"Diana, slow them down at the tunnel! Saleen, keep them from spreading! And let me know if you guys see where security's coming from!" Brittany bellowed the commands, though she really didn't need to thanks to the earpieces. Letting off two arrows at the attackers, she ran towards the nearest rooftop, pulling her grapple gun from her belt. She had only used it a few times before, so her ascent was less than spectacular and resulted in a bashed knee, but she reached the top and turned to begin shooting down the enemy, one at a time.
Diana, she saw, had gotten herself right in front of the tunnel, and attacker after attacker fell to her blade or was thrown aside by her shield. Saleen darted about overhead, taking potshots at the creatures and forcing them to keep relatively close together. Brittany took aim at a particularly large guy who seemed to be directing others. He staggered as her arrow struck and he turned to face her, lifting a rod of some sort in her direction. His turn had presented her with his full face like an invitation. Brittany accepted it.
"I'm getting an earful from the commander, but he now knows what's going on," came Oracle's voice. "His guys are going for a frontal assault..."
"I see them." Brittany vaguely noted that her response had been a bit snappish, but she stayed focused on shooting the bad guys. Two more leader-types had popped up, and she needed to take them down, too. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw security pouring out of doors and around corners, dropping behind cover to start shooting. With a new target presented to them, the creatures appeared to focus on reaching the soldiers instead of just the building. Brittany took down the second leader guy and noted that Saleen seemed to be having some trouble being effective. Right, blue energy is different from green... "Sal, give the guys on the ground some support."
Saleen moved to obey, and Brittany realized that sirens were drawing closer. A helicopter flew overhead. "Oracle, can you have the police take these guys from the side? And if we've got air support, tell them to focus on the middle of this bunch so they don't hit our guys...especially Diana."
She shot down four more creatures before Oracle responded, "They've responded and will do so, but I think I'm going to have to get used to getting chewed out by various people in charge."
Brittany smirked as she shot down another one. "Just keep at it. Any word on the National Guard or anyone else?"
"Scanning the airways...National Guard is coming, and we've got more helicopters coming in, too. I'm sending a message to the Air Force; it'd be nice if they got permission for an air strike-"
"Sal, looks like Diana's in trouble," Brittany interrupted with a shout, seeing the Amazon disappear under a pile of attackers. "Can you give her some breathing room?"
A blue spot of light flew straight up from the lines of security. "We're on it," Saleen responded. It took the crack of gunfire in midair for Brittany to realize that she had some solders in the blue aura with her, and they were all firing on the mound of attackers. A moment later, several creatures went flying as Diana threw them off with a shout-almost deafening through the earpiece-of, "Fall back, foul spawn, or we will thrust you back into Tartarus itself!"
The helicopter flew overhead again, this time accompanied by gunfire. Something exploded in the center of the mass of attackers; probably a grenade. Brittany noted that her quiver was feeling more empty, and grimaced; she had a limited amount of ammunition and needed to make every shot count. The newer arrivals, police and the like, were starting to cut a line through the creatures. Brittany spotted a few of the creatures trying to sneak around to get at the building, and she turned to focus on them. Three of them went down to her arrows; the rest were cut down when the security guys noticed them.
Another BOOM! echoed through the area, accompanied by the glow of another tube on the other side of the Secretariat Building. Only one thing that could be. "Crap. Oracle, let our friends know we've got company on the other side. Saleen, I need a lift. We need to expand our defense."
Another tunnel opened up twenty minutes later, right on top of one of the buildings. Obviously, someone was determined to get their invasion force through regardless of the defenders' numbers and tenacity. Saleen airlifted several groups from the recently-arrived National Guard onto the roof, where they got additional backup from another helicopter. A pair of Air Force planes sped overhead, clearing out a swath through one mass of attackers. More of the creatures immediately sprang to take the place of their fallen comrades, and were met by the fierce intensity of New York's Finest. Diana accompanied a charge into the waterfront attackers, taking down nearly three times as many opponents as her companions in her amazon fury. Brittany, from her rooftop perch, attempted to keep track of everything and still continue to shoot down one enemy after another.
In the midst of combat, another BOOM! rocked the area and almost knocked Brittany off the edge. She couldn't see where the tunnel had opened, however. "Oracle?"
"Scanning..." There was a pause, and then Oracle continued, "Looks like that one opened inside. We've got nineteen delegates still in there, and about...forty security guys. Not good."
Brittany stood up, counting her arrows. Five left. "Saleen, extract Diana and then come pick me up. We need to get inside now."
A moment later, the Blue Lantern appeared with Diana encased in her aura. Blue light shone around Brittany, and she was also picked up and carried along.
"I'll direct you once you're inside," Oracle told them. "Hurry!"
They left Saleen behind not long after they got in, since they stumbled across a number of severely injured people that the Blue Lantern was best equipped to help. On their own, Brittany and Diana raced through the hallways, Oracle guiding them to what she told them was Conference Room 4.
"They've been moved in there; I've got two working security cameras in that room. I count...fifteen delegates...no, sixteen, there's one on the floor...and nine invaders. Two look like they're in charge. Bit fuzzy; it's hard to see-"
Diana crashed through the door, sending bits of wood flying as she sprang atop the tables and charged directly at the biggest guy in the room, a hulk twice the size of a man with heavier armor than the rest of the invaders. Brittany paused to use her last five arrows to take down the creatures nearest the delegates, who were gathered to the left of the big table at the end of the room. Then she collapsed her bow to use as a club, pulled her knife from its sheath on her leg, and joined Diana in hand-to-hand combat. The next few minutes where a flurry of motion, metal, and a blow to the head that left Brittany dizzy, though she pushed through it and rewarded her opponent with a broken jaw.
Suddenly, Brittany realized that she was sprawled across a table, with her head resting rather uncomfortably against a chair back. She blinked, trying to place herself and figure out how she had ended up in this position, and then remembered something grabbing her leg. Wincing, she pushed herself up and turned to see Diana facing a woman as tall as the amazon and far more scantily clothed in tight metal armor. She had a spiked chain in one hand that she whirled around, forcing Diana to constantly duck and evade, and a black mace in the other hand. The women circled around each other warily, feinting to feel out the other's skill. Then, faster than Brittany could register, the two were trading blows.
Diana deflected a particularly vicious attack with her shield and made a thrust with her sword, but the woman's chain swept around, leaving a gash on Diana's forehead and wrapping around her sword, tugging it out of her hand. She followed it up with another blow from the mace, but Diana sidestepped this one and brought the edge of her shield down on the woman's outstretched arm.
Brittany winced again as the woman howled in pain, and she realized, after a moment of confused blinking, that Diana's shield had sliced through the arm to the bone. Which, Brittany realized after another moment, was rather amazing considering that the shield's edge was not even close to sharp. Diana followed up that attack with a punch, but the other woman, despite apparent disorientation due to her injury, dodged the attack. Flailing with her mace, she landed a number of heavy blows to Diana's shield, forcing the amazon back several paces. Then she caught the edge of the shield with her mace and forced it off Diana's arm, sending it spinning.
Diana ducked under a swipe from the mace and stepped forward to land a heavy punch to the other woman's stomach, staggering her. She followed it up with an uppercut to the jaw, then spun to catch the mace as it came towards her head. She pulled it towards her and the woman followed, unbalanced, only to recieve a blow to the back of her neck from Diana's elbow. Another few strikes, and the amazon had the woman laid out on the floor, unconscious.
"Brittany!"
Oracle's voice in her ear snapped Brittany back to reality, and she realized that she had been drifting. "I-I'm all right," she said, then realized that her words were not as clear as she would have liked. It took her a moment to realize that she probably had a concussion.
"I'm getting an all-clear from everyone, and Saleen just took out the machinery they had in place," Oracle said. "She's coming to pick up you two and get you to the airport."
"Could you perhaps ask a physician to meet us there?" Diana asked as she recovered her sword. She gave Brittany a concerned look.
"There's already one on the way."
Diana tugged her shield out of the wall as Saleen arrived. The Blue Lantern gave the two women a smile. "Ready to go?"
Brittany nodded, then winced as she decided that moving her head was probably not the best idea. Diana was at her side in a moment, offering an arm in assistance. Saleen spread her arms, and a blue aura surrounded the three of them as she prepared to depart.
"Wait!" One of the delegates, a tall blond man with an accent that Brittany couldn't quite place, hurried forward. He seemed to have snapped out of the shock that still held most of the others in place. "What's going on? Who are you?"
"A most foul invasion has been thwarted," Diana told him. "And we are-"
"The Birds of Prey," Oracle offered.
"-the Birds of Prey," the amazon completed. Then she grinned. "I expect you will see more of us in the days to come."
"Ready?" Saleen asked in a low voice.
Brittany was more than ready. "Yes. Let's go home."