The next morning I stumbled into my apartment with just enough time to get a shower and get to work. It was so a movie day in math class. Maybe I'd show them Pi or something. High school students wouldn't be offended by Aronofsky, would they?

I slid the Lamborghini into a spot at the far end of the parking lot and sat there listening to the radio for a long moment, my head resting on the steering wheel. I was approaching the breaking point, and I knew it. I would have to take tonight off, or I would be no good to anyone. I turned off the car and dialed my cell phone from memory. As usual, he didn't answer, and I talked to his answering machine as I walked towards the front door of the school.

"Hey, it's me. The garden center still had that plant you wanted. They had all the ones we thought might work. I can go back and get one tomorrow if you don't find anything locally you like better." I snapped the phone shut as I entered my classroom to find the usual scene of chaos, panic and disorder. It must be really nice to be independently wealthy and get to sleep in. I wouldn't know.

With a heavy sigh, I called them to attention, slogging through the day on autopilot.

7 periods, two parent conferences, a staff meeting and a hellish rush hour commute later, I barely made it through my front door to collapse on the couch. My air conditioner was out, and my living room was like a sauna. I made a mental note to call the super, and I passed out. When I woke up, the sky had bled to moonless black, and someone was knocking on my window. I threw a pillow at it. No way in hell was I going out there tonight.

Knock. Knock. Knock. Goddamnit.

I sat up, scrubbing a hand through my disheveled curls, and looked over at the window. Shock didn't quite describe the jolt of cold adrenaline that shot through me. I scrambled over to open the window and she folded her long, lean body through it like she owned the place, the leather of her cropped motorcycle jacket creaking as she moved. "What the hell are you doing here?" I know I sounded cranky. Waking me up in the middle of the night will do that.

She looked around, a little uncertainly. "Can we talk safely?" I nodded, and she continued. "Dick called us to come check on you... You haven't been answering your phone."

I cursed under my breath in Italian, fumbling for my silenced cell phone in my purse and looking at it. 33 missed calls, and the battery was on reserve. At least he cared. I plugged it into the wall and turned back to the gorgeous blonde in my living room.

"I'm sorry, I fell asleep. I need a night off." She sized me up, taking in my wrinkled silk blouse and conservative slacks, the makeup I know must have smeared into raccoon-like proportions around my eyes, and she shook her head.

"Helena, there's a riot going on at Mitchell's. If it was anything we could handle without you, I'd leave you alone to rest, but, it's ugly. REALLY ugly." I sighed.

"Fine, I'll meet you there. Go." She nodded and was gone as quickly as she'd come, leaving the window open to the uncomfortably warm night. I changed, scrubbed my face, and as I waited for the glue to dry on my mask, I thought about what she'd said.

Mitchell's isn't the sort of place you find a riot. The cheapest drink is $20 and the VIP rooms are frequented by celebrities, socialites, CEOs, the creme de la creme of Bludhaven society. Some celebutante had her last birthday there and it actually hurt their business because people thought she'd cheapened the place. On a Wednesday night it wasn't likely to be packed, but there would still be a good 300 people there, dancing, drinking, and enjoying the privileges of their wealth.

I leaned in close to the mirror - I would only get one shot at this, and after the last time some two-bit low-life made fun of me for the mask being on crooked, I was very careful. I pressed it hard to the center of my face and worked it outward, holding it in place as the adhesive dried.

10 seconds later I was out the window, and in 20 minutes I was at Mitchell's. She wasn't kidding. There were cop cars everywhere. Empty. EMPTY?

I saved time, I went through the skylight. Whatever, they had insurance. Never underestimate the power of a good entrance to strike fear into the hearts of the stupid.

I could hear the sounds of the scuffle as I dropped into the middle of it. Dick was tangling with two burly guidos I recognized as the bouncers, who had him pinned to the bar. Black Canary was surrounded by half a dozen cops with their hands over their ears, while two dozen civilians already lay unconscious on the floor in front of her. A sobbing go-go dancer huddled in her cage, beset on all sides by a horde of slavering man-beasts, and easily a hundred more shambled through the ruins of the chic decor, overturning tables and dragging screaming, scantily-clad girls out from beneath them by whatever appendages they could grip.

Nausea rolled through me in a palpable wave, and this had to stop. Now. Before they could spot me, I zip-lined back up to the rafters and dropped a handful of knockout gas canisters into the chaos. It was heavy, it would stay low. I tossed a line down to Canary who had the good sense to grab it and climb up to me a split second before the gas enveloped the angry mob below us.

She was bleeding from a shallow cut over one eye and holding her arm to her side, but she looked fine otherwise. "What the hell happened down there?" I asked, offering her a piece of gauze out of my utility belt.

She took it, pressing it to her forehead. "Nightwing heard the call go over the police radios that something was going on. He tried to call you, and he did get Oracle. She sent me to get you. By the time we got here, the cops had gone crazy too. I- I've never seen anything like it..." She shuddered, wrapping her arm even more tightly around herself and sitting down on the wide beam beneath us. "It's like their brains just shut down and they're running on pure instinct..." The distant wail of more sirens reached us as the noise below subsided.

I made my way along the beam until I was directly over the bar. I shot a grappling hook into the ceiling and held my breath, dropping into the middle of the roiling, greyish cloud near where I'd seen Dick. He and his opponents were just as unconscious as the rest of the rioters, and I clipped the line to my belt and grabbed him around the torso, retracting the line and pulling us both up and out of the gas.

I hadn't really given this much more thought than him not getting arrested, and we dangled there for a long moment while I contemplated how the hell I was getting 190 lbs of dead-weight Nightwing across 30 feet of two-inch board and through a broken skylight to safety. Oh, what I wouldn't have given to have that sanctimonious ass Jordan with us at that moment.

Fortunately at that moment, he stirred, causing us both to swing. "Nightwing?"

"Y-yeah?" He didn't sound too steady, but he was at least coherent.

"You with me?"

"Yeah..."

"Can you get down onto that cross-brace below us? I can't exactly hold you much longer..." My shoulders burned with the effort, and I could feel the strain on the line holding us up.

"I think so, yeah... Let go." I swung us over the beam and released him, watching him land in a somewhat sloppy, but passable, crouch. I dropped neatly beside him. Across the room, I could see Canary already making her way onto the roof, and in a few minutes I had Dick shuffled over there too. The two of us somehow got him up to open air, where he collapsed onto his back, breathing hard. Expected. Canary dropped beside him, coughing violently. Not so expected. I knelt beside them, flinching when I saw the droplets of scarlet staining her lips.

I cursed, long and fluently. She would need a hospital, and I shouldn't move her. Borrowing her earpiece, I made the call to Oracle.

Her voice was low and urgent as she instructed me to find Dinah a change of clothes. An unbarred store window half a block away yielded a dress that zipped all the way up the back. It would have to do. I hurried back to find Dick up and around, and the two of us got her changed. His relationship with law enforcement, by definition far better than mine, meant he got to take her down to the waiting ambulances, effectively camouflaged as just another victim. Oracle would meet her at the hospital, and Dick and I would search the area.

Any plan dictated to me by a woman in a wheelchair is by definition a terrible idea. For that matter, any plan dictated by ANYONE else is a terrible idea. But since it was what I would have done anyway, I agreed. Grudgingly.

We met back up a block south of Mitchell's, and didn't have far to look. After busting up a group of glazed-eyed gangbangers passing around a teenage girl, -she- found -us-.

We didn't hear her coming. Something hit me in the back of the head and I went down, the sticky pavement rushing up to crack my chin and skin my hands. Dazed, I registered a struggle behind me. By the time I could sit up, she had Nightwing pinned to a wall, blowing dust from her hand into his face.

She was tall, taller than me, and in the dim night it was hard to make out details. Her hair was red or light brown, her costume earthy browns and greens, and she was pretty, very pretty. Her hair hung in dreadlocks to her waist, woven through with vines and flowers, and tawny skin showed through diamond-shaped cuts in her bodysuit all around her narrow midsection. She leaned in to kiss him, just as my questing hand found my quarterstaff, and I hurled it at her.

Jackpot. It nailed her squarely between the eyes, and she staggered back, clutching her head. Dick was suddenly on her, fists flying with more savagery than I'd ever seen from him before, and she spun, pulling a hidden cape around her body and disappearing into the night.

Before I could pursue, he turned on me, his mindless fury making him predictable, but tenacious and dangerously strong. Every hit he landed radiated waves of pain through my body, and I was kept so strongly on the defensive I could hardly press an attack. As we fought I steered him toward where my staff had landed. I needed a weapon and the crossbow was not going to do it at this range. Finally, I felt my foot nudge the familiar metal shaft, and I dropped suddenly to the ground, sweeping his feet from under him and grabbing the staff. It was over in seconds - two good hits to the parietal bone and he was sleeping like a baby.

I took no chances, cuffing his hands, tying his feet and gagging him with one of his gloves before I went to get the car. Wrestling him into the backseat, I went straight for the clock tower. With any luck, he'd sleep til I got there.