In the Middle of a Broken Constellation
Pairing: WonderBat (Wonder Woman x Batman)
Rating: T / 14A
Universe: N/A - Reader's Choice
A small gust whipped past her as Dr. Hunt scurried off shortly after his terrified screech, and Diana was glad to know he'd gone. She wasn't happy, however, about the circumstances that were unfolding right before her very eyes.
In a muddled, incoherent mess, the creatures within the once locked room begin to rise into surprisingly tall stances and make their way towards the vacant doorway. No longer confined, the energy of their once lifeless existences transformed into that of an angry mob without much provocation. Diana felt her heart become consumed by dread as she tried to slowly, carefully, remove herself from the anteroom. Like prey before a predator, she knew it was foolish to hope that her slow movements would avoid galvanizing the horde.
All she could think about was her theory about Arthur and Barry's disappearance - she knew that escaping them was her best chance at surviving the sludge herself.
"Code Brown! We have a Code Brown in the Isolation Ward! Code Brown, and Code Green!" an elderly female voice failed to remain calm as she shouted over the loudspeaker.
Diana had no idea what those codes referred to, but she understood that the most likely course of action that the hospital would take had to be a lockdown, meaning she now had no choice but to run!
With the poise of a ballerina and the strength of a soldier did she throw herself into the main hallway of the Isolation Ward. Just as she had correctly assumed, it infuriated the sludge monsters that she left their line of sight, and the misshapen blob of them trying to all push through the doorway at the same time rather disturbed her. They looked like a melted hydra in her eyes and she knew from experience that it was time to make her exit; the scent of the mythological creature was known to kill and the touch of this one could end up taking her life away from her if she dared to fight it!
Diana grimaced as she flew towards the double doors at the end of the hall that she had walked through mere moments ago. They were meant to stay closed to protect people on either side, but when she slammed her hand against the push bar and found that the door would not budge, she instantly felt isolated. In a moment of disbelief, she shook the bar a few more times simply because she knew that slamming through the doors was not an option for her. Not only would it put the other people in the hospital at risk if she acted so impulsively, but her new civilian identity would also instantly be obliterated if she attempted such an aggressive escape.
And her nerves were definitely urging her to fight her way to safety since she could not flee.
If her theory about Arthur and Barry was correct, she needed to find another way to keep herself safe until…
Until…
Until what?
A heavy, liquified hand slammed into the double doors right next to her body and Diana nearly jumped out of her skin. Instead, she spun around to find herself face to face with the front runners of the sludge monsters' pack. The only clear path she had to avoid being swallowed whole by them was to unfortunately sidestep them and hope that they didn't end up pinning her to the wall. It felt like all she could do was retreat to avoid their onslaught but it wouldn't do her any good to simply play chicken with over fifty monstrosities charging at her. She couldn't understand what it was about them that craved claiming her, because she knew that any contact would force her to join their pack.
Perhaps they only knew how to function like mindless animals that wanted to attack the person that was in their territory, but if she could figure out how to escape them, they wouldn't need to bother themselves with her!
Diana tossed her body weight at the wall so that she could plant her favourite heels against its surface and propel herself over the cluster of creatures that had followed her to the doors. Though faceless, she felt their confusion while she soared overhead. As she eyed the spot she expected to land in, preparing to place her hands down upon the ground to catch her fall, the monsters at the back of the group clued into what she was attempting and dared to swipe at her falling body.
Her core activated as she tried to turn herself in midair to avoid their grabbing hands. It caused such a stark change in her course of action that she ended up slamming into the window of the room that had been next to their previous prison cell. It couldn't shatter due to the low impact of her hit, so she was forced into a standoff with the rear of the group. All she had done was switch which half of the cluster she was dealing with.
They were still desperate to grab ahold of her too, as one of them swiped at her ankle in a cheap attempt to add her to their fold. Diana reacted reflexively first and foremost, which resulted in her trying to kick the sludge away from her. It was then she got to see the substance in action, how the sludge broke off into a multitude of smaller pieces, like rampant leeches, as it tried to claim her leg. Fearing for her life, she was left with no choice but to sacrifice half of her favourite pair of heels in order to avoid an ugly transformation.
She threw all of her might into the kick in the hopes of delivering some pain to the monster that took her shoe. Luckily, it did stumble back, and she counted that as a small victory. Nevertheless, the fact that one of them managed to grab hold of her in some way seemed to inspire the other monsters to try even harder to do the same. They were closing in around her now with a renewed sense of impatience, every line of sight she had was slowly being consumed by what she could only describe as wet, pink mud.
It became apparent that she'd need to start sacrificing what she had on her person if she intended to last. Immediately, she thought of her shoe, until she felt her purse swing back and smack her hip. On its chain-like strap, it was clearly the more appropriate weapon…
Especially when it contained a weapon she adored in her arsenal as Wonder Woman.
She ripped the strap off of her shoulder and swung it at them a few times in the hopes of warding away their eager hands, despite the sad ending that her shoe had when she attempted the same strategy.
As they circled around her defenseless form, the sludge that once made up fifty or some people began to fuse together and create a tidal wave-like disaster, towering over her with the intention of swallowing her entirely into their masses. She could tell that they even struck the ceiling as some bits fell from the top of their formation and crashed down onto the floor. "Athena, I beg you," Diana murmured to herself in a last-ditch attempt to summon any excess strength that she could as she pulled out her last line of defense against the sludge monsters.
Her Lasso of Truth.
In her mighty hands, it glowed with the brilliance of the sun, its light unopposed regardless of the way the swarm of sludge that surrounded her. She swiftly reversed the lasso and, instead of trying to capture something in her grasps, she chose to use the opposite end of the rope and transform it into a whip; her indomitable will to live was channeled into each lashing she fired off at the misshapen horde without any remorse in that moment, because she knew that she had to survive this ordeal for herself, for the people trapped within the gigantic lump of sludge before her, but most of all, in order to save Bruce from whoever went so far as to orchestrate all of this in order to get to him.
The person that was behind these monstrosities was no ordinary person, and they would need to be punished for the horrible crimes against humanity that they had put all of these people through.
With every strike she landed, the sludge hissed as steam escaped the mass. Frantically did the fifty or so pieces that once made of the wave that meant to swallow her suddenly fly apart and latch onto all different corners of the Isolation Ward. They moved around without legs as if they couldn't be bothered to return to a humanoid shape. She was able to spy the ones that were struck by her after they had all split off due to the way some of the mounds of sludge would wobble and shudder as if a ripple ran along the surface of their entire shape. Curiosity-driven, Diana flipped her lasso around and began to spin it over her head, eyeing the closest creature-
Then, a massive boom shook the very ground she stood on. With one heel on and one heel off, Diana felt herself nearly lose balance, but instead used the momentum of her swinging lasso to turn around and assess the cause of the sudden intrusion.
It was none other than Superman himself, having punched through the wall of the room that was directly behind her. As soon as their eyes met, Clark looked just as panicked as she had originally felt when she realized she had been trapped inside the ward. In that moment, however, she felt absolutely elated to realize that he had used his superhero identity to give her a plausible escape route. She kicked off her remaining shoe and punched the very window that she had rammed into before, using a great deal of her power to shatter it into pieces. Like an Olympian, she threw herself through her self-made opening and raced towards him at top speed. She leaped at her startled friend with enough force to send them outside of the hospital, into the late morning air.
"Seal it!" She commanded him while looping her arms around one of his shoulders. Holding onto him like a monkey, she made sure she wasn't in his way in the slightest so that he could close off the opening in the hospital wall.
Clark didn't need to be told what to do and proved himself to be as quick thinking as she knew him to be as he inhaled his deepest breath and fired an icy squall at the crater he had made. His self-made flurry took one too many seconds to cover the damage in the bricks, but once it was finally patched up seamlessly, Diana realized in her state of shock that she had forgotten to breathe.
"Are you all right? Diana?" interrogated Superman when her response wasn't instantaneous.
She nodded first as the entire encounter she had just escaped ran through her mind in reverse, her memory storing it away to dissect and analyze when she wasn't hovering fifty feet in the air. "Yes, I'm fine."
"I had to get Lois out of there, I'm sorry."
"No, no, I understand. You showed up at the perfect time, anyway." She encouraged him genuinely, even offering a lopsided grin with the hope that he'd believe her.
They exchanged glances but his chiseled features never seemed to soften. It was only while she waited to see if he'd justify his mood that the cries from below registered in her ears. Diana glanced down at the horde of people that were awaiting their landing, which seemed to give Clark the confidence to say, "I think I have my own mission to attend to now."
"What?" she searched his face once again to see if there were any cracks in his solemn facade, but there were none.
While she frantically tried to stuff her lasso into her brassiere to keep it out of sight of, Clark whimpered like an apologetic pup. "I need to find Vicki Vale. This whole mess today wasn't an accident - someone didn't like that you were getting close to the sludge monsters and tried to attack you. Something must have happened to her as well, and I need to find out what she knew before she disappeared."
"I think you're right," Diana shot out her answer as the screams turned into a massive cheer for their descent. "There are too many angles to this situation for us to focus all of our efforts in one direction."
"Exactly… now get ready to swoon."
"Excuse me?" Those words that he whispered in her ear threw her for a loop as their feet came to rest upon the ground. But once they were swarmed by the many charmed faces of the nurses and visitors, voices high pitched and hands clutching their hearts, Diana knew exactly what Clark was telling her to do.
Behave like a typical woman who wasn't accustomed to Superman.
After such a dangerous battle, she wasn't anticipating to put on a show now too. Still, the only reason she didn't punch her way through the hospital after the monsters escaped was to preserve her new civilian identity, so that would mean…
"Oh, Superman! I don't know how I can thank you!" she squealed at the top of her lungs, still retaining her classic dignity while playing the part of the fool. "I didn't know if I was going to survive!"
Clark's gleaming smile was a little too genuine when he posed, hands on his hips, one slightly cocked brow. "Well, you're safe now, miss."
The corners of her lips twitched and she had to fight off the urge to show him her dryest smile. She didn't have the time to worry about breaking character though as the eerie sound of sirens grew louder and louder than the roaring huddle of people on the hospital's sidewalk. She looked up just in time to witness a trio of cops cars race into the roundabout driveway in front of Gotham General. Some of the already shaken hospital staff were forced to leap out of the way of the invigorated police who barely came to a rolling stop before jumping out of their cars and attempt to manage the informal gathering.
Six officers began patrolling the scene, and all the while, Diana was on the lookout for Commissioner Gordon. Though they had never met, she imagined that he'd have been easy enough to spot, given that she didn't expect to see him in a policeman's uniform. As the entrance was taped off, while the shaken staff and their patients were corralled across the street by the rather aggressive police force, it dawned on her that she should be looking for someone else who appeared to be missing.
No matter which direction she tossed her gaze, Diana could not pinpoint the location of Dr. Hunt.
Author's Notes:
Whew, this chapter was a bit of a mess, but it's completed! I am so sorry it took me so long to write for you all. I had a rather serious family situation spring up and it has occupied my time for about two months now. Thankfully, things have begun to calm down and even though it took me all week, I managed to finish this chapter!
We are back to the original update schedule, hurray! I hope you're excited for next week, where - spoiler alert - we have to get Bruce's reaction to what Diana just went through. So be on the lookout for your next update on February 16th! - Maiden