Chapter Fourteen: Alien Invasion or Poison Ivy?
(Batman is not mine)
"This is one sweet set of wheels!" Robin said as they shot out of the Roost in Blue-Jay's car, The Wraith. Blue-Jay smiled, saying "Thanks, I built it myself." Robins' mouth fell open and Blue-Jay giggled.
The plant was in downtown Gotham, right outside the corporate headquarters of Gothcorp, one of the top companies situated in Gotham, and also one of the biggest players in the deforestation of the rainforests. That in itself was a motive for Poison Ivy to attack them, without even going into all of the other things they did. Actually, Blue-Jay was half expecting Aquaman to come storming into Gotham any day now.
The thing was just as it had been on TV, only even worse now that they were close enough to see the details.
The he vine reminded RJ of the movie Fern Gully, at the end, when the fairies had trapped Hexus in the plant, it had looked like an up-side-down green cyclone, covered in flowers, only here the flowers were pods, and nasty ones at that. They were a sickly yellowish green hue, covered with reddish-black spots, and they were pulsing slightly in time with each other.
As Blue-Jay and Robin approached cautiously, Batman pulled up in the batmobile. Predictably, he grabbed them both and pulled them back, earning another exasperated glare from Blue-Jay. "I don't want either of you to go near it until I have a better idea of what we are dealing with." The Dark Knight said, sternly, before going over to the commissioner, the two birds following.
Blue-Jay and Robin didn't look away from the vine, and were therefore the first to see the pods begin to open. And when they did, Blue-Jay would spend the rest of the day mentally thanking Batman for not letting her and Robin go any closer.
As they watched, one of the pods seemed to squirm and Blue-Jay nudged Robin, pointing the pod out to him. As they both focused on the offending pod, the one next to it also began to squirm slightly, soon, a whole group of them were. Then the first one split open.
The thing that came out was something that Blue-Jay would put on her list of 'Creepiest Critters' the moment she got home. Covered in slime and goo, it stood about ten feet tall, with mottled gray skin with a texture that reminded Blue-Jay of rough bark, an elongated, stem-like body, long, branch-like limbs and was covered in thorn-like barbs. It also had a large, lipless mouth with thorny teeth.
Both Blue-Jay and Robin stared at it for a moment, before they simultaneously reached out and tugged on Batman's cape. He turned around, and instantly pulled the two teens behind a patrol car as every cop in the vicinity took cover.
"So," Blue-Jay whispered to Robin "Poison Ivy or alien invasion?" Before Robin could answer, Batman said "Poison Ivy." Blue-Jay looked at him "How can you tell?" she asked, wondering how he could be so sure. She knew he had had quite a lot of experience with Poison Ivy, but the plant lady was not the only possibility, it could have been Farmer Brown, who was currently out on parole.
Living in Gotham had taught Blue-Jay to expect the unexpected, and the incident with the parasites from space had only strengthened that awareness. Blue-Jay had had little difficulty believing in aliens, and she had wanted to meet the Martian Manhunter ever since he had surfaced.
Aliens had always fascinated her, when one thought about it, humans were just as much aliens as anything else in the galaxy, once we left earth, and having already met one person from outer space, she had craved to meet more.
"It has all the earmarks of her work," Batman said "It resembles a plant and yet can move like an intelligent being, plus, I have seen her create something similar." Blue-Jay was about to ask what he was talking about, when the 'pod creature' let out a hair-raising shriek that shattered the glass in the windows of the surrounding buildings for several stories. Blue-Jay and Robin both clamped their hands over their ears and crouched down, squeezing their eyes shut in an attempt to block out the noise.
The screeching was so horrible, grating on the eardrums of all who heard it, and it got worse as more creatures 'hatched' and began to scream. Blue-Jay and Robin were so busy trying to block out the sound that they forgot about all the broken windows, and the falling glass. But Batman didn't, and when the noise finally stopped, the two birds unplugged their ears and opened their eyes to find that they were both being shielded from the glass by Batman's cape. He had leaned over them and used the cloth as a sort of tent to keep the shards off of the two.
As he straightened up, glass fragments slid off his back and into the folds of his cape on the ground. Blue-Jay looked up at him and he glanced at her for a second before turning back to the creature, an action which she duplicated a moment later.
Looking at the creatures for the second time, Blue-Jay noticed several things that she hadn't before. The creatures' eyes were huge and pale, too pale to be designed for the daylight. "Uh-oh." She whispered as the reasons for that oddity dawned on her. Batman seemed to have realized the same thing, because when Blue-Jay and Robin tried to move away from the things, he sized them both and kept them hidden under his cape with their heads down. But the breeze was against them, blowing from them to the 'Insects' and the bugs had caught their scent.
The biggest bug had hatched first, and was the one closest to them. It opened its mouth again and made a loud clicking noise that seemed to echo off everything around it, but it was really the clicking of all the other bugs as they turned to follow the bigger one. It began to move towards them at astonishing speed and Blue-Jay and Robin immediately knew that they would never be able to out run it.
Blue-Jays reaction was to pull out a grapple and shoot it at the things legs. It wound around them and both Batman and Robin sized the line and as one they pulled, sending the beast to the ground with a crash that as it crushed a cop car. White goo oozed from its ruined right eye as it righted itself and Blue-Jay had to work hard not to try and wipe the bit of slime off of her cape.
The bugs ignored the police that were firing at them, confirming what Blue-Jay had dreaded: the Bugs had been designed specifically to hunt them and no one else. However, they did have a few advantages, they had until dark until the bugs would be able to see properly, so they did have some time to find a way to destroy them. Another advantage the humans had was that the insects were unable to fly.
Blue-Jay was about to head for the Wraith, when Batman seized both her and Robin and tossed them into the Batmobile before jumping in himself and flooring it.
"They have been specifically designed to hunt at night." Batman confirmed, as they all looked over the results from the slime off of Blue-Jays cape. "Not just at night," Blue-Jay said "They were designed to hunt us specifically. Didn't you notice how they recognized out scent when the wind blew it to them?" Batman nodded.
"So, are we using bug spray or weed killer?" Robin asked. "Neither." Batman replied "They were engineered to resist both pesticides and herbicides." Blue-Jay finished. "So how do we destroy them?" he asked, exasperatedly "With a designer poison." Blue-Jay said. Batman nodded again. Without further comment, they got to work.
Robin, having no basis in this sort of thing, sat back and watched the two work. It was odd, the night before they had been at each others throats, but now they were putting up with each other quite well. Apparently, a truce of some sort had been formed.
While he wasn't about to complain, Robin did find it rather eerie that, once they had set aside their irritation towards one another, Blue-Jay and Batman worked together well, almost seeming to know what the other was thinking as they worked and hardly ever speaking, their work quickly taking shape under their practiced hands.
The result was a highly lethal toxin that would kill a human within seconds of contact and the insects within minutes. Batman would not let Blue-Jay handle it, even with gloves and a mask, to her annoyance, but for the sake of the setting sun she didn't argue and sat down beside Robin as the man filled small canisters full of the toxin. The canisters were stainless steel and each contained a lethal dose for the insects. They were made to split in half thirty seconds after being armed, giving them time to get them into the insects mouths. The poison had to be ingested to be effective.
After successfully filling one-hundred and twenty-five canisters, Batman divided them into groups of twenty-five, and giving one group to each of them, Nightwing and Batgirl having arrived just as the toxin was finished.
Blue-Jay and Nightwing were not thrilled about being paired together, so Robin opted to swap with Blue-Jay, and Batman seemed to feel that as long as the two were not on their own it would do, and he and Blue-Jay left in the Batwing.
The sun was jus disappearing below the horizon as the Batwing left the cave, and Blue-Jay could see the lights of the city beginning to flicker on like little stars as the night descended.
"You haven't been back yet, have you?" Batman asked suddenly, "You haven't been back to the asylum." Blue-Jay was so shocked by this that her mouth fell open and her eyes went wide. "I'll take that as a 'no'." He said, dryly. "How, how-" "You have been acting rather," He paused, as if searching for the right word "Stiff," he finally decided on "Lately, not with us, but more in your demeanor. It's getting to you, you will have to go back soon." She sat in silence for a few moments, thinking over his words carefully before speaking.
"I know I need to go back, but right now it's just too hard." "The longer you wait the harder it will get." She bit her lip slightly "I know, I just can't seem to make myself go back. I know that the people who died deserve to be brought out of there and that their families deserve to have closure and a body to bury, but it's just too hard."
It was strange, telling him this, and as she did, she felt different. She was use to keeping everything to herself, but she did not have much difficulty in saying this to the Dark Knight, even though she was still having difficulty saying it to herself.
He let the matter rest there with a slight nod and a glance back at her, and they fell into silence, but one that was less tense than any other quiet moment that had been shared between them, not that there was much to compare it to besides a handful of patrols when Robin had had to stay home and study.
(AN: I am SOOOOOO SORRY that it took so long for me to update, but my mom said that even writers deserve a vacation. In other words, she said 'Get off the computer and stay off until I say so', so I've had to sneak time on the computer to type this chapter and only just got the chance to put it up!)
(Review, please!)