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"A warrior may change his metal, but not his heart."- Dejah Thoris. Princess of Mars. Barsoom series.
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Chapter - 5 (Twists)
To say Diana was a wonder kid in her childhood was simply—overkill.
True, she was an inquisitive girl who always loved to explore her home island. Still, she was just a "young lady" who grew up on an island filled with immortal aunts and being the only heiress to throne meant some extra freedom, which didn't help either. All in all, she was curious and a holy terror.
Jumping in the muddy brook while her royal guards chased after, escaping and hunting in moonlit night of Themyscira, and Diana's favorite—swimming in the sea, far ashore toward Man's world were few of Diana's adventures.
She still amused herself, recalling those smithy ships constructions silhouetted on the horizon against early rising the sun. It was dream of hers, like a child's dream filled with magic swords and dragons.
Just like that, she enjoyed every moment dragging Bruce along in the branching passageway of Indian restaurant laden with different type of acrylic mythology painting, depicting Hindu mythology. Leashing her Knight along, she pinpointed another picturesque to Bruce.
"This one, Bruce."
Upswept and brooding, he retired himself to being the guide. "Ah, this one, it's … Draupadi and her five husbands," he said tonelessly.
"Aww," Bruce feigned a hurt look as Diana slapped his arm lightly. "What was that for?"
"Really?" Diana rolled her eyes. "It's not funny, Bruce."
"What?"
"Stop making jokes!"
"I'm not making jokes, Diana." Bruce retorted as he bathed in the royal ire of wonder woman. A lesser man might have melted into the floor by now. "It's not like Draupadi asked me before getting married."
"You're such intolerant man, Bruce." Diana snapped, holding her chin high and shifting into her ambassador mode. Bruce had faced her like that too many times in past, and every time only one thing happened—he always stuck in losing arguments. Not now Princess!
"So, you mean, the woman started doing polygamy?"
"I never said it's polygamy." Bruce argued. "I just said she had five husbands."
Diana laughed, shaking her head and shoulders rolled back. "You never want to lose an argument, do you Bruce."
Bruce fought back another groan as his eyes sought after how Diana's lips pouted in anger. Her bouncy assets arrested his attention, fueling the perverse pleasure of his inner playboy. After all, by any standards Bruce wasn't a saint.
As his mind raced toward different scenarios where he always ended up with a bedraggled Diana, Bruce understood that the fiddling kiss on dance floor didn't quench his thirst for this amazing woman, not that he hoped it would anytime.
Combination of inhibited beauty and epitome of innocence—indeed, she was a wondrous woman.
"It's not what you're thinking, Princess." Bruce refrained his thoughts to himself. Although he still couldn't decide which Diana he loved more: the innocent Diana or the brat princess. Or perhaps he was just being a "princess-manic".
"I think I can help you both." Someone interrupted the swiftly rising argument.
Bruce glanced at the savior of their talks. There, dressed in a navy blue salwar suit, a scarf modestly covering thick mane hairs, stood an Indian woman. The same one, which had once helped them in sneaking against the Thanagarian hawks.
"Sorry, I couldn't help myself after listening your talks," she said with apologetic smile.
"Yes, we do a lot of talks in different topics." Bruce smiled. "Don't we, Diana."
"Yes, a lot of talks," Diana answered with her own jabbing elbow and introduced herself and him. "Diana Prince and Bruce Kane."
"Nice to meet both of you," The other woman shook hands, "Jasmine Kaur."
"Sorry about my loose mouth boyfriend, he thinks that woman in painting had five husbands."
Bruce gave his bat glare at Diana's remark, which surprisingly—or not so surprisingly—didn't affect on Diana. She's getting immune.
"Actually your loose mouth friend is right," Indian woman replied as Bruce coughed, hiding his amusement at Diana's glare coming back to him.
"Draupadi and Pandavas marriage is one of its own types of marriage in Indian theocracy," Jasmine confirmed. "So in actual, it's not polygamy. You see—"
Beep… Beep… Beep.
A series of beeps interrupted them as Bruce fished out his pager. "Sorry, I have to take this."
"Leaving your date on this beautiful evening," Jasmine, the Indian owner, admonished a disapproving look.
"I…"
"He does that a lot." Diana added with her frown. After all, she'd made it clear to him that he wouldn't access his night routine duty on their date.
"I'll be back in 5 minutes, don't worry," Bruce pleaded, furtively glancing at the pager, making it obvious that it was non-negotiable call. He needed just few minutes for this work. After a quick promise that he'd return in five minutes, Bruce disappeared in the teeming crowd of restaurant.
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Making the beeline for secured rooms that announced in bold letters—ONLY FOR STAFF PERSONNEL—and implementing his second operation for the night, took only half a minute for Bruce.
Of course, it was easy, because the Wayne Tech had supplied surveillance network for Tandoor restaurant. And unrestricted access to Bruce Wayne was part of their protocol.
In real, when Bruce first thought of financing the Tandoor restaurant for merger into Wayne Hotel chains, he had a perfect vision for his undercover surveillance base. A minor one though.
Reason was simple—the tactical position of restaurant couldn't be better. It was located on the borders of Gotham skyscrapers' business area and infamous narrows, which were extremely notorious for its high crime rate.
In a lucrative investment, Bruce succeeded two things: first, a good restaurant that happens to serve good food and second, an exceptional covert base for his low profile Batman's venture.
"You there, B." A voice pinged in his comm link as Bruce slid in dimly illuminated maintenance room.
The Room was designed by his tech-mentor Lucius Fox into the security department of restaurant to keep it out of prying eyes. Note to self: Give thanks to Lucius.
"I'm here," Bruce answered as his fingers danced on keyboard, hacking into live feed of restaurant cameras. After few seconds of searching, he tracked the person through a face recognition program. The target was already in place.
"B, Mayor Drake slid in the executive lounge." Oracle aka Barbara Gordon informed him.
"I got them. Linking the feed into your channel." Bruce tapped last command into computer and via a secured satellite link, the info sent to his protégé. "Can you track audio?"
"Nope, too much interference," Barbara responded, "I think something fishy is going on here."
"That's obvious," Bruce remarked sarcastically. He watched how Mayor Drake and "Target" greeted each other by handshake, and joined in the lounge.
The target was a renowned Russian industrialist and a crime lord in part-time currently visiting Gotham city for business investment. But Bruce knew well, no one comes in Gotham without a second purpose.
"It's not just a corruption deal, B." Oracle pointed out, now watching the live feed herself. "Something else also going on."
"I know," Bruce sniped on the two men.
"How's your secret-dating going?" Barbara asked with sly smugness in her voice.
"Keep your focus." Bruce recited, watching the time with glancing eyes. 2 minutes and 23 seconds passed. He had to wrap up this work in five minutes. Otherwise, Diana would surely suspect something. Then, he'd be in trouble.
"They're transmitting some kind of encrypted data, B." Oracle announced as the men sitting in lounge tapped buttons on their handheld devices. Surely, Oracle must have detected the data stream through the data catcher bugs Batman had installed in the lounge, just the preceding night.
"Can you break it up?" Bruce asked pulling up another window on monitor screen, fingers scrolled over the highly encrypted data packs.
If someone is curious enough with right tools in hands, everything is susceptible to snoopy minds. Bruce had learned the formula—hard way— besides, prevention was always better than cure.
In fact, there was no cure for exposing his secret identity of elusive Batman.
"It's good encryption, very good." Bruce could imagine Oracle's smile, sitting in front of her computer, eyes boring into screen and fingers stabbing in the keyboard.
"Got it!" she announced happily then. "Uh...ugh. B?"
"I can read it." Bruce clipped back reading the deciphered code. It said: BIG ARMS.
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(Somewhere else at same time)
Wham!
A figure popped into existence from thin stale air of Gotham alley, startling some stray dogs and narrowly missing bumping into overflowing dump-bin. A homeless cat protested with a small meow for disruption in her sleep.
"Sod off!" Athena growled at poor animal, barely controlling her nerves to lash something. Or someone. But before she could pick herself from her position, in queue, another figure dropped from air and sprawled over the Wisdom Goddess, sending her back flatly to cobbled street.
"Great Zeus!"
"Aww!" Sappho shrieked lying flat. "Thanks for making my landing soft, Atty. I could've gotten bruises by your surprise."
"Get off me, Aphrodite before I slam you back!" Athena shouted in not-so-hidden-anger.
She dusted off the slime from her chiton and pushed herself on her feet. She almost thought of strangling the swan goddess in that abandoned alley. She could bet Queen Hera would be beside her on that decision. "This is your entire fault!"
"My fault?"
"Don't act innocent!" Athena snapped, shooting daggers with her furious eyes. If only she had a handy spear at that moment, Aphrodite would be as good as dead. "It's your handiwork that disrupted my spell teleportation, and we landed so… indignantly in this slimy alley."
"Oh, for Mother Gaea's sake, Atty, stop making poor excuses," Sappho said, scanning her surrounding for first time. "Ewe, why's there so much garbage here?"
"Because that's your welcome party, Sappho," Athena answered with a healthy dose of sarcasm. "They must have thrown a party at love goddess's arrival in mortal's world. See, there's your host." She pointed at the curious dogs sniffing around for food in the rotting waste.
"Mean, Atty! Very Mean." Sappho glared for few moments then relaxing back to her typical manner. Fingering off the invisible creases on her chiton, she grinned. "Nevertheless at least we should give them return gifts, Atty!"
Athena shook her head as she watched Aphrodite waving her hand to cast a spell. She never misses a chance at flaunting. Never.
Yet instead of flowery bed wrapping up the alley—nothing happened this time. Athena knew it was "flowery bed spell" because she had watched that spell too many times from love goddess. Even sometimes, she suspected Sappho remembered only those few spells.
"Oops." Athena muttered under breath, controlling the bout of laughter prickling her stomach as repeatedly Sappho tried her spell. "Is something wrong?"
"It's not working!" Sappho cried as Athena smiled ruefully.
"Forgot something?"
"No!" Sappho squawked, throwing up her hands. "My spells are not working, Atty!"
"C'mon, Sappho, we don't have time for these childish activities." Athena remarked, pivoting toward the nearby main road. Her mission was her priority, not Sappho's lousy memory.
"I want to get over with this before someone suspect our absence in Olympus."
"But, Atty! My spells are not—"
"Shhh," Athena shushed her not so willing partner-in-crime, and both Olympian Pantheons trotted off toward the modern barbarian civilization, called as Man's world Metro City: Gotham.
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(Back in Tandoor restaurant)
"Is what I think it is, B?" Oracle asked over the comm as Bruce's jaws clenched together in a nut-grinding snarl.
"They're smuggling heavy arms in Gotham."
"Yup, that explains how Two face's goons launched a bazooka on Robin the other night, like they were some toys to play with." Oracle spoke up, maintaining a neutral voice and attempting to break through the rest of encrypted code. "Uh…huh."
"What?" Bruce frowned.
"Our target just transferred a hefty sum of money to a Swiss back account, B."
"Mayor's account?" Bruce asked as the meeting in executive lounge terminated with Mayor Drake parted away with a last handshake. The shark-smiles on his face said all—their meeting was successful.
Although Batman had reputation of not mingling in Gotham's politics, especially after what happened with former attorney Harvey Dent, he couldn't stop himself in this case.
Mayor Samuel André Drake.
Drake had risen silently—a nigh impossible job—in the gallery of Gotham's politics with cunning diplomatic skills that Bruce had to admit the current Mayor was capable man in diplomacy and ruthlessness. However, as Oracle dug deeper in the past of Drake, it revealed more.
Something that Bruce could not ignore. Something that could harm his city or perhaps could be a boon as well. Only time could tell.
"Most probably," Oracle replied, squinting at Swiss Bank account number. "But until we try cracking into Swiss banks database we cannot confirm that."
"We'll deal with that part later." Bruce steepled his fingers under chin as his "Target" ate his last bout of food and started walking out. "Put Robin on track of Russian mafia, but don't engage. I want to know everything about him first."
"Okay Boss." Oracle chimed back. "By the way, your leeway time of excusing yourself from your date is way over."
Bruce cursed under breaths, watching how much time he had spent in the covert op. Past seven minutes. Diana is going to be royally pissed off.
"Keep me updated of any news, but don't disturb."
"Vow boss, will do that, B. By the way, you never told which bimbo you took this evening?"
"Not your business," Bruce cut off any further comm talks, not wanting to entertain unnecessary audiences. "B, out."
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A/n: And I'm in. Surprised, don't be!
Ok, finally I'm back to writing after struggling with my crashed lappy (Yup!) I got a new one now. Therefore, updates will not be pushed like this one by months. Hey, MERRY CHRISTMAS to all frnds. Enjoy!
Until then. Keep reading.