A barrage of thorns. They made Bruce realize that life just is not fair at all. But these thorns were even worse: black and narrow, crimson tipped, they shimmered with a secret liquid coating that he would not allow himself to explore more intimately. They erupted from Woodrue's very mouth, propelled by some unseen forth within from high above where the massive seaweed tendril held the madman. Throwing himself to the right, the black thorns arrowed into the wall behind, just barely missing Bruce's head, and when he looked around, he saw the metal where they had stabbed sizzling… sizzling and emitting a strong, sulfuric odor…

"SUBMIT." Woodrue's transformed, pencil-thin, infinitely long arms pointed a gnarled, branch-like staff (one of his fingers) at Bruce, and the creature grinned. "THIS IS THE WAY, CUSTOS. THIS IS THE WAY."

"Sir!" Alfred was crying frantically from the com-link. "Red-001!"

Bruce nodded (though Alfred could not see that, of course) and said, "Right." He lifted his left arm, aiming it right at Woodrue.

"Tell me something!" Bruce cried, his face filled with rage. "Did you disable my suit's protective measures before bringing me down here!?"

Woodrue, glowing eyes pulsing out green steam in his agitation, let out a monstrous roar and propelled a new barrage of thorns at Bruce, who sidestepped and hit the trigger on the side of his left arm. From a small, cylinder-shaped tube, a blast of red flame exploded outward, jetting quickly across the room at Woodrue. Woodrue, crying out in shock, moved his arms like a composer, and before the flames could hit him, the giant tentacle that had previously held Bruce in place sprung alive and snaked quickly to its master, catching the flame blast. A terrible sound, like screaming, issued from the onion-shaped pod nearby, and in the next second, the giant tentacle came crashing down, fully burning, at Bruce. It moved so fast that it actually hit the back of his leg as he went to dive out of the way, knocking him across the floor and against the wall.

As Bruce hit the wall, Woodrue descended down, landing upon the floor in front of Lasetta's capsule. He ran quickly to the terminal before the thing, typing in instructions as he switched on a microphone and spoke into a small speaker. "SWANSON. BRING YOUR TEAM IN AND EXTRACT LASETTA."

"Understood," a deep voice replied from the other end. The line went dead, and as it did, Lasetta Rilee suddenly began to descend within her capsule as the green liquid within began to drain. Bruce leapt to his feet, running forward as he took aim against at Woodrue. The first blast of fire had been overdone, he would admit to himself later, out of desperation. He had used up more than half of the fuel storage circulating within between his pauldron and vanguard. Woodrue heard him coming, however, and spun around fast. And he was holding something at the ready with only one hand to support its weight.

"WATCH OUT, BRUCE." The .10 gauge shell exploded out of the end of the shotgun. Bruce was hit directly in the chest, and pain became his entire world in that moment as his vision went black and he fell back onto the floor… He crashed, sprawled, pieces of his chest-plate flying in every direction… He screamed for the sake of the pain that burned through his body. An evil, excited laughter carried on the wind around him as he struggled to breath, his heart hammering hard… he was bruised, and bruised badly. Am I dead yet…?

Woodrue was walking towards him now, twiddling the shotgun around in his hand with inhuman strength. He stood over Bruce and shook his head in disappointment.

"CUSTOS… WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME?" The shotgun was aimed now at Bruce's head, who could only look up at this tool of his inevitable death. He was too weak. He was in too much pain. He…was human. Woodrue…was not. "I'LL ALLOW YOU LASETTA'S HAND, CUSTOS… I AM GOD. I AM HONORABLE LIKE THAT. ONE MORE CHANCE, CUSTOS. ONE MORE CHANCE. SUBMIT TO GOD. SUBMIT TO JEHOVA. CALL ME WHAT I AM. CALL ME VIRIDI DEUS. CALL ME YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR."

Bruce said nothing. He merely closed his eyes and waited for the demon to be done. This demon of plant life and insanity… in the end, Woodrue would be dealt with. Clark would come…too late, but Bruce was sure he would come. And if not, Alfred, Dick and Barbara would ensure that Woodrue was found and dealt with. He had no regrets. His life had been a fine one… I'm coming home now, Dad…Mom… I'm coming home now.

"NOTHING?" Woodrue sounded genuinely disappointed. "FINE. I SEE YOUR WAY. THE ACCEPTANCE, THE MENTALITY OF ASSURANCE… METAPHYSICAL, YES, BUT NOT LOGICAL, YET LOGICAL TO YOU. I'M ACTUALLY PROUD OF YOUR STUBBORNESS, CUSTOS."

Woodrue looked around at Lasetta's capsule. The woman had awoken. Fully nude, dripping from her soaked form in the vibrant chemical, she had her hands placed against the glass, and was peering outward with a curious expression. Her skin, now unhindered by the green hibernation fluid, could be seen to be copper in color. Woodrue, sighing happily, turned away from Bruce and advanced towards her. At that same moment, a barrage of footsteps could be heard from behind. A door behind Bruce slid open, and in charged a party of seven armored, armed security guards, all wearing gas masks and carrying AK-47s. Three of them spotted Bruce and held him at gunpoint, while the other four proceeded forward, just as Woodrue was unsealing the capsule.

The glass door spun open, and Lasetta, her expression wide-eyed, fell forward, into the awaiting arms of Woodrue, who embraced her closely. The four proceeding guards came forward and stopped before the two of them. Lasetta was shaking, as if she were very cold, and looked around, whimpering and wild-eyed, unable to say anything.

"IT WILL TAKE SOME TIME," said Woodrue, "FOR HER TO REGAIN SPEECH. SHE NEEDS TO BE ESCORTED SAFELY FROM THE PREMESIS, SO THAT WE MAY BEGIN THE MENTAL TREATMENTS. SHE IS SO…VERY CLOSE NOW." He stroked her face in a very caring manner, and she could only look at him in silent, questioning reply. Her face asked: What is this world, and what am I doing in it? What am I? What is 'am'? What is 'is'? Woodrue looked around at his four escorts, and said to them, "DON'T LET YOUR PROTECTIVE GEAR FAIL YOU. A SINGLE TOUCH OF HER SKIN… YOU WILL DIE. THE VERY AIR SHE EMITS… IF ONLY YOU HUMANS COULD FEEL IT: TOXIC AIR. THE DEADLIEST KIND. SHE IS A LIVING CONDUIT OF VENOM, A POISONOUS FLOWER OF PERFECTION. DO NOT BREATH IN THE AIR AROUND YOU WITHOUT YOUR MASK FILTERS. DO NOT APPROACH HER WITHOUT PROTECTIVE SUITS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

All of them nodded, with a chorus of 'yes sir.' They stepped forward, opening up a thin blue sheet to wrap her up in… and one by one, they fell over. One by one, they toppled, each one letting out a fierce, pained gasp of breath… Woodrue looked around at them all, astounded and interested. The four guards were retching loudly, gagging audibly as they struggled with something upon the floor for a moment… before each one became still. Very still. Dead.

Woodrue gasped, bending down and snatching off one of their masks. The man beneath it… his skin had turned a sickly green in color. His veins were bulging with dark green matter. His eyes… they had bled profusely, his face saturated in it. All over his face, little black pods were sprouting through his skin, bursting through his body and spreading… they looked like mushrooms…

"I SEE…" Woodrue nodded. "I VERY MUCH SEE… HER BODY PRODUCES SUCH A POTENT POISON. IT'S TOO POWERFUL FOR EVEN YOUR PROTECTIVE GEAR. SHE'S EMITTING IT LIKE A STEAMER… I ADMIT, I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING. WHAT A SHAME." He actually chuckled loudly. "YOU TRULY ARE A LIVING MIRACLE, LASETTA." He took her by the cheek and stroked her face. Still, her expression held only curiosity. She was like a child, and a mute one at that. "WELL, WELL… IT SEEMS THAT I WILL BE THE ONE ESCORTING YOU, THEN. THE REST OF YOU!" He looked around at the three guards holding Bruce at gunpoint, who were all staring at their fallen comrades in stunned silence. "BRING CUSTOS… BRUCE… TO SUBMARINE ALPHA. NOW."

The surviving guards hurriedly did as they were told. Two grabbed an arm and the third his legs, and they began to hoist him away, straining as they lifted him up in their eagerness to get out of the room with the virulent, terrifying woman… a woman who protective suits meant nothing to!

Bruce, fading into unconsciousness now, tried desperately to talk to Alfred one last time… but he managed nothing, and slipped into black. Of course, his com-link had been damaged by the shotgun shell. What difference would it have made?

"It makes all the difference in the world," Pamela told Alissa, who was crumpled into her little corner within the hallway, still shaking madly in her traumatic phase. Pamela crouched down before her and grabbed her chin forcibly, making eye contact absolute. "Look at me, Alissa, now!" Alissa, her eyes twitching, did, though she was incapable of speech. "Doesn't this make all the difference in the world!? Aren't you glad to see Officer Patterson dead?"

Alissa, in her continuing, stunned form, could only make something like a cross between a moan and a choke. "No?" Pamela asked, looking sad. "Well, I suppose you can just go home then. Go on." She released Alissa and stood up. "Go home. Go home and wait for them to come looking for you, when Patterson doesn't show up…"

Now, Alissa found her voice. She looked up at Pamela incredulously. "But you killed them," she choked out, her voice no higher than a terrified whisper. "You killed them…"

"And you were with me," said Pamela coldly. "You're involved now. Patterson was going to turn you in along with me. You heard him. I barely heard him, but I did, Alissa… and you know what? I'm glad he's dead… aren't you?"

Alissa stood up too, looking at her with wide eyes. "N-n-n-…" She squeezed them shut and clenched her fists. "N-I'm n-n-…" Why could she not say it? Why could she not say no? "N-…"

"N-n-n-no?" Pamela tried to help her. "Is that what you're trying to say? No?"

"I.. n-…" She almost gave off a small sob. "Y-yes…"

"Yes?"

Alissa looked at her with tearstained eyes. "Y-yes," she hissed, through gritted teeth. "Of course I'm glad…"

Pamela smiled warmly, and placed a hand upon her friend's shoulder. "Well, good. Very good. That's the way it should be, Alissa… that's the way it should be. Patterson was evil. He took bribes. You know he did. He admitted it. He took a bribe from Otto Rock, and has kept what was done to me in shadow… he punished me for being a rape victim." She looked down at his body in disgust. "Now the fucker can spend the rest of eternity in Hell. Imagine it, Alissa… him burning…burning in agony, boiled and torn asunder, forever and ever… Patterson deserved this. Patterson has been made beautiful."

"B-beautiful?" Alissa repeated, shaking her head. Pamela nodded, and walked over to Patterson's body, placing a foot upon his chest in triumph.

"Yes. He's been recreated, in my new philosophy."

"Philosophy!? Pam, we're talking about murder!"

"Who says they cannot be one in the same? My philosophy is simple: every person on the planet is an interloper. The property belongs to Mother Earth. Therefore, interlopers must be shot." She kicked Patterson's body firmly. "Shot. Stabbed. Burned. Mutilated. I don't care how it must be done…but everyone deserves a death. You. Me. Everyone. We're all mutilating the Earth, one by one. We're all damaging it… we have to be stopped, Alissa. All of us. I'd take his gun now and blow my own brains out…your's first, of course… if I knew that there were others willing to fight for Mother Earth as I have tonight." She faced Alissa now, and stood atop Patterson's body, so that she was above her friend. "But I see that there is no one, Alissa. Mother Earth came to me tonight. She spoke to me, and commanded me to take Kevin's life, and sacrifice it to her." She grinned excitedly. "And when I obeyed… she sent my enemy Officer Patterson! She sent him right afterwards, as a sacrifice to both Her and myself! Don't you see, Alissa!? DON'T YOU SEE!? I WAS REWARDED FOR OBEYING! I WAS REWARDED FOR SHOWING HER MY LOVE!"

She hopped down and bounced about excitedly, hugging herself as she grinned at the ceiling. "Thank you, Mother Earth… thank you for the sacrifice!"

"But you'll be arrested!" Alissa snapped. "Both of us will be arrested! We'll go to prison!"

"No, no!" Pamela said quickly, snapping back to her serious side. "No, we'll hide the bodies, Alissa. You and me. I know a place. I know a good place! A place they'll never be found! It's in the Hallow! There's a marsh there. The bodies will never be found!"

"You want to hide them in a swamp!?"

"Yes, Alissa! The bog water will decompose them quickly! It's very well hidden, and no one ever goes through there except me! It's my secret spot! We can hide the bodies there and let Nature handle the rest!"

Alissa had paled. She was looking uncomfortably from Pamela to Patterson to Kevin. "When?" she whispered, her voice quivering. She…just could not see any other way.

"Right now. He left his cruiser out there, right? We can use it, and then… then…"

"You realize police cruisers have GPS tracking, right!?"

Pamela held up a hand. "I know, I know… Let me think, please…" She tapped her head in aggravation. Those damn implementations. What horrid additions for the "sake of accounting for our boys in blue?" "Alright, alright," she said quickly. "Here's what we do. We drive it out of town. Far out of town, and leave it abandoned, a very long way away from where we hide the bodies. Porda-Bay Village!" she suddenly screamed, the idea hitting her at once. "We drive to Porda-Bay Village! They have a bus… If we leave the cruiser outside of Porda-Bay, we can catch a bus back to Gotham City limits… They'll eventually find the cruiser, but they won't have a proximity link to where the bodies will be stashed!"

"Pam, that's… that's ab-" Alissa could not finish the sentence, however. Right now, they had to think, and think fast. This was a moment of entirety: her entire future hinged upon making the wisest decision. She was of two minds, and both decisions were phenomenally hard: run to the GCPD and contact the commissioner of police, who was well-respected and would tackle the situation in the appropriate manner… or go with Pamela and hide the evidence that anything had ever taken place here, and risk going to prison (or worse) in the process for a crime that she had not committed, and murder at that…

The choice was quite clear.

"Alright," she breathed out at last, tears in her eyes. "I'll… I'll do this for you… I'll do it to protect you, Pam… but why did Kevin have to be punished?" She pounded the wall hard, making Pamela jump. "I understand Patterson… and I'm glad he's dead." She was. She really was. She cast a look over at the officer's body and felt only bitterness towards the asshole. "I'm glad he's dead," she tried to pronounce, more confidently. "He deserved worse than what you did to him… and I… I thank you…" What was she saying? Why was she saying it!? "But Kevin… did he really do the…the Earth an injustice?"

"We all do," Pamela whispered, giving her a look of deepest sympathy. "We all do. We all injustice Mother Earth. We all deserve death, as Kevin learned. His sin…was existing. It is the sin we all commit… all of us… but Alissa…!" She became excited again. "…if we become Agents to the Earth…imagine the immortality! Mother Earth will grant us freedom! She will grant us wealth beyond our wildest dreams! We will be rewarded for weeding the Garden!"

"Wealth?" Alissa shook her head. "I don't see wealth in our future, Pam…"

"Oh?" Pamela knelt down beside Patterson, and rifled through his pocket. Out came his pocketbook, and when she revealed the contents, Alissa gasped loudly…against herself, at that. The wallet was stuffed with hundreds. "Behold? I give this gift to you, Alissa. Take this, and remember me by it." She removed all forms of communication from the wallet and handed Alissa the stuffed treasury. Alissa took it with trembling hands, gazing at the money longingly…hungrily… She looked up at Pamela, an incredulous look upon her face… and grinned.

"Really?"

Pamela nodded. "Really."

Moving the bodies was difficult. Pamela had to act swiftly. Her first order of business had been to run out to the police cruiser with a flashlight, and deactivate the flashing lights. It seemed that no one really was home around the quarter this weekend, as there were no curious faces in the windows or doorways to see what the cruiser was doing there. Mother Earth watches me. It took her several minutes of searching to find the correct switch for the lights, and when they were out, she set to work destroying the laptop connected to the car mainframe, attacking it relentlessly with a claw hammer until it was an utter mess of scrap upon the seat.

Afterwards, to be safe, she went around to each of the five houses in the quarter, knocking on each door. Thankfully, only one door answered her call. The moment the young, sleepy young woman answered the door, her eyes squinting to see through the lack of contacts, Pamela, a long hoodie drawn over her face to act as a mask, raised the perfume bottle of disguised pheromones and entranced the young woman at once.

Stroking the woman's face lovingly, Pamela whispered a simple request: for the woman to lock herself away in the closet for an hour, and that, if she did as was told, a most sensual experience would be awaiting her as a reward. Manipulated, Pamela was overjoyed to see just what her experimental fumes were capable of. She knew this woman. Martha Tembrow, English major and known heterosexual mascot. How she swayed for Pamela… how she swayed for her sudden, artificial desires…

The final piece was smashing every exterior light, blackening the quarter. It would just look like another college prank… another attack for the weekend escapees. She made sure to smash her own light. Now, she was just a victim, along with the other four residents.

By the time she made her way back into the house, Alissa had already wrapped both of the bodies up in sheets, and both lay awaiting Pamela in the hall. Together, in silent, secretive intensity, they hoisted Patterson, stripped nude to ensure less weight, across the dark, silent quarter and into the back of the cruiser. Alissa nearly dropped him as they got close to the vehicle, and a threat of death from a pissed Pamela quickly assured that she would not repeat her sin. Kevin, thankfully, was much, much lighter than the heavy, muscled Patterson, and he took no time at all to get into the cruiser, laid across the top of Patterson's body.

Panting heavily, the two women leaned against the cruiser, catching their breath.

"How far is the marsh?" Alissa whispered, her heart hammering.

"Not far. About three or four miles. I always walk there from campus and it doesn't take long… thank Gaia that the university is on the edge of Gotham…"

Thank Gaia indeed. Murderers must remain secret.

Alissa, wearing thick gloves from Pamela's wardrobe, drove them silently down Mildred Road, delving deep into the thick, swampy brush of the Hallow. Pamela directed her down the right way, with a few twists and turns that eventually led to a dead end, the road concluding at the edge of a bog. As they approached, their headlights shined upon some napping alligators, who swam away, irritated by the lights in their eyes. Alissa sat frozen, her breath ragged and terrified.

"What are we doing?" she whispered to herself. Pamela's hand shot out and wrapped around her neck, and Alissa uttered a soft scream. Those mad, green eyes glinted dangerously in the dark.

"Dealing with it," was the short answer.

Dealing with it…right… Alissa cried on the inside. Her hand squeezed the thick wad of hundreds in her pocket… such damn good money. She smiled, nodding. Dealing with it…right…

The two of them carried Kevin first, hoisting them down a narrow, heavily enshrubbed path that ran around the side of a large swamp cove. It was very difficult work. While Pamela helped carry the man's corpse, she had to simultaneously hold the flashlight in her mouth, moving her head about awkwardly to keep them on the right path. For ten minutes they delved deeper and deeper into the blackness, the air smelling heavily of rotten leaves and old moss… Bugs bit them. Crickets chirped. Frogs chorused.

"'Ere," Pamela seemed to mumble at last. They had at last reached the most secluded looking grotto, a fine swamp-side, grassy bank surrounded by blooming honeysuckle, saturating the air with their sickly sweet vapors. She let go of Kevin's body, and Alissa let out a soft scream as he dropped from her grasp and rolled away into the awaiting swamp water. Pamela hurriedly ran to pull him over, rolling him onto the bank and splashing water everywhere. "Come on," she said quickly. "The grass here is thick and endless. We can hide the bodies within its midst…"

Alissa helped her move aside huge clumps of thick grass, and eventually they were able to find a deep, natural enclave within the earth, in which they promptly deposited Kevin into his grave. It would be easy to cover this enclave with the grass and a mound of dirt. As deep into these woods as they were, it was almost guaranteed that he would never be found.

"Alright," panted Pamela, popping her neck loudly. "Patterson…"

The trip with Patterson took even longer, due to the man's bulk, and they dropped him several times on the way. It took a good half hour to get the fatass into the grave with Kevin, and when at last they had laid the demon into the hole, Pamela happily and unceremoniously delivered upon him a series of fierce, almost rhythmic kicks, jubilantly dancing about as her strike landed within his skin and bruised his waiting body… "I bet you never wanted to die like this!" Pamela hissed, kicking him across the face hard. She felt the nose break. "I bet you never wanted to die like a fucking little bitch!"

"Pam… we should go. Now…" Alissa's voice shook hard as she begged.

Pamela took Kevin's wallet from out of her shorts pocket and held it before the dead man's missing eyes. "Thank you, Kevin," she whispered, passionately enough. "I thank you. You have given me more than just wealth tonight. You were my first. You were my first and I thank you for it. May there be many more. I will send them your way."

"No, Pamela… you can't…"

"Perhaps you'd like to join them in this grave, Alissa… there is so much room."

"No! No, please…"

"Then hush, little mammal… hush…"

"Pamela-"

Pamela spun around and slapped her. The pop was so hard, so fierce, it sounded like a shotgun going off in this dense silence. Alissa fell onto the ground and doubled over in pain, holding her stinging face. Pamela stared down at her madly and darkly.

"Stop…calling…me…that…"

"It's your name!" Alissa cried. "Pamela, it's your name!"

FUNCK! Pamela's boot made contact with Alissa's face, and the latter's scream was terrible as she rolled forward, landing face first into the swamp water. Pamela knelt down and pulled her head up by the hair ends, and she whispered into Alissa's ear, "I-will-drown-you-if-you-don't-behave."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO CALL YOU THEN!?" Alissa screamed, losing all sense of caution and secrecy. Pamela grinned, and hissed one word into Alissa's ear.

"Ivy."

There was so much ivy covering the exterior walls of the Zodiac Shire Manor. The place was eerily deserted, but Clark Kent knew better to assume that this was merely the way of a place's order. This was but the way of the current day. The sun shined down happily upon the castle-like home, magnifying the lavenders within the field with extravagant grace. He hovered above the estate, his long, crimson cape fluttering as the sea sent him a powerful, salty breeze. Frowning, he flew down to the rooftop of the manor, landing lightly upon the enclave of up-top veranda, examining the marshy fields below. This place gave him an odd feeling, but he was not sure why.

From his investigation, he had found the place to be abandoned. A woman lay dead on an upper floor, riddled with bullets, decked in SWAT body armor. Glass shards littered the upper floor. There had been a big library, at some point, but someone had sent it to flame recently: the west wing was still smoking through the charred remains of several rooms, yet the odd thing was that it had been stopped. No other part of the manor seemed touched by the burning that had obviously taken place, as if someone had come to put it out. Had it been home-based or terroristic?

Every room had given him the same traces of evidence: nothing and nada, nada and nothing. Woodrue had had an office: a boring, cleaned out room with nothing but the bronze nameplate upon the door. Someone had left in a hurry… someone had quite expertly cleaned the place out. Which brought forward the question: just where was Bruce Wayne?

Feeling very uneasy about this entire mess, he took out a small transceiver from his side (a gift, actually, from Bruce during their last collaboration) and punched in a single number: 3. The transceiver dialed up almost instantaneously, connecting to a satellite utilized by Wayne Enterprises, and suddenly a voice spoke from the other end, frantic.

"Mr. Kent, you've called in. Please tell me you have good news." Alfred sounded sick, and Kent shared his pain.

"He's not here. I've searched the entirety of this place, and it seems that someone cleaned this manor out. Bruce isn't anywhere to be found."

"My God…" Alfred's voice shook. A new voice suddenly join in, a frantic, and angry sounding, woman.

"Where the hell is he!? He's seriously not anywhere on the premises!?"

"Whoever was here recently tried to burn the place down, but someone or something out the fire out," Kent told them. "I can't say for sure what happened to Bruce; it's most likely he found the same thing as I did and left, which is nothing."

"No… he would have checked in," came a voice Kent did recognize. "He always makes sure to keep us in full Intel," said Dick Grayson. "He's in trouble, I know it…"

"Well there's nothing here. Nothing here at all to suggest where Woodrue may have gotten off to. The place is dead. I can see through walls and floors… you'd think Woodrue would have a secret base of operations for the kind of work he was doing, but there's nothing."

"Alright, alright, no panicking… the line's gone dead and we can't reach him from our end. When we were in contact last, Woodrue… he'd changed… somehow, I don't know what happened…" Alfred sounded as if he were fighting a very fine battle to keep himself strong and in control. One could easily sense the deep concern for Bruce in his shaking voice.

Kent, frowning deeper, walked about the roof, analyzing tall bushes of potted hedges that seemed to make a mini-two foot zigzag across the roof. "What kind of change?"

"Something organic. He did not sound human at all before we lost communications with Bruce. Like a… a monster of some sort…"

"A monster?" Kent stopped. "What kind of a mon-" FWECK. Something suddenly slapped him in the back of the head from behind. He felt nothing from this, and promptly turned to face the new annoyance. He beheld something before him that had not been there before. From the small hedges there had appeared a large, beastly shape, its humanoid-shaped body made from the hedges that Kent now saw were missing at a certain point in the zigzagging wall. It was living, walking hedge, and its arms were long and tendril-like. It raised one of its tendrils again, and swung it at his head.

Kent caught the swinging vine with ease, raising an eyebrow. "This is interesting…"

The creature let out a tremendous scream, something so inhuman and otherworldly… like the wind gurgling beneath water. "What are you talking about? What is that!?" Barbara Gordon cried from the other end. The creature growled again and swung its free arm at Kent, who sidestepped the beast with ease and focused intently upon the creature. Feeling heat rise behind his skull, he smiled and willed the energy building up within to burst forward. From his eyes exploded of fierce spray of flaming light, the beam cutting through the creature with delicate grace of ease… its head-shaped part went flying away, burning to cinders… and yet, it advanced forward, headless but still swinging at Kent with much furiosity. Kent, shaking his head in annoyance, leapt upward into the air, hovering above the scene at a ten foot pace. The creature, headless but uncaring, twisted its body upward and swung blindly at the air, unable to reach him. Kent studied the creature carefully.

"It seems like Woodrue's been growing some new form of life," he told Alfred and the others. "Some kind of…humanoid plant. The hedges on his roof just sprang to life and tried to attack me. And… oh, boy… looks like they're all doing it…" Everywhere across the rooftop now, the hedges were moving, twisting about and bending upwards, forming themselves into humanoid shapes that limped forward into a massive circle, all of them looking up at the hovering, invincible prey that was Clark Kent…

"Humanoid plants? That sounds exactly like what happened to Woodrue…"

"There's at least twenty…no, thirty of them," said Kent. "The roof is covered in these creatures." They were all flocking to the same spot, eager for their awaited feeding. They grouped together in an almost trained, organized fashion… "This place really needs to be burned to the ground…"

"Well we know that Bruce isn't there. According to Woodrue, before we lost contact, Bruce had been moved after they incarcerated him. I didn't think it was true, when Woodrue said it, but it really seems as if they've moved off of the property…"

"And he didn't see where they were? He didn't even hint…"

"The transmission kept cutting in and out. We haven't gotten a clear reading on just where Woodrue took him…"

Kent tried to force his mind to give him the appropriate solution. Trying to figure out just where Woodrue would have taken a captive Batman… he could have killed Bruce and left him here, in this manor… he could have had Bruce stuffed into a private jet and flown to God knows where… there seemed to be many possibilities…

"I just…don't know…" he admitted, feeling the defeat wash over him. Superman had lost this one. "I truly have no idea. If he had any documentation concerning exterior sites, he either cleared them out or burned them. Maybe capturing Bruce was essential to something. This estate must cost millions of dollars. Why abandon it? Why burn it? Did he know I was coming?"

"I don't see how he could…" said Alfred, sounding faint. Kent shook his head angrily.

"I… I'll keep looking, Alfred Pennyworth. I promise all of you, I will."

"And I'll set to work, too," Barbara said quickly. "We lost signal but with a little work, I think I can trace the location of last contact… I thought he would be there…"

"Set to work, then. Meanwhile, I'll handle things topside," Kent replied. "I'm heading back to Metropolis. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do here. Back home, though, I think I may have better insight."

"How!?" Dick demanded.

"Because Woodrue has friends there, that's why. Small-timers, really, compared to the work he's done. Academia Master of the Tri-Emblem."

"The Tri-Emblem!" Alfred breathed. "My God, that's right… Woodrue was a member of the organization! Genius minds with long-term goals on global preservation and resource management…"

"Yes. They're based in Metropolis. I wonder if one of them may know something about him that can give us a lead."

And with that, he dived forward, flying towards the massive flock of hungry abominations, and fire became the only thing they knew in their final moments…