all knew that you never left a target with a weapon unless you were utterly confident of your ability to overcome it. Was Batgirl really that good?

Adam felt his hands sweating as he gripped the wheel, but his training easily pierced the anxiety that was pounding through his body. He drove fast, but not so fast as to be noticed by the local police, and made sure to obey all traffic signs.

It happened when Adam was obeying a 'stop' sign. He was examining every mirror, every little shadow and point of concealment he could think of while still being able to drive, when the back of the van simply swung open.

Batgirl leapt inside and elbowed Peter Till in the face before he could even raise his gun. His teammates, stunned that anyone would have the gall to just step inside a vehicle full of killers, pressed themselves against the wall as Batgirl grabbed the stunned Till and dragged him out into the street.

"Listen," Batgirl looked at Noah with a frightening intensity, "this will be your future."

Batgirl smashed her foot into Till's knee, and the last thing Noah saw of the man he considered an uncle was him screaming in pain and reaching out towards his friends as they sped away, leaving him alone with an enemy.

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Tense seconds stretched into tense minutes and then an hour. The team of now four killers took the back roads, watched their rear with guns at the ready and took every precaution possible as they made their way to Gotham's private docks.

All the while, there was no sign that they were being followed, that Batgirl knew where they were going. Adam activated an emergency signal jammer he kept under the seat, just in case, but nothing seemed to provide his men with any peace of mind. The closer they got the potential freedom, the angrier one became at leaving their friends behind.

"I said shut up!"

Adam Abel slammed the van door shut with all his strength, his temper boiling over.

"If we made a stand with Till, if we tried to get him back, we'd have a better chance at killing that bitch than running!" John Swagger stalked up to Abel, his face inches from the elder assassin, "the math isn't complicated!"

"You want to talk math?" John heard the click of a hammer, and felt metal pressing against his stomach, "you keep questioning me, and we'll work on subtraction."

"Peter…"

"Was grabbed in the middle of a city street!" Adam roared, "we start a gun fight and even if we do kill that bitch, we'll have an entire police force up our ass!"

"Alright, that's enough," Jimmy Samson stepped between the two, "I don't like leaving Pete either, but Adam's right. We start fighting in the middle of a city, and we might as well call 911 ourselves."

"Escape has to be our first priority," Adam assured him, "no one around here is quick to call the police. Here, we at least stand a fighting chance."

"No…no, that's not true…at all."

All four of them looked up, and saw Batgirl crouching on the top of the van. She looked down on them like a cat preparing to pounce on a mouse.

"Bring it!" Jimmy Samson whipped out his knife and allowed his anger to boil over. Unlike most, he channeled his anger into precision focus, and combined with his six foot six body of almost complete muscle, was a combat machine not to be taken lightly with a body count in the dozens.

Batgirl leapt down from the roof, and twisted in midair so that she landed on Jimmy's broad shoulders with his thick neck and head between her legs. Batgirl twisted backwards, and Jimmy was pulled backwards.

The back of Jimmy's head collided with the ground, and he was out before the pain even registered.

Batgirl rose slowly, like a vampire from its coffin. The three men had half a dozen weapons pointed at her, but they hardly seemed adequate against someone who'd defeated their strongest member in a single move.

"You two," Batgirl pointed at Noah and John Swagger, "you may run. I want to…have a chat…with your leader."

"Dad…?"

"Do what she says," Adam didn't look at his son, "I'll be fine boy. I promise."

Noah and John barely hesitate, and took off.

Batgirl and Adam Abel stood on the dock alone. Only twelve feet separated them, but for Batgirl it wasn't nearly enough. The disgust she felt for the man was almost palpable.

Batgirl reached into her belt, and sent two bataranges flying. Adam's years of instinct took over and he shot both out of the air before his conscious mind even registered the fact they were flying. The weapons exploded in a cloud of dust, and Adam covered his face on reflex.

Adam's vision cleared just in time to see Batgirl's knee smash into his face. As she came down, she swept her hands outwards, and swatted the guns aside like a parent swatting matches from the hands of a child.

Adam struck out on instinct, and to his astonishment, actually connected. His fist smashed across Batgirl's face, a good solid hit.

But the young crime-fighter barely flinched, and gave Adam a look that could bend steel.

In a fight, the only reason anyone ever took a hit they didn't have to was just to show they could, to demonstrate just how little your resistance meant to them. Adam had seen it a dozen times, but never did he expect to see it from a young woman just barely over five foot seven.

Batgirl replied with a right hook that sent Adam sprawling to the ground.

"So why me?" Adam spat a mouthful of blood, "I know enough to know when a beating's personal."

"You made him like us," Batgirl growled as her fist slammed into his gut. When he kneeled over from the blow, her knee connected with his lower jaw, "into a killer…your own son!"

"I made him strong," Adam slid a knife out of his sleeve and lunged for Batgirl's throat. She deflected the blade with her left wrist, and swung her other elbow into the side of Adam's head.

"You took his life away!" Batgirl snap kicked him in the stomach, "you had no right!"

"I had every right!" Adam swung at Batgirl, but she effortlessly sidestepped him, "I'm his father!"

"No!" A fist slammed into his cheek.

"You are!" An boot slammed into his knee.

"Not!" The kick rendered Adam mercifully unconscious, as Batgirl loomed over his defeated form.

"Just a monster who shares his blood."

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From a nearby building, John Swagger watched as Batgirl stood over his friend of fifteen years, trembling in rage. He'd seen the entire fight, but was too worried about hitting Adam to even chance making a shot. But now that he was on the ground…

John took a moment to focus on Batgirl's head. He knew that she likely wore some type of body armor, and at this distance armor wouldn't mean a damn thing. But blowing out the back of her skull held a visceral appeal. He confirmed the target thought his scope, hugged the trigger and…

…nothing.

Almost in disbelief, John pulled his head back as he pulled the trigger. It traveled all the way back as it would if fired, but nothing happened.

"Missing this," John looked away from his rifle, and saw Batgirl crouching on the ledge. In her hand was a silver pin.

"My firing pin…?" John couldn't believe that something so simple, so small had robbed him of his kill.

Batgirl flicked it towards him, tore Swagger's SASR sniper rifle from his hands and then smashed the butt first into the firing pin and from there right between John's eyes. The veteran sniper fell unconscious instantly, the imprint of his defeat etched on his forehead.

"You can come out," Batgirl said as she walked inwards, "I knew…you'd come here."

Noah Abel sprang up from behind an air conditioner unit, and unleashed two entire magazines at Batgirl.

It was only when his weapons came up empty that he realized Batgirl was nowhere to be seen.

"We need to talk," Batgirl said as she stood beside the young assassin.

Noah turned, but by the time he thought of what to do, he was already flying backwards. But Noah picked himself up quickly, white hot rage was like a dam, stopping even the notion of pain from reaching his brain.

Batgirl strolled in front of Noah, so that he had his back to the roof.

"You need to listen to me," Batgirl said calmly. The venom and loathing that laced her words before had now vanished, replaced with genuine empathy.

"Like hell!" Noah fought his instinct to charge, and silently sized up Batgirl, trying to determine what weapons she was carrying, what side she favored in a fight, looking for anything and everything that might give him some sort of edge.

"I am…a lot like you," Batgirl began.

"Bullshit!" Noah spat, "you and I are nothing alike!"

"I picked you out of a crowd. You saw how…I took your father's men apart," Batgirl said without a hint of pride, "found your getaway car…without even trying. Beat your combat specialist…without effort. Do you really think…that I could do that if I didn't know how…people like you operate?"

Noah felt a chill run down his spine. Batgirl had already proven her superiority in combat, the only thing worse than dealing with that was the idea that she also knew whatever other tricks he might pull and was prepared. All of a sudden, he felt like he'd brought a knife to a gun fight.

"Fine, so what?"

"So, I know where our…your life leads," Batgirl began to walk forward. Noah, acting on pure instinct, took two steps back for every one of hers, "I know…what we really do."

"Oh, what's that?" asked Noah, as a cold sweat began to trickle down his face.

"Death… pain, and nothing more," Batgirl replied. She reached into her belt and withdrew one of the sharpest knives Noah had ever seen, "this was a gift. Right now, you need it."

Batgirl threw the knife, and Noah caught it perfectly. He felt it for a second, recalling his tutorage with his father and Samson. It was perfectly balanced and weighted, and looked sharp enough to nick Superman himself. Noah held it in his right hand, his preferred hand, and fantasized about driving it through the hollow Bat symbol on his enemy's chest.

"Because now you have to make a choice."

Batgirl surged forward, and when Noah took a single step back he found that he'd accidently run out of roof. But Batgirl grabbed him by his left wrist.

"Here it is," Batgirl said, "I can help you leave them behind. You can change…be better. But you...have to decide."

Noah gave Batgirl a look of pure contempt, and swung his right hand, still armed with her knife and aimed at vital arteries in her wrist. Batgirl saw it coming, and simply let go.

Noah snapped his head towards the ground as he was overwhelmed with fear, anger, regret as he felt gravity claim him. His life didn't flash before his eyes, yet he somehow managed to question everything that led up to now.

Batgirl caught his right wrist, and hauled him back on the roof. She threw him to the ground in outrage.

"That fear, that panic?" Batgirl looked over Noah like a skyscraper, "that's what your victims feel…before nothing claims them. And when I finish here…you will envy them."

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Batgirl entered her headquarters as silently as a breeze of wind. The authorities had collected the Abel crew, found the evidence in their safe-house, and now all the young woman wanted was to rest, to put this day behind her.

But it refused to let go. Like a bad wound, the events of the last several hours ached and tugged at her mind, demanding attention. Batgirl pulled off her mask and threw it away. At the moment it was suffocating.

Cassandra Cain then looked towards a mirror on the wall. She absently ran her hands over the reflection of her face, and she stared into her own eyes, searching…

Tatsu Yamashiro, who had been making her way down the stairs of Batgirl's sanctuary, heard glass scatter, and literally leapt down the stairs and raced towards where she heard the noise.

She saw Cassandra on her knees, slumped in front of a scattered mirror, tears staining her cheeks.

"Cassandra!" Tatsu rushed to her Ward's side, "what happened? What's wrong?!"

Cassandra Cain stared at her broken reflection. By any measure, tonight should have been considered a success. She'd brought down a cabal of killers that no one even knew was in Gotham, but when she looked back, Cassandra could only think of Noah.

"…I failed."

The End.

Next issue: We see some of Cassandra's day at school, a team-up with Nightwing and a murder mystery!

Afterword: Sorry if this issue was a little depressing. The idea for this story came to me when I read a Batman story where he utterly dismantles a gang of criminals who kill two parents in front of their young son.

Due to the obvious differences between Cass and Bruce, it required some alterations. Hope you enjoyed it!