a/n: Whoosh, it's been a while. Time to get the plot moving. Thanks to all who've been reading and reviewing and all that, truly much appreciated (:

Chapter 22

"You've got a plan," Wally said. It wasn't a question. Bruce considered if it was worth his breath informing the Flash that his talent for stating the patently obvious was unparalleled, then settled for arching his eyebrow in a manner which communicated said sentiment.

"What, some sort of disrupter you've got stored somewhere, EMP?" Clark asked after. Bruce didn't bother sparing him a glance in this instance. He was already filtering through the itinerary accessible either to him or the League, which effectively would mean him at any rate.

"Most items these days are proofed against electromagnetic pulses, and besides, even if half the city weren't, what's to stop our invisible friend here from proofing his? Doesn't take a genius," Bruce muttered half to himself, lifting his cane to set it at a pace towards the computer together with his feet. "There is a device with more finesse though. Orion's Arrow. Operates at a sub electron level with high concentration. Bends refractions and reflections basically to create a corkscrew of radiation. It would effectively short circuit any device within a twenty metre radius, miniature ones included." His face darkened. "But we need whatever they have intact, if we want to find anything quick."

"They have to be running on some sort of frequency, right? Can't we just jam it?" Wally said, kneading the back of his neck with one hand.

"They are jamming our frequencies already, electronic and biological," Diana replied, "We wouldn't know what to direct a counter frequency to."

Specificity… did they really need it? Bruce stole a look at Clark, and saw the steeled still muscle that was ready to be a sledgehammer in any given situation, whether the situation required it or not. Perhaps… something like that might work. Bruce almost laughed at the seeming simplicity of it.

"Overload," he said, and the others stopped their debate, turning their attention to him.

"We overload all frequencies. Indiscriminately." Giant sledgehammer. "It would also mean a dissolution of all communicative devices." That was the reason it had been voided as soon as he had thought of it when they had first encountered the equipped gangsters. For all intents and purposes it would mean a shutdown of the city. Anything from elevators to airport control towers, from housewife gossip to stock market trading. Traffic pre-emption systems would be thrown out of whack, and the entire city had routed its technology for decades now. Disaster control by trying to strike at a time in which the inhabitants were less active was irrelevant, impossible, in a city which never slept. There'd be as much chaos as the first option, more easily rectified, yes, but chaos was what this Guan Gong, or whoever he was, wanted, wasn't it? Forcing him to burn a barn to find the needle in it.

"If there's too much data on their system, they can't send or receive anything, which means they won't be able to send out whatever interference they currently are," Clark mused.

"Seems our best option," Wally added, and the man was right.

"Our own communication will be cut off beyond proxy once the device is activated," Bruce murmured, then lifted his eyes to the screen. "I suggest we plan our game." An elaborate game of tag. No, he wouldn't even give Guan the dignity of a the chess board he seemed to have set up in his city. He wanted to play? Bruce would play along with him, and beat him soundly. He would have to believe that, because the alternative was unthinkable.

"And… where are we getting this major overloading device? Please say Wayne Enterprises," Wally called from the giant coin. His voice reverberated through the cave walls, Bruce noted absently, visualising the effect of the Omnid, as its makers had called it. Bruce had to credit them for keeping the name short.

"The whole city's walls would be used as a board off which what we're going to employ is going to function. A giant antenna, or conductor, if you will. No, an amplifier. A prototype was been tested in Old Mexico before the rebuilding. Impossible to carry out an experiment on an actual city without widespread damage."

"Please say Wayne Enterprises."

"The concept it never largely employed under a civilian or even military tactic, as it would disrupt all communication, not just that of the opponent. They've considered using it as a pre-emptive of sort just before moving in with heavy artillery. Wayne Enterprises did begin the development before Powers took over, but he apparently never viewed it as very...lucrative. R&D shelved it."

"Please say Fox-teca."

"Ai-lat bought over the design specifications and brought the project to completion," Bruce finished, before steepling his fingers and swivelling round in his chair. He could hear the wet slap of a palm on forehead as Wally West strolled into view, hand left in its position crushed against his skull for prolonged dramatic effect. Bruce resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Clark didn't. Wally eventually moved his hand and opened his mouth once again to speak, again.

"So now you want us to rob the place that you and the Guan guy are essentially fighting over, I mean, if you are connecting him to Huang Holdings and all."

"Ai-lat is well known for its high security," Diana offered.

"Sounds like a day's work to me," Clark grinned, his heels lifting themselves imperceptibly off the ground, almost. Noticing, Bruce held up a hand to stall the overgrown, too young Kansas Kryptonian, not without a small smile playing around his own lips.

"Almost. Like I said, we'll plan. Not all of us can be involved in this extraction."

"Oh? Why not?" Diana asked.

"Because, Princess," Bruce said, the smile tugging mercilessly at his lips now as he extended a finger to point at Diana, "you have a date." He paused a moment longer, allowing the deliciously buoyant feeling sink in at the looks of growing confusion of his colleagues. "We have a date."

"You're joking," Wally said, then corrected himself almost immediately. "No, but you don't joke. Supes, tell me he's joking. Diana?"

"Bruce?" Diana asked. Bruce hit a button on the console in response. A private message opened up on the screen, window enlarging, the unmistakable logo of Huang Holdings centred in the header.

"Hungry Ghost Festival. Mid Autumn, really. They hold a dinner every year, extended to most major and minor companies along the coast, the Chinese ones especially. Powers has never failed to attend." Bruce himself sneered at the artful sheen of the animated invite. He continued in his didactic tone. "It would be unseemly," Bruce said, "for Bruce Wayne not to appear after retaking the helm of his company." He smiled here, it was cold, brusque, business like, meant for paparazzi cameras and the press, and all the more incongruent in the depths of the Manor. "The Huangs like to hold it in the middle of the Hungry Ghost month."

"There'll be no moon tomorrow," Diana noted half consciously. Bruce nodded, but didn't pause.

"It is customary for bachelors to bring a date with them, for appearances sake," he finished, glancing askance at Diana as he did so. She smiled in return, and his own chill one gained warmth from it.

"Relegating an ambassador to call girl, Mr. Wayne?" a voice came from the top of the stairs, and they all turned to look. "Or hired muscle? Bribed? Coerced? Charmed? Never could tell, with you." Barbara Gordon descended the staircase, hands deep in her trench coat and lips thinned in what her men had grown accustomed to identifying as a grim smile. Though not without humour. Barbara Gordon had, she believed, a greater sense of humour than the old crotchety man she was currently addressing, along with a greater common sense and sometimes foresight. That humour was currently channelled despite her otherwise frosty exterior, of which Bruce had grown accustomed to in the days gone by. Perhaps the cave was the true dampener. The crease between Bruce's eyebrows tended to deepen into unfathomable shadows in it, and after a while even Wally's voice would begin to sound muted. At least, Wally's voice had sounded muted to Barbara as she neared the entrance five minutes ago. She turned her attention to Bruce again.

"The bike's in the garage. I took the liberty of placing it there myself."

"Thank you," Bruce acknowledged, half rising from his chair before decision took hold of his limbs and extended them fully. He tapped another button on the console and the floor plans and schematics of the Ai-lat research tower unfolded across the screen. Barbara raised an eyebrow, eyes wider than usual by just a touch, hands tightening through her coat, Bruce observed, watching the cloth around her pockets warp into a sudden crease. "Excuse us, a moment," he told the three, before moving towards the top of the steps. Clark, Diana and Wally immediately began studying the entry and exit points of the building with a sort of intensity that served to contrast all the more with the silence that had descended on the pair that stepped out of the cave onto the plush carpet of the hall.

Barbara was the first to speak. "I hope you know what you're doing, Bruce," she muttered, hands still resolute in their position in her pockets.

"Like you said," Bruce murmured sotto voice, "I'll have hired muscle about me." Barbara answered with a choked laugh, hoarse from too many scalding coffees and cigarettes as she bore the brunt of achieving justice through the corrupt system that was Gotham.

"Hired muscle that belongs to who, Bruce? Diana can't save you from if you insist on walking into death traps. The Chinese are ruthless. We'd sent a mole once. He came back in an urn, limbs and tongue chopped off, delivered to the doors of Gotham Central Headquarters." She shook the hair that had fallen in front of her face and looked up at the clock, lips twisted in a grimace of a smile. "You don't need to be insane to be sick and cruel. Do you even know what you're dealing with?" She directed her eyes to Bruce's at the last. His were calm, so calm, Barbara knew, as before a storm, not after.

"Yes," he said.

"I hope you do. I don't want anyone else hurt, do you understand, Bruce?" she asked. Bruce was studying her hair, wondering if the fiery nature that he'd long associated with her red tresses were hammered into the iron grey by some strange blacksmith of time and tragedy.

"I need your help, Barbara," he said, looking straight at her now. "There will be chaos."

"Which you will create."

"Which I will engineer, and therefore control."

"Which I will have to clean up after?"

"No," Bruce said, "which you will help to control." Then Bruce told her the plan. The air was still about them and Barbara was still and eventually the stillness buzzed with the static pins and needles of a muscle rediscovering itself after being cramped and quashed into dormancy. This time Barbara did not smile, but she held out her hand instead, and Bruce clasped it.

"It seems I must trust you again, Bruce," she said. "It seems that there is little else one can do when it comes to you." The bitterness in her eyes held a trace of something not quite sweet in it, but not quite wholly bitter either. Bruce chose not to comment.

J-man was like, in an ultimate fizz 'cos like, this wasn't his patch man, this wasn't what like he did. He felt naked without the grease (well advanced polymer latex which maintained the skin, thank you, not all the girls liked spotted faces) paint that was his usual garb every night. Suits he could deal with, but this cut was like total different from the loose cool purple ones that were his and his alone, that defined him man. Man, sent down to just be your average, what was he supposed to be? A waiter? The Great Guan Gong had told him that if he did this right he'd be totally back in the game, or at least that's what Old Lin had said the Great Guan Gong had said. J-man needed that like he needed to skeet around crazy on a dark as a duck night like thissun was, tearing up the old streets for the good old times and old little grannies who needed the help to make their neighbourhood look kinda more oldish like they did.

It'd been a while since J-man was top man, ever since the Joker had ridden into town and picked up a bunch of goons that were otherwise on the C-list of the gang roster and turned them into total rad mains on the street. Unschway man, like total unschway and you do not slag J-man without him getting back to slag you into the slag pits of shmuck. He was the J-man, man, you did not turn your dog nose up at that whether you were the real Joker or not. But the DeeDees had been pretty sure, and kooked up as they were, they had connections, family connections that were kinda rattled about after the Joker had found them. Like, the reason why the Joker had found them in the first place. Yeah so, when the Joker ditched he thought he'd go and get them on in his team, boost his rep back a bit, only to find that some crazy guy was recruiting both Ts and Jokerz to work for The Great One, all terrible and mighty and the ultimate schway dude as you would ever see.

No one told him when he signed up for it that he'd be out here doing no fun work like what no fun boy probably did for scary old dude Wayne WAYNE WAYNE (man, his name needed to stop coming up, it was bad for the karma, man, like J-man's personal god karma, not that he was prayery or anything) every other day of the week. Man, and the collar was stiff. He thought of the starched stuff he'd seen in old costume shops down at the old end of the undermarket. Felt like it. Smelt like it too, or maybe that was from all the burning sticks further down the cruise ship's upper deck. Like Halloween for the Chinese, or something, and some crazed wild partaying for the jewels and sniffy well kept of Gotham. Thugs was thugs, no matter how shiny they were though, J-man thought to himself, not that he wanted or needed to be shiny, no. It was kinda stifling, all this handshaking and curtseying around him, and he saying welcome sir welcome madam welcome welcome every ten seconds was making his tongue feel like it'd been smashed into cracked glass. Man, what he wouldn't give to crack some glass right now. He made a face, and touched the gun in his inner pocket to reassure himself. Steel meant he was the J-man, man, you didn't mess with metal, no how. He could deal with a few more hours of this.

At this point he stumbled and barely caught himself on the rail of platform, as a murmured apology was given and a dozen camera flashes went off in his face which he was sure would cause some sort of permanent damage. He blinked stupidly, and saw the hand of Bruce Wayne outstretched towards him, and quelled the urge to scoot backwards and off the pier into the sea below.

"I'm terribly sorry," Bruce Wayne said, "It seems I underestimated my ability to cross the walkway, young man." J-man was glad for once that his hair was all slicked back and not in the pompadour he usually favoured, and that his face wasn't covered over in white mud and he was this night just Jesse Kilpatrick to all and sundry.

"No bother sir, welcome aboard sir, have a good night, sir," he grinned and gibbered. Bruce Wayne smiled genially, and fished some credits from his trouser pocket, tucking it into Jesse's before being led away by a very stunningly beautiful lady with hair as rich and black as a midnight sky in the untouched regions of space. The camera flashes went off again, and when the whiteness had cleared from Jesse's eyes, the couple had already made their way into the ship. He fingered the credits in his pocket. Maybe standing out here wasn't quite so bad after all.

They entered the ship, both looking at each other on hearing the minute crackle that told them that their comlinks would be useless as long as they remained on the ship. Bruce made his way to the table as the waiter within had directed him, two tables diagonally off from the stage that had been set up on one end of the deck, Diana by his side. It was round, seating ten, a Lazy Susan holding cups of Chinese Tea and a pot in plain white crockery. Nodding greetings to those seated with him, he reached for a cup of tea and brought it to his lips. Jasmine, a bit dry, with a strange lack of aftertaste that he had never quite got used to. The media frenzy that dogged the place had been in full force during his entrance, with the same scattered questions about Terry's disappearance, quickly changing their tune to comment on the presence of the Themysciran Princess by his side. Though the diversion of which if gave was what he was counting for, he couldn't account for the sneer that he had to repress in demurely uttering some flattery of his companion to appease them. For her part, Diana seemed to be taking it well. Bruce was glad for this, as he sipped at the tea.

The second time he brought the cup down from his lips, he noticed a man approaching. He was short, portly, with a pencil moustache and a receding hairline. Bruce recognised him as Mr. Tan, Dana Tan's father. "Mr. Wayne," he said, putting forth his hand in greeting. He looked uncomfortable, standing rigid as if to prevent himself from slipping on the highly polished floor. His face was grave. "You are brave to come here tonight," he said, voice low, now clasping his hands behind him. "One hears things."

Bruce gave a narrowed smile, a raised his voice slightly above the murmurings of the crowd, light and airy, "I trust your daughter has recovered?" Mr. Tan bowed in response, quick to follow suit.

"Yes, sir, what has happened is unfortunate. Your fortitude in appearing despite it is no doubt to be commended, along with your choice of companion for the evening," he gave a bow to Diana, who smiled politely in deference. "Again, a pleasure to meet you." He held out his hands again in a double handshake and firmly grasped that of Bruce's, before departing. Bruce reached for the napkin in front of him, and as he laid it in his lap, flipped open the note that had been slipped into his hand.

'Moon wanes.' Wayne. 'As warning and example to brotherhood. GG. HH.' Guan Gong. Huang Holdings. Good, at least Fox-teca was more than aware of the underworld's surge. Lucius the younger had been wise to adopt and fund the many entrepreneurs from Asia that had entered Gotham's shores over the past few decades.

A hush fell upon the room as he folded the note and slipped it into his pocket. Diana had reached out to grip his arm. Bruce looked. On the stage the spotlight had been turned on, and the ceiling lights were being dimmed even as the curtain rippled, and an ancient Chinese warlord strode through. An elaborate headdress adorned his mask, filaments of golden feathers fanning out from the crown, while the face itself was a blood red sheen detailed with angry black stripes. Like the design they'd seen in the photos, on the walls, near where Terry had been taken. Upward god, downward man, apparently, for Guan Gong had chosen a finely tailored evening suit, the rippling of brute strength just discernable beyond the crease and fold of inky, black cloth. A modernised god. Bruce decided that he would ensure that the fall would be infinite. He lifted a hand to the audience.

"Hing Dai.*" The words licked over each person like a hail of brimstone. His gait was deliberate, slow, powerful, intended to impose and impress and intimidate. Trays of Chinese buns and roasted meats followed, and were placed on the table in front of him, where a trail of incense curled over the suckling pig that was the centrepiece of the banquet display. The effect produced stunned the guests into silence, then a raised applause, almost manic, as Guan Gong raised his hand in condescending benevolence, and the banquet began. Bruce sat unmoving, eyeing him from a distance, staring him down till the mask shifted, turning in his direction.

"Bruce?" Diana asked softly as they passed round the soup that was being served.

The mask's slits seemed to narrow further, the lines growing more fearsome, while Bruce's face melted to stubborn impassiveness as they held each other in their gazes, past the smoke and dimly lit room, past the bustling waiters and flow of wine and increasing coarseness in the conversations that spun about them. The minute stretched out, and Bruce was content to let it stretch further before he allowed his lips to twist upward viciously and mouthed, 'Hello'. Then he broke the contact and returned to his food, seemingly oblivious to what had just transpired. A few metres away from him in the stage, Guan Gong smouldered, and with a flick of his finger directed an attendant to him. A few whispered words later he himself rose and quitted the dining area.

Conversation took an immediate turn. The confirmation of the presence of the great Guan Gong, the protector of businessmen, with promises that had been spread, that if they joined in brotherhood, they would once again rule and supersede and own, together, as brothers, what was rightfully theirs. It was not just a ploy by Huang. He was true, he existed. The command he held over all was the proof that god or man or reincarnate, he would hold true to the promises that they had heard. Looks and glances were aimed at Bruce, calm, sitting there. He was a fool, they would whisper, trying to go against the Great One, not engaging in the profiteering that his company could be the ultimate vehicle for. If Powers had still been in control, they said, the fear mongering would have been unnecessary, everything would have been so smooth. By the fifth course the back of Bruce's neck was itching from the stares lobbied to the back of his skull.

He wiped his mouth, then doubled over an instant later, cringing as he gripped the table cloth and an unknown force pounded through his left ear. Diana beside him had similarly started, but now reached for her ear and tapped off the communicator. His eyes darkened. "What have they done?" he grimaced. A waiter near their table had crashed to the floor, and was currently the butt of jokes from the drunk party surrounding him. The idiot from the walkway, Bruce realised, and one of the lead Jokerz. The youth fumbled near his side pocket before shaking his head like a confused beast and propping himself up. Bruce decided to be charitable as he got up and held out a hand to help him stand, using the other to steady him at his side while resisting the urge to land a blow to his head, giving the nonplussed fool a very genial smile to cover his derision. One more glance at Diana, and they made their excuses before exiting the cruise.

*brothers - (cantonese)