It goes without saying that I do not own the characters used within (something which I'm sure we're all grateful for.)
Unlikely Detectives
7 - The Bright Knight
Power Girl cut a path through the night sky, streaking over the Hudson and into Gotham City in a matter of seconds. She would have moved faster if not for the build-up of energy in such a populated area. She cruised across the islands that formed the foundations until she finally arrived at the tallest landmark, complete with a glass observation deck and railway lines stretching off in all the compass directions.
Kal was right – Gotham was a headache. Not so much for the twisted, Tim Burton-esque architecture. Her issue lay in its very foundations. Some structures had sunk – due to Earthquakes and age – and the city had merely built on top of them. With her x-ray vision, they appeared like giant blots of ink, so soaked with lead as they were. Other buildings kept the old facades but were converted into nightclubs or offices. The cables that ran behind the brickwork resembled glowing veins in some great beast.
'Okay,' she thought. 'This city really does need a different kind of superhero.'
Wayne Tower was just as old and hard to look at, despite being upgraded and overhauled repeatedly. She appreciated that Bruce probably designed so much of the inner structure to keep sneaky people out, but circling the base three times and coming up short was frustrating. Especially while she was searching for Blackfire's jury-rigged explosives. And judging by his boast that the tower would burn, she was expecting a lot of them.
Instead, all she saw was glimpses of cars moving underground and figures crammed inside elevators inside. No doubt the night staff evacuating.
"Hello…? Miss Starr? This is the Batcave calling." Alfred Pennyworth's voice never sounded so welcoming in her ear.
"Go ahead, ah… Batcave? Penny One?"
"Whichever you prefer, Miss Starr," he answered. Thank Rao for Alfred.
"I'm outside Wayne Tower," she reported, zipping up around the railway lines until she came to the terminal at the base. Nobody was waiting for a train, but a glance at the timetable revealed there wasn't any to wait for. It would have been a perfect hiding place for Blackfire's explosives, but it took her a scant few seconds to thoroughly search in and around the station. And once again finding nothing. "I'm having trouble seeing through the walls here, and the staff are still evacuating, so I can't go rushing in and out of every fire escape."
"Mister Fox is still inside the CEO's office near the top floor of the tower. He should be able to provide any answers you need."
"On it," she reported, taking to the air once more. 'Huh – so this is what it's like to work on Team Batman. Nicer tech support than the Birds of Prey.' Her boots landed on a reinforced balcony, and she hesitated to knock at the shutter, uncertain if she could make an adequate tap without shattering any window pane behind it.
"Hello…? Lucius Fox?" Before she could react, a lens appeared beside the shutter, and a flash of light appeared. A computerised voice announced a short warning: "Stand back, please." Karen blinked, her thoughts racing. Was she on some Batcave friend-or-foe list to get access to Batman's civilian office? Was all the Justice Leaguers on it?
... was it ranked, and if so, where did she sit on it?
But her idle thoughts vanished as the shields slid away, revealing the richly decorated office of Bruce Wayne. Or, more realistically, the office of Lucius Fox, who stood nearby with a tablet computer.
"Good evening, Miss Power Girl," he welcomed her with a warm voice as the glass door slid open. "Welcome to Wayne Tower. Though I understand it's not the most ideal of circumstances."
"Right," she said carefully, wondering how much Fox knew. Wayne Enterprises was the public face of Batman Inc., but still. She wasn't some Teen Titan who hadn't learned how to be careful. "I understand there's an attempt on Bruce Wayne's life. If he hasn't evacuated already, we'd be wise to move him before – " She trailed off as Lucius shook his head, an amused twinkle in his eye.
"I assure you, I'm very aware of who Mister Wayne really is," he said. "Though I applaud you for the initiative you've practised just now."
If not for the crisis, and the task that Bruce entrusted her with, she would have been tempted to ask if Fox was secretly a drunken heartbreaker, acting like a calm and professional man. But she said nothing, and he tapped away at the screen on his tablet before depositing it on the desk. The floor in the office immediately shifted, revealing several light emitters.
Power Girl's eyes widened as a blue light bathed the office, forming a three-dimensional layout of the entire tower. "Mister Fox," she began. Bruce Wayne trusted Lucius, and Karen trusted Bruce's judgement. "I find myself needing to remake my office back in Manhattan. When this is over, I'd like to make you an offer to come by and make it as incredible as this one."
"Then let us hope we're both around to discuss it, Miss Power Girl," he said, as calmly as possible. "The Batwing has already been scrambled to collect Mister Wayne from across the river, but in the meantime, these sections here…" He gestured as several parts of the hologram began to flash. "They indicate repairs over the last few months. However, they've all been covered with a leaden shelf afterwards to minimise their security threat."
"That explains the dots I see everywhere," she muttered. "The device at Starrware was detonated by a radio frequency that had to be as close as possible due to the use of blast-proof windows. I imagine what you have here puts their reinforcements to shame."
"We may not have many metahumans in Gotham like yourself, but Wayne Enterprises remains a favourite target for many Arkham residents."
"At least you can guess when they're on the way," she murmured, her arms crossing over her chest. "I'm not even hearing any… wait." She squinted as her hearing picked out an odd rolling noise. A shuffling, steady turning of wheels. A train.
"Your timetable down below say you have no public trains active before morning. Does Wayne Enterprises receive shipments by rails?"
"On occasion," Lucius answered before frowning. "That said, we're not due for anything for… more than a week, I believe."
"Well, you're getting one," Power Girl said, concentrating a little harder. "From… here, the north line." A gloved finger gestured towards one of the many lines that converged beneath the tower. Her eyebrows knitted together. "How strong are the supports beneath this tower?"
"They've been improved since the earthquake that caused the No Man's Land incident. Of course, depending on the payload, it's possible that the overall structure could be weakened significantly."
"There's also the evacuating staff to consider," Power Girl thought aloud, watching as banks of elevators continued moving to different floors. "… does Bruce always keep so many people working so late for him?" she asked, quirking her eyebrow.
"It's Gotham City," Lucius smiled. "Of an evening, the safest place to be is this tower. It's why so many people request the night shift."
"Can't argue with that," she muttered. Power Girl glanced at the layout once more and, confident she had committed it to memory, turned away from the projection. "Tell Bruce – well, Batman – that I'm going to investigate that train. These guys think they're working for some 'higher power' and know how to make bombs, and that's a dangerous combination."
"I wish you speedy luck, Miss Power Girl," Lucius Fox smiled, tucking his hands behind his back.
"Thanks!" she called behind her as she jumped over the railing, twisting in mid-air and accelerating down the north line.
Power Girl wondered if anybody was quietly phoning the hardworking Jim Gordon and telling the GCPD that a rogue train was rolling along the north line late at night. Not so much because the tracks were meant to be empty, but because it was stripped down to one engine and a single car. And in a city like Gotham, that was suspicious on its own.
She gave it a quick peek from above with her x-ray vision, unsurprised to find it at least one driver and four other members of Deacon Blackfire's "flock" in the carriage. Along with more than a dozen beeping, glowing bundles they played with. She idly wondered if they planned to blow themselves up to topple the reign of "billionaire bad boy Bruce Wayne."
"Cults – gotta love 'em," she muttered darkly, matching the engine in speed as she flew alongside and opened the door.
Blackfire's driver looked like he knew what he was doing, hands on the throttle and door control. When everything was over, she guessed that there would be some digging to find just how far the Deacon's influence had spread. For now, the driver turned and stared as she flew inside and planted her feet on the deck, shrugging her shoulders. "Don't mind me – I've just always wanted to play with a train…"
Power Girl trailed off as she realised the substitute driver wasn't listening. He was too busy staring with glassy eyes at the window on her chest, revealing her full cleavage. 'Ugh,' she mentally groaned. One step brought her forwards, and she flicked him in the head, sending him tumbling backwards and crumpling to the floor unconscious.
"Can't go twenty-four hours without that happening," she grumbled, looking over the controls before finding and easing off on the speed. The train jerked and began to grow sluggish along the line. In the car behind her, she heard the remaining four members becoming more alert.
"Did you feel that?"
"We're slowing down."
"It's the Bat, I tell you. He's here!" Power Girl frowned as she heard a firearm loading, followed by another. Of course, she spotted the rifles on the way in, but hadn't thought they were dumb enough to fire while they were handling explosives.
'And there's a little more faith in humanity lost,' she thought wryly. She placed her gloved hand on the door handle and turned it, prepared to have to talk the fools out of doing something stupid.
"Die, freak!"
Too late. Someone on the other side yelled out before bullets started to spray through the thin armour of the door. Karen frowned and reared back as they began pelting her, bouncing harmlessly off her enhanced figure. But with the shouting and swaying of the firearms, she had to spread her arms and weather the irritating brunt of them all. Otherwise, she'd risk a stray round going into the console, or the knocked-out pervert behind her.
Soon enough the rifled stopped firing, replaced by loud clicks as the clips ran dry. "I'm out!" cried one, before another shouted they were, too.
"Who cares – we must've got that winged devil, now."
"The Lord will be pleased with our work," another sighed. The relief in their voice was palpable.
On the other side, in the engine, Karen glanced down at her uniform. It weathered the best of the attack, but pieces of her thin utility belt were trashed, and the clasp that held her chained cape was shattered. She snapped the final few links and allowed the bullet-ripped fabric to flutter to the floor before her boots left the ground.
After everything that had occurred in the last twenty-four hours, Power Girl hit her limit. She grabbed the wrecked door with one hand and squeezed, crushing it like tinfoil before dropping what was left. She recalled watching Bruce work in the dockyards, like some spectre of fear itself. But being shot at made her angry, and now it was her time to be the bright knight of Gotham City.
As she hovered into the car, it dawned on the four faces just how grave a mistake they had made.
"I am vengeance," she growled, her eyes glowing red. One of the men recovered in time to fiddle with his rifle in an attempt to reload, but a blast of her heat vision sent it scattering out of his hands before it melted into a puddle of slag behind him.
"I am this night," she continued, clenching her fists. A second thug tried to stop whatever demonic woman they were dealing with, lifting one of the cobbled-together explosives up. Faster than he could react, she snatched it from his hands, blowing against it and turning into a block of ice. She dropped it with an unimpressed thud.
The four of them backed away, finding themselves neatly boxed in by the back of the train car and the furious alien woman hovering above them.
"I am Power Girl!" she yelled down at them. And then Kara moved, faster than light. One fell to a punch across the midsection, followed by a right hook. The next two were reeling back before she brought their heads crashing together. The last suffered the least as she spread her palm over his chest and pushed. The wall of the train bent and bubbled outwards as he collided with the frame.
All four cultists slumped to the ground. It almost appeared as if she hadn't even moved once.
"Jerks," she sniffed, turning and blasting what was left of the engine's console with her heat vision. The train groaned and began to slow, dead on the tracks, as the roar of an engine flew overhead. The Batwing appeared in the night sky, and Power Girl checked her earpiece before hailing the craft.
"Power Girl to Batman – I got you a little present."