Disclaimer
I don't own anything. DC Comics, and anything that it publishes, is not in anyway owned by me. It is all owned by rich, talented people. I'm a nobody. Please don't sue me.
Degreeless Noon
The next month passed slowly for Cassandra. Their triumph at putting a major hole in the Mandragora operation had been tainted by her firing. She hadn't really loved her job, but she had been good at it, and it had felt nice to be successful at life. Failing at keeping a job, forcing Stephanie's waitressing job to support them both, sorely stung her pride.
Stephanie took it all very well. She continued her own work, and she brought in enough tips to pay for things, although the budget became very tight. She didn't say anything and just smiled when they downgraded to the cheapest, most basic cable, or when they started shopping at the discount food store, but Cassandra felt terrible whenever she saw her friend's disappointment at the various things that they could no longer do since they were reduced to living off of a single income.
Cassandra had spent the first week after being laid off frantically searching for another job, but nowhere she went was hiring. She had experience and a positive recommendation, which should have made her search easier, but unfortunately so many people had been laid off at once that the unskilled labor market was full of people seeking new jobs. Jobs which, being based around manual labor, were usually filled by the large men seeking the job, despite how hard-working her former employer said she was.
Eventually she gave up on finding work immediately, and began spending more and more time hunting down leads on the Mandragora family. Batman had only begun training her as a detective when she had left the city, but she had at least picked up the basics which, when combined with her ability to read people, allowed her to make progress. Stephanie was a major help as well, as she had been trained in investigation from the beginning as Robin.
One evening eventually found Cass crouched on the roof of a building overlooking a Thai restaurant. While it looked unassuming, she knew that two major players in the Mandragora crime syndicate would be meeting there very soon. She didn't move a muscle as she waited for her prey to be in position.
She had originally planned on hitting them in the restaurant itself, but as she waited she saw the fearful body language of the workers there. One waitress was nearly shaking as she waited for major criminals to come and put her life in danger. Seeing the innocent waitresses doing their jobs reminded Cass of Stephanie, who was busy at work at that very moment.
Cassandra frowned as she thought about her absent friend. Normally Steph couldn't be kept away from a major raid like the one she had spent the past several days planning, but over the last week Steph had been spending less and less time on patrol. Cass decided to see if she could figure out what was going on after she finished capturing her targets.
With those thoughts in mind, she decided to revise her plan slightly. She had just finished planning her new attack when she saw a nondescript black sedan approach. She was already preparing her grapple before the vehicle even parked.
The first person out was a large, muscular bodyguard, who carefully surveyed the scene before letting his employer out of the car. As soon as Cass was certain that the man was her target, Julian the Snake, she fired her line and began to swing. She smiled as her feet left the ground, relieved to be once more completely immersed in her element.
The bodyguard saw her moments before she reached him. He managed to pull his handgun from a holster with commendable speed, but it wasn't enough. Her feet took him in the solar plexus, knocking him flying into Julian, where they both collapsed to the ground in a daze. She had just rendered them unconscious and was finishing binding them when she saw the approach of the other vehicle.
The other criminal, Marcus Grimm, was no fool, and his car had already begun to turn around by the time she saw it. Drawing two spoilerangs, she let them fly, piercing both tires on the right side of the car and sending it careening into a truck parked on the side of the street.
Marcus' bodyguard was also well trained, and he managed to fire several shots before Cassandra reached him. He hit nothing but air, however, as Cass ducked and weaved around his line of fire, knocking his gun from his hand with a precise finger strike before kicking the side of his knee to send him to the ground. Before she could put him out of the fight, however, Marcus opened up with a submachine gun.
The weapon had a tremendous rate of fire, and his preferred method was to simply wave it around, hoping to catch his target with sheer firepower rather than skill. That unfortunately meant that Cass' body reading was far less effective, and she was forced to dive and roll behind a parked car to get out of his line of fire. When he ran out of bullets and had to change magazines she took a look behind her, nearly losing her head as the bodyguard, who had retrieved his handgun, took a shot at her.
Cass considered her options quickly before pulling a flash bang from her utility belt. Priming the tiny grenade, she waited until the automatic weapon began to fire again, using its racket to aim her throw. The grenade bounced off of a billboard and landed right at Marcus' feet where it exploded with a deafening crack and a bright flash of light.
Before either man could recover she was on them, disarming them both with a single wide crescent kick before putting down the bodyguard with a brutal palm thrust to his chin. Marcus lasted even less time, and in under a minute both men were bound and laying on the trunk of their car. By the time Cassandra reached the roofs again, she could already hear the police cars in the distance.
Once she was sure that the situation was in hand, Cass ran along the rooftops towards the diner where Stephanie worked downtown. She was sure that something had been bothering her friend over the last week, and she felt bad that she hadn't paid more attention to what it was. It was easier to concentrate on taking down Mandragora's thugs than to worry about her personal life.
When she reached the diner she crouched on the shadowed rooftop across the street, watching her friend through the large windows as she worked. Cassandra frowned at how rundown Stephanie looked as she hurried from table to table delivering orders. She considered what she was seeing for several moments before she saw her friend approach her boss, Rick, and begin talking to him.
While she couldn't hear anything from across the street, she was able to read their body language well enough to quickly figure out what the conversation was about. For some reason Stephanie was pleading for the chance to work more overtime. As Cassandra watched that a cold feeling crept into the pit of her stomach.
A few hours later Cassandra was sitting on the couch with the TV off when Stephanie finally came in the door. She had bags under her eyes and was moving more slowly than normal, although she was working hard trying to keep from appearing tired. It was a lost cause trying to fool Cass.
"What is wrong?" Cassandra asked as soon as her friend had shut the door.
Stephanie jumped slightly. "Cass? What are you doing back so early? Thought you'd be out beating up the bad guys."
"What is wrong," Cass repeated, her expression stern.
"That cook at work, Jake, is still being a jerk," Stephanie said, rolling her eyes. "You'd think he'd get the hint I'm not interested by now. He still keeps asking me out though."
Cass felt a moment of outrage on her friend's behalf, along with a strange sense of relief that she didn't really understand when Stephanie finished her statement. She decided that finding out what was really bothering her friend was more important, however, and set the odd feeling aside. "What is wrong?"
Stephanie hesitated, before finally slumping onto the couch beside her friend. "My paycheck isn't stretching far enough."
"But... pay for less," Cass objected. "No more... good TV."
Stephanie gave a tired nod. "Yeah, and it's helping. We're not losing our savings as fast. But my job just isn't enough to support the two of us. Not without a way cheaper apartment, anyway. I've been getting as much overtime as possible, but it's just not enough."
Cassandra felt about two inches tall. She couldn't believe that she hadn't realized how much they had been struggling. "Sorry."
"Hey!" Stephanie said. "Don't say that. You were making good money at the warehouse, and it's not your fault you were laid off. Well, okay, we were the ones who busted up the crime ring, but you know what I mean. Stuff just happens sometimes."
"Will look harder for job," Cass declared firmly.
Stephanie smiled at her. "That would help. We can get by for a little while yet, mostly 'cause of all the money you got from Batman's card before we left, but it won't last forever. And I really don't want to be broke if one of us gets hurt or something."
They sat in silence for a while, until Cassandra spoke again. "Should have said."
"Probably," Stephanie agreed. "You were doing such a good job busting up the Mandragoras though, and I know you were trying for a new job."
"Easier if I could read," Cass grumbled. Taking a deep breath, she walked over to her shelf and pulled out her practice books. Stephanie soon joined her, and the rest of the evening was spent working on Cassandra's literacy.
"You have something?" Batman asked flatly.
Oracle jumped, then turned in her wheelchair to glare at him. "Knock next time." He didn't respond, and finally she sighed, pulling up reports.
Batman spent several minutes studying them before nodding. "It's them."
"What are you going to do?" Oracle asked.
"Nothing," he said.
"What do you mean, nothing!?" she sputtered. "We have to talk to them."
"They left," Batman said flatly as he started towards the window. "They aren't with us anymore."
"They're still fighting crime, doing everything we taught them," Oracle said. "The only reason that they left is that we drove them away. We can't just leave them out there all alone."
"If they want something, they can come to us," Batman replied.
"If you don't care, why did you keep checking up on my search?" Oracle objected. "I know you were doing it."
"I had to make sure that they weren't going to use their abilities for criminal ends," he answered.
"That's crap," Oracle said. "Cassandra would never do that, and you know it. And Stephanie's come a long way since she started out... and she wouldn't have done that, either. They're both committed to the cause."
When she didn't get an answer she glanced back, frowning when she saw that he had already left. She shook her head and placed a phone call.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Dick," Oracle said.
"Babs!" he answered. "What's up?"
"I found our missing girls," she said.
"That's great!" Dick said. "What are they up to?"
"Fighting crime in Hub City."
Dick was silent for a long moment, before finally answering. "Good. Someone needs to keep an eye on that place now that the Question left."
"They shouldn't be doing this alone," Barbara said.
"Hey, I'm alone here in the 'Haven," Dick said. "And they've got each other."
"Yeah, but you talk to me," Barbara said. "All of us are just a call away for you. They don't have anyone."
He chuckled slightly. "Sure they do. Now that you've found them, you're gonna be watching out for them, same as the rest of your people. They just don't know it."
She smiled slightly. "You know me too well, Former Boy Wonder."
Cassandra spent the next week searching hard for a job. She went from business to business, determined to find work, unwilling to stop until she had some form of paycheck. It wasn't until the end of the week that she finally found someone that would hire her.
The employee before her had left suddenly, and she found herself being asked to start immediately. She couldn't help but grin as she pulled on her new uniform, which consisted of a dark gray dress that went to her knees with a white collar and apron. Before long she was fully dressed and ready to work.
Her boss gave her a cursory nod before pointing to an older woman wearing the same uniform. "For the first week you'll be shadowing her. She'll show you everything you need to know."
"Hello," Cass said, giving the older woman a tentative smile.
The woman smiled back slightly, and then began to speak in rapid Spanish. Cassandra blinked in confusion, biting her lip as the woman stopped and tried again in English. "Do work. Follow."
By the end of her first shift, Cassandra decided that she preferred working in a warehouse to being a maid in a hotel. The building was old and part of a cheap hotel chain, with carpets that needed replacing and walls that looked dingy no matter how hard she scrubbed them. It was a terrible indictment that the dockside warehouses were in better shape than the hotel was.
The rooms themselves were worse, however. The guests apparently felt that, since it wasn't their home, nothing they did in the rooms mattered. As a young girl she had eaten out of more than a few garbage cans while living on the streets, but in the time since meeting Barbara, her life had changed enough that she found herself deeply disgusted the first time she had to clean out a clogged toilet.
Despite her general dislike of the job, she was relieved to have found some work. She managed to beat Stephanie home by a few minutes that evening, and she was glad that she had found a job when she saw how tired her friend was that evening.
"Hey, Cass," Stephanie said with what was supposed to be a smile.
"Got job!" Cass said.
Stephanie's eyes lit up, and Cassandra felt a warm glow in her chest. She would happily do a job she hated even worse than her current one if it meant seeing Stephanie so happy. She felt herself grinning goofily back at her friend.
"That's great! What'd you get?"
Cass' face fell slightly, although she made sure to seem happy for her friend. "Clean hotel."
"So... a maid?" Stephanie asked.
"Yes."
Stephanie thought about that for a moment, before shrugging. "Guess that means we don't have to worry about being on the streets anytime soon."
"Hit streets," Cass said, punching her palm with her other fist.
Stephanie paused, and Cass could see her wavering for a moment as she considered that, before smiling slightly. "Alright. Time for Spoiler and Silent to take down Mandragora together! Or, you know, some of his guys."
The two of them were soon running over the rooftops and swinging over the streets. The nervous tension that had filled Stephanie for weeks had finally abated, and as she laughed as she ran Cass suddenly realized how much she had missed her friend's usual good mood. Before long her laughter became infectious, and the two girls spent more time playing tag than hunting criminals.
That changed when they heard a loud alarm some distance behind them. They quickly turned around and ran, heading as fast as they could back to where the alarm was sounding. The two were soon crouched on the edge of a roof, looking down at a bank where men in masks were running swiftly in and out.
"Bank robbery, at this hour?" Stephanie said. "Unless they can crack the vault, they won't get much."
"Something wrong," Cass said as she studied their body language. "Not move like robbers. Move like... hit men."
Stephanie glanced over at her, then shrugged. "Even hit men need money. And if they aren't normal they might have a way into the vault."
"Don't like," Cassandra said. "Something not right."
"We'll worry about it later, after we catch these guys," Stephanie said as she fired her grapple.
Cassandra hesitated for a moment, before swinging after her friend. She knew that something was wrong with the situation, and her instincts told her that this was going to go very badly. Stephanie left her little choice but to follow, though, and so she swung out, fully alert for any danger.
The first criminals began to raise guns as they hit them, but the men didn't stand a chance. Cass was fighting harder than usual, wanting to take down the criminals quickly before whatever was going to go wrong did. Stephanie had weeks of frustrations to work out, and Cass noted approvingly the slow but tangible improvements in her technique from training her every day.
Just as Cass finished dropping another criminal she suddenly dove to the side. She wasn't sure why, just that instinct, honed past a razor's edge by her father, warned her to dive, and so she did. A huge hole suddenly appeared in the pavement behind her, revealing her fate if she hadn't reacted.
She didn't hesitate, simply throwing down a smoke grenade even as she dove for her friend, knocking Stephanie to the ground as another sniper round tore through pavement where she had been. "What's going on!?" Stephanie shouted.
"Sniper," Cass said quietly. "Anti material... rifle. Fifty caliber. Dead if hit."
"Oh," Stephanie said as they moved quickly into the bank. "What are we gonna do?"
"You go in bank, beat thugs," Cass answered. "I get sniper. Be careful. May be more trap."
Stephanie nodded in agreement and the two swiftly parted before the smoke cleared. Cassandra quickly ran into an alley, firing her grapple and easing onto the roof in the shadow of a large air conditioning system. Looking around carefully, she saw no one, and so began to creep from roof to roof, staying low and out of sight as she searched for the sniper.
Her instincts flared again and she dove, the bullet that had almost hit her tearing a hole bigger than her head through the water tank on the roof behind her. As a flood of water poured out Cassandra jumped up and began running, her trained eyes finally locating the sniper. He was two blocks away, and she recognized his weapon as a bolt action fifty caliber sniper rifle.
He saw her coming even as he worked his bolt with commendable poise. Having seen him, however, she knew that he was no longer a threat, and as she closed she kept her balance to allow her to twist aside slightly to avoid his next shot as she came in. He tried to drop the rifle and pull a handgun as she reached him, but he was unconscious before the weapon hit the ground.
After securing him and dismantling his guns, Cass swiftly headed towards the bank. She couldn't hear anything coming from inside, and so she silently crept through the door, moving it slowly and deliberately to keep its motion from catching the eye of anyone inside. Once in the bank she hid behind a counter and took in the situation.
Most of the thugs had been dealt with, but one was still standing, and he was holding a gun to the head of a scared looking, overweight man. Stephanie stood in front of him, holding a spoilerang in one hand as she tried to talk the man down.
"Look, if you kill him, you're only making this harder on yourself," Stephanie said. "You haven't even made off with anything, yet. You don't have to do this."
The criminal snorted, although Cass could read the fear he did a good job of hiding. "All you've gotta do is let me go. Anything else and they'll be scrubbing the manager's brains out of his own bank."
Cassandra tuned them out after that, moving without a sound around the edges of the room until she was behind the criminal. Slowly standing so that she didn't surprise Stephanie she moved up behind the gunman. Cass could read the relief in Stephanie's body language as she kept the man talking, buying time as Cassandra got into position.
The man never even knew she was there before he was unconscious, and the terrified bank manager nearly collapsed from relief as his attacker was tied up. "Thank you!" he said. "You saved my life!"
"All part of the service," Stephanie said cheerfully.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Spoiler, and my friend's Silent," Stephanie said. "We're just your friendly neighborhood superheroes!"
