9.
~ Catwoman held tight to the freak as soon as her feet left the ground. She wasn't sure what kind of mechanism was pulling them both up, but it was like flying. The freak delivering them both safely to the support beam above the lobby. She didn't even look back to see the door being blown open.
Catwoman held her balance while the freak, in a show of raw nerve, took the canister from her.
"Careful with that!" she hissed at him. "You saw what it did to the guards on the roof."
"No, but lets talk about that when we're in the clear." the freak said in a gruff voice.
Catwoman shifted away from his embrace. His arms were like iron and held her in a way she didn't realize men should hold a woman. Her heart was beating fast, and it wasn't just the excitement of the situation.
The freak was ignoring her, however. His gaze focused on the intruders who had entered the bank. Fish and Ivy emerged from the smoke. Ivy still holding the high tech bazooka that had blown the doors.
They were looking for her.
Instead, all they got was a bunch of scared workers and beaten up guards.
"The red head. Her name is Ivy Pepper." Catwoman whispered to the freak from their hiding spot in the shadows. He had pulled her closer to him. An act that signified he would protect her. "I've known her since we were kids. She's been making mind control chemicals in an old house outside of Gotham."
"Why were you with them?" the freak accused. His voice riddled with hostility.
"Did I not just say it was a mind control chemical? Ivy drugged me, kidnapped me from my home. If I tried to escape, they would have killed me or worse." she hissed.
"Worse?" the freak asked.
"Did you see what was left of those poor guys on the roof? Or are they a tree by now?" she asked.
She felt the freak's body tense slightly next to hers.
"How do I know this isn't apart of the deception?" he whispered.
"You don't. But I'm dead if they catch us, so lets get out of here." she whispered.
"If they are really as dangerous as you say, we can't let them get away." the freak told her. He removed a pair of simple black handcuffs from inside his black leather jacket.
"You're going to arrest them?" she teased.
"These aren't for them." he said.
Without making a sound, he had managed to subdue her. His body was powerful and he knew all about pressure points to keep her from fighting back.
Before she could even fight back in any meaningful way, she was cuffed to an iron pole neat the exit.
"What are you doing? I can help you!" Selina whispered.
"I can't take the chance you aren't here to double cross me." the freak said. "You'll be safer out of the way here."
The freak stood next to her, his body closer to her than she normally liked from a strange man dressed in black. For and irrational moment, she thought he would take off his helmet and revel who he was. Instead, he raised a hand to her. Selina flinched away. She was all too used to being hit. But his touch was gentle. His gloved hands securing the gas mask she still wore onto her face better. Making sure the seal was tight on her skin.
"Just in case." he said in a gentle tone.
"Don't get too close to Ivy. She has the mind control serum in a spray. She can make you do anything." Selina called out. She had to do something to help him. "She's dangerous."
"So am I." the freak said before he jumped, fifty feet, to the lobby below.
~ Fish and Ivy never heard Batman when he hit the floor. Too much smoke from the blast, too much confusion and noise. All were tools he used to as weapons.
"Where is that little bitch!" Fish growled. "Can't even do one thing right."
"We were outside." Ivy Pepper said. "She hasn't come out yet."
Batman decided Fish was more deadly than Ivy. Fish was older and experience in any street fight won the day. Fox had given him a new toy that worked much like a stun gun. A small pin knife that barely pierced the skin and then tasered the suspect into submission. A neat, and silent weapon from Wayne enterprises.
Fish cried out at the seemingly unknown attack and fell to the floor. Ivy, sensing something was wrong, immediately fired the high tech bazooka at the shadows. It bladed another hole in the wall near the still frightened workers. Dust flew everywhere and in the confusion, the workers ran free via the new escape rout.
"Oh, you're here, aren't you?" Ivy called out.
Batman hid from her. The darkness, dust and even the light hiding him from his enemy. He looked over Ivy Pepper. She was different now. Her once stringy, dull red hair shone like fire and she had defiantly hit an impressive growth spurt since he saw her last. She was dressed in high end clothing and looked like she belonged in a fashion show. Not holding a deadly weapon and hunting in crime ally.
"Why don't you come on out? We can talk like civilized adults?" she cooed.
Batman watched her and tried to think of how to take her out. She was trigger happy, which was useful, but she was also smart. He could see it in her eyes that there was a spark of intelligence there.
"They call you Batman. Isn't that funny?" Ivy sang out to the shadows. "All of Penguin's little soldiers you rough up each night. They think you're like a bat."
Batman watched as Ivy roamed the lobby with the bazooka in hand. If he tried to take her out, she might fire again. There were no more hostages, but Selina was cuffed in the wings and another heavy blast might be enough to bring the old building down. It was already creaking from the two holes in the wall already. No, he had to get her and that weapon clear from the building.
"I said come out!" Ivy shouted.
He could taser her like Fish who was still groaning on the floor.
"Alright." Ivy sighed. "I'm over this little game of hide and seek. The GCPD will be here soon with all these explosions, and I can wait another day for you."
Batman watched as she turned to Fish Moony.
"Sorry about this. It's been real, but I'm not doing hard time for you." Ivy said.
Batman watched her drop a smoke bomb onto the floor and quickly vacuum sealed his helmet. He could feel the suction around his face and the air processors keeping the toxins away from him.
If Selina was telling the truth, Ivy just poisoned herself. The smoke went from white to green in a matter of seconds and Fish gave out a gurgled cry of pain. Batman watched from the shadows and hoped Selina's gas make would hold up to the poison in the air.
He saw Ivy through the smoke and was shocked she was still standing. Her breathing was easy as the smoke clung to her body and hair like the vines of a deadly plant.
Fish didn't fare as well. Her body was rapidly decomposing from the gas. Green leaves fighting their way out of her mouth, nose and ears. Finally her eyes. The eye patch pulled free from her lifeless face was now cradled by a red flower.
In a cruel bit of irony, Ivy plucked the rose like bud that had grown from Fish's bad eye and put it in her hair.
"Hate to leave, but I don't want to stay." Ivy sang out.
Batman had to remain calm as a warning light flash on the inside of his helmet. The gas was still potent and wouldn't protect him much longer.
'Selina!' he remembered.
With a graceful flick of the wrist, he shot a boomerang deceive at Ivy with an electric line. This worked like the taser dart, only it securely prevented her escape as it wrapped her tightly in it's snake like grasp.
He shot his last grappling hook into a nearby support beam and his body lifted up like a bird in flight.
'Or a bat.' he thought bitterly.
Selina was still standing when he reached her. Her eyes large with fear.
"She killed Fish." she was in a panic. Her view from the rafters meant she had seen everything.
"The GCPD is on it's way." Batman told her. "We have to leave."
He quickly unlocked the cuffs and pulled her away from the gas and up to the roof.
~ Selina pulled off the gas mask and tasted the beautiful fresh air of the night. Even the horrible river next to Arkham Asylum smelled wonderful just now.
"Down here." the freak ordered.
Selina didn't question, she just followed him down a rickety fire escape. His movements were fast and purposeful. She jumped ahead of him, and he quickly caught up with a leap down below. It was like some kind of dance they were both doing. She did a hand stand on a ledge just below the street level, her feet in the air, her head pointed downward as he swooped past her.
A part of her wanting to show off for this masked man.
He was waiting for her when she finally dropped next to him.
"Lovely." he said curtly and she took it as a compliment.
"This way." he ordered and they fled into the darkness as GCPD lights rang out though the streets.
"Are you sure Ivy can't get away?" Selina asked as reached a darkened ally.
"The police would have gotten to her by now. Are you really that afraid of her?" the freak asked.
"She has a real nasty side." she assured him.
They slowed down when they reached a black, late model economy car.
"Get in." he ordered.
She almost laughed.
"Problem?" the freak asked. A cop car rushed past the dark ally they were standing in.
"No problem." she said with a shrug. "Just pictured you having a nicer car."
Even with the helmet on, she could tell her dark savior didn't like that comment.
"Just get in." he ordered.
~ Batman wasn't sure he could trust Selina. Bruce Wayne trusted Selina. But that was a different man right now. He knew she wouldn't hurt Bruce. But she would certainly double cross his alter ego.
Her comment on the car hadn't eased relations with her either.
"I take it back." Selina breathed as the night vision HUD display lit up the windshield.
"Appearances are deceiving." he said.
He could tell by the way she looked over the high end tech in the console she was impressed.
"So what are you?" she asked as he drove them safely out of crime ally. His computer telling him what streets to avoid as the GCPD was closing in on them.
"Former special forces? An ex cop?" she asked. "You can defend yourself better than any street fighter I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of street fights."
"I'm no one." Batman said simply.
"Well, Mr. No One." she said with her classic sarcasm. "You can let me off here. I'll find my own way back to Gotham."
"Not so fast." Batman growled. "You have to show me Ivy's lab. Where she works to makes the poison. It has to be destroyed. Her notes to."
"Won't the DA need that to prosecute?" Selina asked.
"If this toxin and the mind control drug falls into the wrong hands, think of the damage that could do." Batman said.
Selina nodded.
"It's over the bridge. Just keep driving north." she said.
Batman sped up. His deceptively fast economy car passing everyone over the bridge.
"Why didn't the toxin kill Ivy do you think?" Selina asked after a few moments of silence.
Batman had been waiting for her to ask him more questions about himself. Who he was, why he was fighting the scum of Gotham.
"Immunity." he said. "It would make sense if she developed the toxin that she had the sense to build up a resistance to it first."
"A vaccine to the toxin." Selina whispered. "Maybe even for the mind control to."