Chapter 4 - Bloody misunderstanding

When she awoke, Tanya immediately noticed that the faint throbbing in her hand was gone. Where she had cut herself yesterday on a porcelain shard, now only spotless white skin remained. Huh, that was nice... From her own experience, that was around fifteen times faster than the average person's healing speed. Though, if that rate would stay the same when it came to handling deeper wounds remained to be seen.

Standing up from the chair she slept in due to how itchy blankets now were, she stretched her nude form and noted with appreciation how remarkably not sore she was. Maybe the chair would remain her place of nightly rest for the foreseeable future. Or more likely, daily rest as her work would take place mostly at night.

'Am I becoming a vampire now? What's next? Am I going to have to buy a coffin?'

She snorted at the mental image that idea presented. As if she could afford a coffin.

After a light breakfast she began the tedious task of improving the inside of her clothes with silk, always keeping a lookout for the clock. Progress was slow as she didn't want to mess up the expensive cloth or create irritating seams on the inside which would defeat their whole purpose.

Finally, after she had adequately prepared her first shirt, the time had come for her to go and pick up her new protective lenses. Taking an experimental peak from under her sunglasses instantly made white fire explode on her retinas and drove a spike of nausea deep into her brain. Yes, being able to see normally would not be possible without their aid.

On Sundays the Thomas Mall was usually closed, but as hers was a handsomely paid for custom order and the optician had taken a personal interest in the project, he had been willing to meet outside and check them in person, should they require adjustment. Exactly five minutes before their agreed time, she arrived at the steps of the gargantuan mega-building and shook the hand of her supplier.

They exchanged the bare minimum of niceties before he unceremoniously handed her a small plastic box and explained the basics of using them by giving her a practical demonstration.

Stepping into the shadow of one of the entrance pillars and draping her shawl over her head, Tanya quickly drew a small mirror from her pocket and took off her shades. She got the hang of inserting the lenses quickly which was somewhat uncomfortable, but once they were in, they fit perfectly. Their obscuring filter sucked any contrast out of the world, but when she stepped out into the open, no headache awaited her, so it was worth it.

Presenting her work, Tanya asked with a satisfied smile: "And? How does it look?"

"Wow... I knew it was going to be... uh, intense , but..."

He trailed off with a grimace, gaze fixed on her face.

Looking closer into her pocket mirror, she soon saw what he meant. Normally she was quite proud of her shining blue eyes. Now her pupils were entirely black however. Like two bottomless holes they drew all focus to their creepy emptiness which was the exact opposite of what she had wanted to achieve. Oh well, if she avoided eye contact then it shouldn't be a problem. There were way weirder people running around Gotham.

Now it was time to prepare for the main task that she had set for herself today. Putting together an adequate costume was not something she enjoyed, but it was necessary. Going out in her normal clothes was out of the question.

If she wanted to ambush some lowlifes and 'liberate' their assets then she needed her outfit to perform three key functions: Protection, Stealth and Anonymity. And also Comfort, she added as an afterthought. Getting distracted by scratchy clothing at a crucial moment would be idiotic.

Protection would be granted by her mother's old biker jacket. The hardened leather could at least deflect glancing swipes of a blade while not being cumbersome.

Stealth was harder to define, but it not only included moving silently but also the ability to become quickly unremarkable. After all, she would need to make the trip to and from her apartment without getting noticed. Changing her clothes in some rotten alleyway every time did not sound appealing. By sticking to a muted colour scheme and glueing a few strips of felt to her shoe soles she would contribute to that, but it wasn't enough.

Just in case, Tanya packed an emergency bag with vinyl gloves – despite how much their feeling on her hands disgusted her – a reserve shirt in case things got too bloody, some plastic bags, zip ties and some obnoxious cheap perfume to hopefully throw off her scent.

Lastly, her anonymity would be ensured through a black hood, a medical face mask and her shawl. Though looking at them made them appear a little too plain for the kind of risk she was about to undertake.

Thinking about it more, Intimidation was also an important factor to consider. From what she heard in the news and common gossip, the prolific vigilante 'Batman' was so allegedly scary that the mere mention of his name lowered morale in the gangsters of the city.

Of course that was pure hogwash, but if she became inevitably recognized by Gotham's criminal underground then she wanted that impression of her to be a menacing one. Mysterious, masked figures enjoyed a kind of prestige in Gotham that was not granted to common thugs, despite being responsible for far less of the city's current state than their non-costumed counterparts. That brute 'Killer Croc' was theoretically not any more dangerous than a pothole, because every month more people in Gotham died from traffic accidents than he had ever killed. Yet he still dominated the headlines whenever a scared old lady claimed to have seen his head poke out of a sewer, purely due to his monstrous appearance. Image made all the difference between regular crime and 'super-crime' .

Such respect could be harnessed to great effect in order to become nigh untouchable by all but the biggest players. And in her case, Tanya wanted her opponents to feel like an ominous demon or better yet, the devil herself, had come to hunt them down.

'Hmmm… Devil, eh?'

Something resonated deeply with her at the comparison.

That word brought with it a deluge of confusing, hazy memories. Some days she was sure it had to have been the manifestations of her fever sick mind at a tender age, other times she knew that those pictures and sounds were far too vivid to have come merely from her imagination. There were things she should not have known back then, wisdom and experience too great for any normal child to have. Foreign languages and education and the art of war .

Childishness had been unfamiliar to her as long as she could remember. Tanya had never known an existence without those random flashes and instinctual reflexes that piloted her body at the oddest of times.

Like that time when someone lit up some fireworks and she instinctively threw herself behind cover. Or when her third year maths teacher had shown them some calculus equations in order to demonstrate the potential uses of arithmetic and her mind had intuitively solved them in seconds. That was not normal behaviour for any child.

But had she really lived another life? In another world no less?

'Get to cover! – Oh, god! They're coming! – The Devil! She's the Devil!'

The disturbingly lifelike nightmares that haunted her occasionally left no room for other conclusions. In this life, she had never been in a war, let alone another continent. Crawling through trenches, soaring through the clouds... Such experiences could not come from nothing.

Yesterday she had felt it in her veins. That homeless thug had not been the first man she ever killed. There was a sick familiarity to the bloodshed. Beating up schoolyard bullies had always come easy to her, but to be absolutely unshaken by ending a life with her own bare hands?

In the end, it didn't really matter. That accursed question – if this was indeed her first life or not – would follow her to the grave, of that she had no doubts. What was important was that she mastered this one. As far as the greatest scientists and philosophers around the globe were concerned, humans only got one shot at forging their destiny. Tanya could not rely on the uncertainty of reincarnation like a crazy religious person.

She needed to take control into her own hands to create an absolute certainty of where she stood in the world.

-W-

Tonight she had just wanted to get a feel for how it felt, moving through the night, gun strapped to her belt and knives at the ready. It was supposed to be a time of getting to know the layout of places she had never dared to explore and test the limits of her own body. Overall, a more or less safe plan to metaphorically dip her toes into the murky water of Gotham's backstreets.

Sadly, it seemed that since gaining powers, she had also become a magnet for trouble.

Jumping from one roof to the next had awakened a deep excitement in her for how far she could push herself. To clear a street in a single leap had at first been something she had been sceptical about, but after some careful experimentation at ground level, Tanya had dared to try the leap and instantly fallen in love. Effortlessly manoeuvring far above where anyone could see her was a welcome boon to her future operations.

In her enthusiasm for traversing her home city in an entirely new way she had however also been blinded to what was happening below. Oh, she had smelt the ruffians milling about and heard them whisper to each other, but she hadn't thought that they were talking about her! After all she wasn't the Batman that they were looking for!

What she failed to take into account back then was that they lacked her superhuman vision to distinguish shadowy, fast moving figures in the dark. To them, her airborne form had looked just like Gotham's 'Dark Knight'.

And now it had come to this...

"Surrender, Batman! We've got you pinned!" yelled the guy with the AK-47.

"This is your end! Just give up and we'll bring you to the boss! Else we have to hurt you!" continued his subordinate, waving around his shotgun.

Six more armed goons stood at either side of them and continued to silently close in on her position. This was not good.

On her first night out in costume she got ambushed like a damn rookie! Wasn't Batman's presence supposed to deter crime!?

'Focus, Tanya. They might be armed but they are undisciplined and untrained. You can do this.' she told herself, breathing in deeply as icy clarity filled her. Time seemed to slow while she drew her pistol from its holster, disengaging the safety and preparing to take aim.

At the moment she was trapped behind a dumpster after they had forced her out of the open with a directed salvo of machine gun fire, meaning that they had to have wasted at least a third of their magazines. Nonetheless, if combined, even their inaccurate shots would hit her, so she needed to split their attention and confuse them.

Digging her fingers into the side of the metal trash container she clenched her hand with all her might and ripped out a crumpled piece of steel. Tossing the ball of scrap into the brick wall to her left she gripped her gun tightly and moved to the right.

As the improvised projectile impacted the building with an explosion of dust and stone shards, she stuck her hand out of cover like a striking viper and squeezed off two shots from where she could hear their frenzied heartbeats.

A second later two heavy impacts on the pavement confirmed that she had hit her targets. Those many hours at the shooting range had not been for naught. She had aimed slightly lower than their central mass to destroy their pelvis; an extremely devastating and painful injury that would most likely not be fatal.

"Ah!" – "What the-" – "Shit!" – "Johnny!"

Using their confusion yet again, Tanya popped out on the left and fired off three shots at the panicked men that were looking towards their downed comrades. Two of them were felled without a hitch, but the third managed to send some panicked bullets in her direction before collapsing which luckily only hit the dumpster.

"Motherf-"

Anchoring her feet on the floor, she laid her weapon down and drew her arms back, gathering all the power in her body... and shoved!

The rusty trash container's surface slowly dented underneath her buckling hands before the force of her action seemed to catch up with the half-ton object and it went careening down the small street.

Clipping and consequently obliterating the foot of one of the injured thugs, the moving metal wall tipped over and skidded along the ground, still knocking the probable leader and his shotgun wielding buddy down.

Bereft of cover, Tanya instantly lunged for her gun and let off two shots against the last man standing, one in the shoulder and one in the hip.

She sprinted towards the sideways lying dumpster where the two gangsters who had threatened her not even a minute ago were now trying to get back to their feet. Judging from their pained moans they had likely broken something during their collision. Not slowing down, she jumped over the blockade in her way and sent two medium strong punches at their heads which finally knocked them out when their bouncing skulls collided with the muddy road.

Turning around Tanya took in the aftermath of her rampage.

Crying and whimpering filled the dimly lit alley and the stench of blood and urine overpowered even the spilled garbage around her. One man was near catatonic while another was praying for help. Of those who were desperately clutching their wounds only one of them had enough presence of mind to shakily aim at her with his offhand.

Dashing to the side, outside of his field of view to where he had to crane his neck in order to see her, she grabbed her knife and threw it at his rifle. Now, she had never seriously thrown a knife before and especially not with such a big one, but her goal was not for the blade to connect, but for its sheer weight to hammer it out of his grip.

Tanya saw in perfect detail how the muscles in his wrist slackened and pounced. The gun clattered to the ground and at the same time she was upon him, tightly clasping his forearm.

"Who sent you?" she asked harshly.

Getting a bit of information out of this whole debacle was the least she could do to not make this a total failure on her part.

Hate-filled eyes stared up at her defiantly.

"I won't tell you anything... Who the hell even are you?" he snarled.

"If you won't tell me who sent you, I'll break your shitty arm, understood?" she threatened, increasing the pressure on his limb.

"Dream on, bitch! I'll never- Aghhhh!"

She had warned him. He was in no position to negotiate and even if he didn't tell her what she wanted to know, one of his fellows would. Why was he remaining stubborn when faced with a serious threat to his physical well-being? Irrational people like him always had to make their quirks her problem...

"Who sent you?" Tanya repeated flatly.

"I won't-"

He abruptly stopped when he felt her pistol at his crotch.

"You can live without these, though the blood loss won't be pretty. For the last time: Who sent you?"

His last resolve crumbled when she pushed her gun harder against him.

"Th-the Penguin! We work for the Penguin!"

Tanya had no clue who that was, but she was sure it would prove useful.

"What did he want with Batman?"

"I don't know! I think it's because he- aghh – because he ruined the last few shipments. Boss got real mad and had us waiting around here on standby. That's all I know, I swear!"

"Are there other teams waiting for him around the city?"

"How should I- ugh – Yes! Probably a dozen!"

"Does the Penguin know that you found me?"

"Don't think so. Benny is the only one with a phone. Boss hates mistakes, so we thought we'd wait to call him until we got the bat-bastard done and bagged."

"Alright, that should be all. I have one last job for you. You are going to point this 'Benny' out for me and then call the police with his phone. You all need emergency treatment so it's really in your best interest. Do you understand?"

While he did that, she wrapped up the shotgun in a plastic bag and emptied the other weapons of their ammunition. Waste not, want not after all. Only two of them had purses with them and one of them was basically empty. How had they planned to buy breakfast in the morning without money? Did their boss provide free food?

She had just finished stuffing everything in her backpack when she heard something above her move.

Spinning around, she was surprised by a winged person descending in the middle of the street. No, those were not wings, it was a black cape. And that mask... It could only be Batman himself.

"What is going on here?" asked the vigilante with a growling tone that instinctively set her on edge.

Just her luck... She had to play it cool here.

"I was just attacked by these gentlemen-" she gestured at the weakly breathing gangsters spread around, "- who mistook me for Batman. Apparently a guy called 'Penguin' is looking for him. Do you know anything about that?"

"And you shot them. Without remorse." he stated accusingly.

Why was his voice so familiar?

Raising her hands placatingly, Tanya explained: "It was self-defence. They were threatening me with guns and I reciprocated as is my right as an American citizen. An ambulance should be here soon and none of them will die."

"And there was no other way than to possibly cripple them? Who are you?"

Wow. Was he honestly asking why she hadn't made them stand down with the power of love or something? Shooting someone was always dangerous! And to demand her real name out of the blue? Was he crazy?

This guy's moral grandstanding and unreasonableness reminded her of Bruce Wayne in the worst way possible...

"I'm nobody you need to concern yourself with. Just a woman who believes in the Second Amendment. Ah, I hear the sirens already. Feel free to stick around for the police. I wish you a good night, sir."

"We are not done here."

Oh, this guy was really pushing all her buttons!

"Yes we are . I have nothing more to say on the matter. If you want some testimonies just ask the guy with the phone. He's still conscious."

And with those words she crouched low and jumped up to the second story of the nearest fire escape. There was no reason to hide her superhuman strength when evidence of it was literally imprinted in two hand shaped dents on the dumpster.

For safety's sake she would have to run around in a few circles to make sure that the annoyingly nosy Batman was not following her home!