Disclaimer: This story heavily uses ideas and concepts from the James Luceno book 'Darth Plagueis'. I highly advise you read the book if you want to know, catch on, and understand this fanfic story. Wookiepedia can get you only so far.
I do not own any of the Star Wars and DC characters and ideas represented in this work.
"The dark is generous, and it is patient. It is the dark that seeds cruelty into justice, that drips contempt into compassion, that poisons love with grains of doubt. The dark can be patient, because the slightest drop of rain will cause those seeds to sprout. The rain will come, and the seeds will sprout, for the dark is the soil in which they grow, and it is the clouds above them, and it waits behind the star that gives them light. The dark's patience is infinite. Eventually, even stars burn out." - An excerpt from the Revenge of the Sith Novelization by Matthew Woodring Stover.
2018
Cassandra
Empty black, cold darkness was just that. An absence of light and material that either couldn't produce light or was too weak to do it and the void engulfs it in its entirety. In the abyss, two blood-shine beams of energy erupted, casting a hue of red onto its wielders. Then, in a blur, the duelists attacked each other. So fast at the speed they did, if one were to observe the interaction with a simple eye, they wouldn't be able to decipher who attacked, defended, repulsed, countered, parried, blocked, and so on. One would only be able to see two weaving, trailing fans of crimson light striking at each other like lightning bolts intersecting.
The art of the lightsaber was a martial skill that couldn't be compared to any other. No amount of sword fighting could match its complex sequences; hand fighting styles like Lethwei and Silat can't fathom its brutality; it was the most exhilarating, powerful, and dangerous martial practice Cassandra Damask could ever do. Having a weapon that produces the same temperature as the surface of the sun in the palm of a hand cannot be beaten by the simple feel of Nippon steel or hardened fists.
The lightsaber was a weapon of pure instinct and power made manifest, the highest form of combat that war could ever possibly achieve. What emboldened Cassandra, even more was that there are only two practitioners of it in the world—a learner and a teacher, a daughter and a father.
The session of strikes, flurries, endless assaults, thrusts, and cuts lasted for an hour. Cassandra favored the more agile and energy-intensive forms of the lightsaber, such as Ataru, Shii-Cho, and Juyo, as her lean, acrobatic build supported sought-after techniques. Her father, Hego Damask, desired the forms that ended the fight quickly, like Djem So, Niman, and Juyo. Though their chosen styles may have Juyo in their sequences and patterns, their characteristic styles couldn't be any more different.
Cassandra preferred speed and agility, her Father stayed on the ground to store his strength and hold on the defensive. Her attacks were astoundingly fast but lacked kinetic energy in bursts of speed, Father, on the other hand, struck hard and calculated though at the expense of speed and reaction. Both knew each other's weaknesses and strengths; they protected their own drawbacks while exploiting the other's shortcomings, and they used their advantages to their fullest while avoiding and mitigating the others.
Amongst this show of bright flashes and quick execution of swings and slashes, Cassandra wore simple black armor weave pants with a plain black sports bra. Her father had black pants with heavy-duty boots, revealing his finely built torso and arms freely. Sweat gleamed off their skin from the superhuman attacks and speeds they were doing.
Her father bound their blades together after defending himself from her assault. Sparks leaked out of the intersection as both of them fought each other in a test of strength. Cassandra, being in her mid-adolescence, was stronger and more physically built than most, if not all of her age group and even more than most people. Except for the scars and former wounds that were a reminder of her past failings, she was at the peak of her form, in her age at least. Father, though, was three times her age, yet he never seemed to suffer from its drawbacks, looks and performance-wise. He only looks like a slightly older version of the father she had her first memories with. And with the addition of that, he had the force and abilities she didn't know of to halt or mitigate aging.
So when Cassandra poured her absolute strength to push her father backward with force enhancement, she managed to only push him a bit. Father, on the other hand, had enough of her attempt and put his own strength then made Cassandra pull back and reengage with a flurry of lightsaber attacks.
Her father parried and blocked the assault to a point, her offensive so speedy and fast that he was backtracking around the pitch-black training area, this made Cassandra smile. Father saw her daughter's change of expression and glowered. Then, like a stone enduring an unruly typhoon storm, he stopped backtracking and firmed his feet in place to withstand Cassandra's attacks. With each blow and strike Cassandra made, he absorbed the offensive and ended it by binding the blades together in a twirl, twisting Cassandra's lightsaber away from her grip.
Without any light besides the lone lightsaber in Father's hands, her lightsaber winked out and disappeared into the gloom. The smile on her face faded when she heard the hilt clattered on the floor in the dark while her father angled his lightsaber towards her.
His eyes fixed in a mean look that was revealed by a crimson glow, "This is not a game, Cassandra," he chastised her with no quarter. "A fight to the death is an affair both sides must take in earnest seriousness and dedication. Enjoy the experience after you have slain your enemy—savor the lamentations of their friends and loved ones afterward. But now, like the child you are, acting like this is playtime, you have lost your weapon and are at the mercy of the enemy."
In one hand, he had his lightsaber at her, with the other, he lifted it up, and blue lighting danced around his fingers. The air crackled with charged electricity and smelled of ozone. One side of his face was lightened by electricity; the other side was shown in red light. "Anything to add before your punishment?"
Cassandra didn't say anything. She darted her eyes from her father and to her lightsaber, which was trapped in the shadows. Yes it was pitch black, but that didn't matter when she had the force to tell her where exactly her lightsaber was at. Her father noted her silence, "Taking the punishment in full stride?" He asked, then somewhat nodded in light approval. "I've raised you well."
Her father moved his hand that sparked with lightning toward Cassandra, but the younger girl did a fast diving roll to the side to escape his aim and then closed the gap before he could bear the force lightning on her. He registered the evasion and did a striking arc horizontally against her; she ducked when he tried to bring down his lightsaber again in an overhand strike, Cassandra grabbed his arm by the wrist, stopping his strike at her. Simultaneously, she grabbed the hand that was webbed with bolts of sparking energy so that it wouldn't cast painful electricity upon her.
Cassandra gritted her teeth as she struggled to match her father's strength. His lightsaber in one hand, lightning in the other, she kept his weapons in a tussle before he could deploy them. Unfortunately, he flicked the wrist that contained the hand of cracking lightning, and dancing arcs of electricity cocooned her.
A face of grimacing turned into clenched teeth and shut eyes as unbearable shocks of pain prodded every inch of her body. She had faced her father's force lightning before, but this burst was possibly the worst she had ever seen, and she knew very well that this was a low-energy attack. Yet, despite electrocution, the shock jabbing her nerves, and her flesh slowly being cooked and heated, she not only endured the pain but channeled it. As her father taught her, the dark side fed onto pain, and one trained could use it to turn it into strength and power.
Her electrical torment molested her with agony, but over time, in his brutal punishment, she made her anger and hatred fester. She fought the struggle and pushed him back despite his physical advantage. The more she won an inch, the more he poured energy into the lightning to stun her, and the more lightning unleashed, the more pain she used to feed her strength in the dark side. She knew very well that her body had limitations and that ceiling would come soon if she didn't end the fight now.
While still locking hands with her father and the painful web of electricity still covering her body, she trained her eyes on her lightsaber, still lying patiently in the dark gloom. Then, like a master to a domesticated animal, she recalled it back to her. The hilt moved, it jolted in the air, the synthetic crystal sparking into life, and a bar of blood shiny plasma erupted from the curved casing. It twirled and had a trajectory to her fathers back in the speed of a lighting bolt.
Her father perceived the sneak attack, ended the barrage of electricity, and with one pushed-back hand, sent Casandra away across the training area with a force wave. She was flung backward and landed on the floor, though she managed to recover with the force instead of being turned into a mangled mess. Sliding back, she saw her father, then turned around to gauge Cassandra's lightsaber head-on and repulsed it with a parry. As her lightsaber bounced off his blade and was back to flying toward the ground, Cassandra ran as fast as she possibly could in a blur, and in a dropkick, she crumbled her father to the floor.
Father sensed the attack but wasn't fast enough to fully meet her, so instead of his back being kicked; it was his solar plexus being booted. He fell, and his grip on the lightsaber loosened, his defenses faltering for a split second, she took the opportunity and seized the lightsaber with an invisible grip and recalled her own sword to the other hand. When her father managed to recover in a crouch, she quickly closed the space in between them and brought the two red lightsabers in a cross into his neck, like a pair of scissors ready to close and snip.
Her father didn't move a single centimeter nor did Cassandra. He stared into her eyes, and so did she above him. At this time, her heart was pounding against the walls of her chest, and sweat glistened over her body. One wrong move and she can accidentally sear her father's neck, a seriously wrong move, and that would lead to his decapitation.
The glow of the lightsabers luminated her father's face and the humming was even more foreboding than it should be. This was the first time ever in her life that she managed to beat her father in a lightsaber duel. At that moment, a swell of pride and anxiety swirled in her chest—self-accomplishment and doubts, works of joy, and the grace of fear entered her.
In a small whisper, a gust of wind, as it almost felt like to her, breezed past her ear. She recognized the near-silent voice as the dark side speaking to her, the words of it spoke, "Your time has come. Claim your stake to the dark side. Strike now and end this once and for all."
"Well?…" her father said, bringing Cassandra back to the trance-like state she was in. "If you're going to strike me down while I'm defenseless, then do it." He said in a voice so relaxed and bland that it seemed like he didn't care that two beams of hot energy were a hair away from his neck.
This shocked Cassandra. The sweat bending down onto her face and hands were of apprehension and great fear. She couldn't fathom the idea of her father dying, from her own hands more so. She took a step back, unbelieved that her own father would suggest such a thing. Looking into his yellow glare, by the way he asked the question, it seemed like she was staring at a complete stranger.
No, she affirmed, she could never dare to take her father's life. Cassandra never saw the times when he forced her to go through gruesome and brutal training regimes, endure hostile environments, and deal out punishments for her failings and shortcomings. She saw them in acts of love in his own way. Not in the sense of showing her compassion, for compassion, he had said to her, had no place in their dealings.
Yet, he did all of these and continued to do them to her not out of spite or vicious hatred, but to strengthen her, to turn her into a better being. He was showing her the path to her truest potential. A way to use her abilities to their fullest. She owes him for giving her life as well. To be his daughter and betray that trust was…inconceivable.
Cassandra deactivated the lightsabers, ending their glow and letting the training area succumb to total darkness. She went back further and fully knelt on the floor, placing the lightsabers in front of her while bowing toward her father. "I…could never, father." She proclaimed in all earnest. Even the thought of doing so made her sick and caused her hands to tremble.
The darkness surrounding them, sight being useless, she heard her father get up from his downed position and walk towards her. Stopping at the two lightsabers, he picked up his lightsaber and activated it. The crimson hue returned, and the edge of the black receded back. She only saw her father's boots in her perceptual view. There, he stood for a long, dreadful moment, one that didn't help her worry that she may have done something wrong.
"When I had you with your mother," Her father, Hego Damask said to her. "I originally wanted a son." He admitted with coldness but was otherwise honest, if not bluntly. "I even thought of possibly manipulating the force to alter your genders once finding out that you would be a girl when you were still in your mother."
Father had never gone into detail about Cassandra's mother. A drifter, he said. A woman with too much ambition and pride for herself to abide for motherhood, he commented another time. A woman with no real commitment to anything, he stated to a younger Cassandra.
To Cassandra, her feelings for her mother were…vague. One part may have hated her mother for leaving Cassandra and her father, but then again, she doesn't know the reasoning for it. Another part of was a desire to search for that mother, to discover the truth about where she came from.
Was she alive now? Had she truly loved her father or was it just a transaction to deliver a child such as Cassandra? These were questions that Cassandra might never see the answers to.
"And when you were born," her father continued. "What a pathetic and weak thing you were." That line burned in her heart like a lightsaber strike, but she took it regardless. "Even after all these years of training you in the ways of the force, you disappointed me in ways that truly tested my patience." Within Cassandra, a desire to say, "I'm sorry, father," tried to exit out of her lips. But she clamped down that thought powered through her father's words. "You are reckless, impatient, and worst yet, you have your mother's ego and show no signs of my yearnful humility." He raised the lightsaber overhead and hissed out, "I've had my fair share of thoughts of riding you…"
Cassandra's face was unmoving, like a statue. Her eyes stuck downward to the floor, and then she closed them. If her father struck her down right now, would she fight back? If this was a training session, she would, but to truly offer her life to her father in a show of love and loyalty, if this is how it ends, then so be it.
She thought that her final moments would be to hear a lightsaber falling down and extinguishing her life forever. However, she got two of those things. She heard the lightsaber move downward, but not in a way, so cut her down. It stopped a hair away from her right shoulder, hovering.
"You were weak when I had you," her father's voice brought her out of her frozen haze. "Now your hatred has become strength." He brought the blade up away from her right shoulder, over her head, and sat it hovering above her left shoulder. While her father uttered, "At last, the dark side is your ally." He finally let off the lightsaber and had it to his side. "Rise, my daughter."
Cassandra went up to her feet as she was told and felt a haughtiness come to her. "Your shortcomings are apparent, but you overcame them and showed yourself to be worthy of the dark side." He looked into her eyes, "I have wondered if you will ever be accepted and handle its power. My question is now complete. You have passed the test and truly are my daughter."
It was like the weight of the world was pressed down onto Cassandra, not out of burden, but out of responsibility and knowledge that her father approved of her. "What is your bidding…father?" She said with a bow.
His lightsaber shut off, he placed it to his belt, and with a wave of a hand, the training area's light flashed on. "You know very well that I have performed work for decades under the world's eyes." He explained. "I have done covert operations in the shadows to supplant and sow chaos throughout humanity…" his voice switched to a tone of disgust when uttering, "And I have sabotaged the efforts of those so-called heroes. All of this was with one goal in mind. Not for chaos and destruction for the sake of it, but to help humankind progress through troubled times he wouldn't be able to exit out of on its own."
He paces away from her while she watches intently. "These heroes think that the current status quo will solidify and never come to pass. They earnestly believe that once they pass on themselves, their protégés will carry on the torch of vaunted views of justice and peace. Then, they too will teach the next generation, and so will they in an endless cycle of procurement of individuals, lying to them about the world needing them."
"While they trick each other into a falsehood, they believe themselves to be guardians of Earth, yet don't have the stomach to do what needs to be done and end the lives of criminals. Instead, they render themselves on the moral high ground, refusing to dirty their hands of riding pests that sully their prestigious cities."
Father then plants his hands in the small of his back and balls his fists out of rage. "The heroes of this world ignorantly believe that equality and ideas of hope are what brings humanity together. This is another lie they tell themselves. Let me tell you, Cassandra, the true drive that has guided humanity for countless millennia…fear. It was fear of the dark and predators that forced cavemen to convene and create fire. Fear of the other tribes made many create cities. Fear of competing nations created technology and war that further progressed the world and culled the weak."
"Fear, Cassandra, fear is what drives every single organism to succeed or die trying. From the lowliest of rodents to modern man, we all fear, and in turn, that terror motivates us to do incredible things. What has equality done for us? Nothing but deliver corrupted, self-serving leaders who privatize liberty from the public while domesticating the masses to be docile and submissive who can't think for themselves. Nor can they see that the current system is rotten to the core and rebel against their controllers. All of this, the Guardians of peace and justice willfully protect this status quo with a smile."
"I say this to you: if the reign of democracy, modern morality, and equality had led to this, then it must be ripped away from its lofty perch, and a new system will have to be enacted. This era must be cleansed by a great fire and blaze to burn away the old, the complacent, the corrupt, the destitute, and all of the factors that created them to wipe the slate perfectly clean. Then, Cassandra, and only then, humanity will heave away its shackles and become masters of its own destiny."
He paused, turning back to Cassandra and noting her face of processing. Cassandra knew that since she was a little girl, her father conducted dealings and secretive business with clients and other shady individuals. She theorized that his goals lead to something greater but couldn't fully grasp it. Now, to hear it from her father made her go in awe.
Father let a few silent moments pass for Cassandra to absorb this information then continued. "Chaos, Cassandra, is not the end in itself, it is the means to the end. If a forest becomes too old and sick, nature will provide a simple spark, and the right conditions can ignite a firestorm to rid the land of infested growth. And in the aftermath, a new forest will rise, one stronger and healthier that will be better than the previous one."
"Decades of work, daughter, years of my business in the shadows and in politics have been leading up to this goal. Even now, the public doesn't have the same rose-tinted glasses on the heroes it used to, and paranoia of superpowered beings will come to a boiling point. Within our lifetime, the world will rid itself of the weak and we, as father and daughter, will show them the way to a better path."
Then he shifted his tone to a cautious approach, "We must be careful, Cassandra, the dark side may be on our side and give us the power to enact our machinations. Yet, there are other powers at work that will not only be against us but try to penalize and punish us for our audacity. Like a raging river, the force will create whirlpools, torrents, eddies, and deluges in the currents to stop our goals. The heroes, though not aware of our identities, no doubt will attempt to do the same as well."
Hego Damask let his words sink into Cassandra's mind and then went on. "There are those, of course, that believe in the same cause as we do. As do I, they employ the same tactics and methods of manipulation and deception to secretly undermine the world's governments and their protectors." He lifted a finger, "Make no mistake, daughter, this cabal is nothing but filled with crooks, madmen, and relics of bygone days that think they can bring humanity to the light in their own image. If they complete their mission, their desires made manifest, then like hyenas, they'll fight over the scraps and nothing will be accomplished."
"Allied I may be to them, and they perhaps think that I am one of them. But in the end, they themselves are just as guilty of fueling the cycle of charades of heroes and criminals. They too will be purged and will be nothing but a memory in the new world order we will establish."
"Now, though the progress I have made has borne fruit, my entanglement in politics has been conflicting with my true purposes. Agents and informants I may have, yet none have the force…" he stepped closer and put a hand onto Cassandra's bare shoulder, "…Nor are they my daughter. If I should succeed in finalizing the grand plan, who better could I ask than my own blood?" Again, Cassandra was speechless and felt that she didn't deserve to be the daughter of Hego Damask, secretly a master of disguise and manipulator. It was a legacy she wasn't worthy of and yet, he chose her so regardless.
Cassandra could only make a nod. Her father still talked to her, "I have trained you in many arts of espionage and martial skills. You have gotten through gauntlets designed by me to test your resolve. Failings there may be, but in the end, like here, you have passed them. But now, if you truly are my progeny, then it's time you take part in the…family business." He stepped and motioned her to properly dress and convene to the ready room outside of the training ring.
Cassandra gathered her lightsaber and went to her room. Simple and well-maintained, it included a bed, a bathroom, a work desk for creating gadgets and maintaining her lightsaber, a designated area for filled bookshelves that pertained to her interests, and an area for self-training in a corner. Doing proper hygiene, Cassandra fitted herself in the assassin's suit her father designed specifically for her. Donning the mask, lifting the hood, and attaching the lightsaber to her belt, the young assassin now exited her room and entered the ready room where her father waited, dressed in a grey business suit.
The walls of the ready room were lined with computers and screens that showcased current global affairs and economic policies and stocks enacted and fluctuating. Her father is looking at one screen and has his back toward Cassandra. She went to the middle of the room, kneeled to her knees, and waited for further instructions.
Father spoke in concession, "I may be adept in concealing my plans and actions from the normal eye, but there are times when cockroaches would slip through the cracks and become a nuisance." He turned around to look down on her, "There has been a leak within my network. I myself took care of the rat who did it." He let out an exaggerated sigh, "Unfortunately, as pests do, there is always a way they can spread."
He clicked a button on one of the consoles, and a blue cone of light was emitted from one of the cameras attached to one of the screens. The scanned light created an almost identical copy of a rotund man with graying hair and in a black business suit.
Father gestured to the holographic image, "This is Rupert Thorne an…" he stopped when he made a glance over to the image and twisted his face in sour distaste, "…associate, I suppose. I tolerated his presence in past dealings, but no longer. Like the weasel that he is, he has obtained information that can cripple my operations and my true identity in exchange for protection from the government." He swiveled his eyes to Cassandra, "He is a threat and one I will not stand." Father posited to her, "You will rid him for me."
Cassandra made no effort to show her emotion, but she was anxious, excited, and nervous. "I could possibly do it myself." He suggested out loud, "But, I cannot let you stay in my shadow forever. You have been on missions with me before," he stopped for a brief moment, "And killed too."
She didn't look into her father's eyes unless she warranted an unwanted memory to come back from the past she would rather put away. "This, however," his words broke her downward stare, "Will be child's play compared to your past experiences." He flipped another button and showed a large penthouse and its location in Gotham City. "The fat man is now held up in his high-top penthouse in the Diamond District ." He stated. "Security is obviously present, and anti-intrusion systems would be in place, though it is nothing you can't handle."
He switched a button, and the glowing hologram of her target and his location faded away. "What is the main problem, Cassandra…" he then pressed a button, and pictures of multiple masked figures appeared. "…are the Bats that lie perched up nearby."
The Bat family a group of highly talented and skilled individuals led by the infamous and reclusive Dark Knight of Gotham City. Her father had explained to her before that, in the past, he had complications with the bats and even was forced to engage them, though under a disguise, of course. In a strange way, in the words her father described Batman, it seemed like he had a sort of admiration toward the caped crusader, if albeit minimal. Yes, they had no strength in the force or any supernatural abilities, to begin with, yet they have somewhat gained her father's respect by their sheer skill and commitment.
"They got word of Thorne's information." He said, "And no doubt will keep an eye on the slob for their own interests of trying to uproot my shadow network."
Cassandra continued her analysis. They were enemies that needed to be destroyed at the first opportunity. Alas, her father professed the consequences of killing one of the heroes, or at least making it seem like they were killed at any rate. Perhaps they do deserve death due to their pride and ego in their haughty actions of heroes, but her father warned that to do so would warrant many more heroes becoming vengeful and motivated to find the murderers.
Their time will come, but not right now.
Her father still continued while she stayed silent: "I have trained you in many art forms of killing and concealment. I'm confident in my own teachings to you that this will be a mission you are capable of completing. You are to enter Gotham, infiltrate his penthouse, and deliver what Thorne deserves without making it seem like foul play. All of this while avoiding detection of the bats." He stopped for a moment. "Supposedly, one of Thorne's children may be present." That brought Cassandra's face up, but she made sure not to betray her thoughts openly. "Which one?" He said, "I cannot say, but it is possible that they could be with him."
He held her gaze in a serious yet understanding matter. "If it can be helped, Thorne's death should be your only kill in this task. But I know very well from experience that events and circumstances could be put in your way as an obstacle. There are factors beyond our control: if the child is an obstruction to your mission, then riding them would also be part of it."
Cassandra, still having to process what he was saying, could only blankly stare down to the floor. Her father's reaction wasn't as reprimanding as she thought it would be. Hego Damask placed a hand on her shoulder. "Do you remember what I have said about killing the innocent?" Cassandra took several seconds to recall those words he had said to her years back and nodded.
"Then you know that taking the life of the weak shouldn't deliver you joy, not entirely, at any rate. Previous Dark Siders before us have succumbed to their deep impulses and desires. Butchers and killers have been the usual act for past practitioners. But you and I are more than that."
"Instead of simple-minded warriors, we are the architects of the future. We don't hide in the dark; we ARE the dark. There are those who try to regulate life and end death; we ARE the only ones fit to govern who lives and dies. We, Cassandra, only we, ARE the only ones able to show humanity the true path. With that responsibility weighing heavy over our shoulders, we must be prepared to take action to achieve it less all of the sacrifices, work and lives wasted, be all for nothing."
Father receded his hand from her and stepped out of the ready room, leaving his daughter in fixed, deep thought.
Heavy blasts of rain saturated the night air in Gotham City. Dark clouds high in the sky blanketed the already barely visible sky and poured vast amounts of water down onto the filthy streets and buildings of the city. Periodically, veins of blue bolts of lightning would come from the overcast and flash the night in a brief burst of light, followed by roars of their crackling past after their bright manifestations.
Several buildings rose from the landscape below: old and new, tall and minutely small, dilapidated and well kept, dirty and clean, power and those who lacked it. More so, regions of the city like Crime Alley had such slum accommodations while places like Diamond District housed the city's richest and most powerful of its residents.
Amongst the lofty towers of gleaming glass, metal, and concrete sat a figure on one of them, dressed in all black, unmoving and careless of the rain pouring angrily around her like the gargoyle next to her. The only times one might be able to identify Cassandra from the haze and gloom that was the night and drenching rain would be the quick flashes of lightning that revealed her.
Cassandra stood at the edge of the tall building she was ontop for several minutes in a study on the location of her target. Rubert Thorne: Industrialist, financier, and one of Gotham's crime lords. The last title was, more often than not, an open secret. On top of his grand penthouse, Rubert Thorne is marked for death by her father. She could only imagine that Thorne must've betrayed Hego Damask in swindle like fashion. If the large man was truly in league with her father for a time and double-crossed him, then was about to come upon him would be well-deserved and satisfying to Cassandra.
Though she spied on the penthouse, for that was her main objective, Cassandra also scouted the wider city she was in. Gotham was such a cesspool of a place. Not only was the architecture gloomy enough, but the spirit and essence of the urban sprawl spoke through her from the Force.
Being taught in ways of the force and the dark side, esoteric and pragmatic techniques, father once said to her that a force user's interpretation of the force would vary from each and every other user. To her, the force spoke to her like a whisper to her ear. When a threat was close to becoming real, like words being carried by a subtle breeze, cries of warning from the force told her the means and routes to dispatch such danger. When the force conveys a person's moves, thoughts, emotions, and actions through her empathy and foresight, it is like a silent voice speaking to her from the person themselves, telegraphing their whole being on what they will do. Having the ability of Shatterpoint and being trained on how to use it, when an object's or person's weakness appeared to her, it was like a low voice telling her a dirty secret they kept themselves. And when used to its fullest, she can break them with minimal effort. The force in Gotham City spoke to her, and what it said was filth.
Greed, envy, lust, paranoia, fear, aggression, and hatred were the raw emotions that the dark side feeds on, and Gotham was a fat source of such impulses. The dark side saturated the air as much as the rain was doing this night with such extreme downpour. Dark energies furled and coiled, laid themselves in the shadows, and tied to every being here whether they knew it or not. Yet, despite the great reservoir of such power, the city was nothing more than a disgusting pit of such weak-willed people who seemed to think their current way of living was acceptable. More to the point, she can see why Father had such disgust for the city, and she could tell that he would like to do nothing but demolish its entire foundation and start a new one.
What deeply angered her father even more so was the heroes, public or otherwise, who stalwartly defend places like this, and Cassandra couldn't agree more with her father. Their skills and powers are not to be taken lightly and are respected by Cassandra, yet their outlook on the diseased world they live in makes her sick.
How could they believe in all of their great intelligence and talents, that the current systems on the planet are worth fighting for? How could they look at themselves in the mirror each day before they do their hero work and believe that they themselves were making a difference when in reality, they don't do anything but lock criminals up and think society would fix itself? How could they sleep knowing that nothing of consequence happens when they don't allow themselves the honor of getting rid of the pestering criminals for good? They think of themselves as paragons of justice but never truly dispatch it and are cowards on what needs to be done.
One would think that due to the area where the Bat-family operates, they would be inclined more to deliver death to criminals and scum, but Batman and his followers are the most zealous of the hero lot when it comes to their sacred "no-killing rule". Have they really gone mad? Cassandra wondered. It seemed like they were a completely separate species altogether from humans in the way they think about how the world works.
Then again, knowing her father for all of her life and understanding how other people behave, Hego Damask sometimes didn't act like any other person. Weirdly enough, he acts like an alien trapped in a human's body sometimes, she occasionally observes.
Knowing that her musings would not perform the task at hand, she ceased her most deep thoughts and focused her attention on the now. Yes, she had done several equipment checks before this mission, but now she was going to do one last check before she crossed the point of no return.
Retreating back from the ledge she stood upon, she inspected her field kit. In an all-black body glove, her assassin's wear was made up of a ribbed armor weave material capable of reliably stopping smaller and intermediate cartridge calibers while being flame retardant. A hood, part of the suit, further concealed her black masked face which fully covered her head. Over her eyes through the mask was a black frame that housed one red photoreceptor on the right side for the main imaging sight, while the left side had three smaller photoreceptors in the formation of a triangle for distance measurements, thermal imaging, and targeting. The fabric part of the mask also acted as a respirator for a limited amount of time.
Moving downward, she searched her utility belt. Having a buckle in the middle front, several black pouches lined the belt that contained several items. From a tow cable, miniature medical and splicing kits, a set of small tools for undoing locks, high explosive putty, and many more items Cassandra would need in the field or to use in an emergency. Further down, she had a knee guard with boots in the same material.
[Note: I have commissioned an artist to more or less draw Cassandra's assassin's outfit in this fic. The outfit in question takes details and characteristics from her League of Assassins outfit from the comics while having material traditionally used by Sith Warriors. The artist who created it is named Sketchatron on Twitter at Sketchatrondraw, and you can look up the art under 'Sith Cassandra Cain' in the latest tab. Her lightsaber is also in the commissioned art]
Her father designed and created this suit just for Cassandra. But the jewel of her kit was of her own design.
Attached to the left side of the belt was her personally built lightsaber. The heart of the device was powered by a red synthetic crystal created and attuned to Cassandra. Energized by a power cell, the weapon wasn't mechanically different from her father's more pragmatic and utilitarian lightsaber. All but two things.
The first one was the 30-degree curved handle to allow for better handling in the grip and open options of altering attack vectors that are subtle enough to surprise and confuse her opponents. This component of her lightsaber is at its most potential when using the second form of lightsaber combat—Makashi. The wrapping around the handle was similar to the Tsuka-Ito wrapping of a Katana.
The second unusual design feature she had was the dual-phase setting. The focusing chamber that housed the lone synth-crystal was calibrated in the dual-phase configuration to allow changing blade lengths. The lightsaber with the length control button close to the emitter ridge could be thumbed by her to change the standard meter-long red blade to be lengthened at three meters, be less than a meter short, or be set to any length in between by a press of her thumb for surprise maneuvers.
Done with her inspections, she scanned the area for any prying eyes. Nothing at the moment. Then, going even further back, she gathered the force within her, she leaped a 50-meter gap between the tall building she was on and the one next to it. She landed without trouble, now two more buildings closer to the target. She scanned the area again and did the same thing. One more building closer. Cassandra did one jumping arc over the final concrete building and landed. Before she could orient herself to the side of the skyscraper that faced Thorne's penthouse, she detected a presence.
She was on the third to last top floor of the skyscraper, perched on the ledge as well as the stranger, she sensed. Cassandra made herself flat to the wall and ever so slowly moved to the nearest corner. Passing it, she concealed herself from normal senses with the help of the force and placed her body on the ledge of a window. She carefully peeked out her masked eye from the corner and saw who she detected.
Recognizing her from father's past briefing and what available information he provided, Cassandra Damask saw one of Batman's underlings, Spoiler, crouching on a similarly built ledge facing the Thorne residence. In a dark purple suit, the young woman, close to Cassandra's age and build, had a mask that left the top portion of her Caucasian face exposed. In the purple hood, Spoiler's blonde hair was somewhat seen, though only in locks. With a cape that reached to the back of her calves, Spoiler sported a set of Escrima sticks in the same color as her uniform. Just like the rest of the bats, she also had a utility belt to add her unpredictability.
It was clear that this member of the bat family was assigned to watch Rubert Thorne, seeing how whatever information the mobster was willing to provide would go a long way for the vigilantes. Scanning the area, it seemed like Spoiler was the only one on guard, or at least at the moment.
Skillful she may be along the rest of the Gotham street crusaders, to think that she was a true threat to Cassandra, more so to her father, was unimaginable. With no powers whatsoever, Cassandra will have absolute impunity to do whatever she needs to dispatch Batman's pupil. Whether that was a blinding lightsaber strike, a burst of lethal lightning, telekinetic strangulation, crushing her organs by a simple thought, surging a force wave to render her body to a mushy pile, driving a punch through her chest by force argumentation, attacking and reducing her to a vegetative state by a telepathic attack, those and many more were ways Cassandra could kill this hero.
Due to her father's mandate, however, on Cassandra and even on himself, killing any hero, in general, would raise awareness of their tight community, and the consequences would bear upon the Damasks.
She needs to be careful about how to approach this.
Spoiler: not aware that a dark sider was close, still watched over the mobster's penthouse. Cassandra scoffed at the hypocrisy, to think that a crime fighter would protect an agitator of organized crime was somehow ironic to her. If Cassandra were in her position, she would be livid, and hearing Spoiler press a comlink in her ear, it appeared that the vigilante agreed, too.
"Anything on your side?" Spoiler asked whoever she was talking to. With the mask, her voice was somewhat concealed and muffled, which made distinguishing her voice difficult.
Quickly, Cassandra trained in, focused, and amplified her hearing to Spoiler's earpiece that housed the comlink and eavesdropped. Despite the thundering and heavy rain, Cassandra managed to hear the electronic voice speaking in Spoiler's ear. "Nothing." An older female voice responded to Spoiler, "My end is good. Batman and Robin had to respond to a Killer Croc sighting somewhere in the narrows."
Spoiler made a visible shudder in recollected memory, "Don't make me remember the first time I've fought the guy. Ugh, and the smell too."
"Well, just be happy that they aren't really tracking him anytime soon. They'll be back here, and Bats want to talk with Thorne himself."
That surprised Cassandra. Her father warned that the Bats would be involved, but Batman himself to warrant a visit to the mobster only meant how serious this was. Thinking it over, she told herself that it shouldn't really be this shocking. Master of deception and secret agendas her father may be, yet he admitted to Cassandra that in the past, the caped crusader had undone some plots and machinations he created and tussled with him in separate confrontations before, though her father was in a secret identity in those interactions.
If her father was worried by the information leak, then this special talk with Batman would assuredly undo her father and his decades-long plans. That won't do, Cassandra declared.
Realizing that time won't be on her side, she needed to remove Spoiler from the picture, or at least distract her long enough to leap over the distance between buildings and enter the penthouse.
Bringing her own will into reality, she focused a trick of the mind on Spoiler, making her think that she heard movement thud on the roof of the building despite the noisy rain. Spoiler's attention went upward, leaving her gaze from the penthouse onto the roof above her. She darted her eyes a bit and comlinked to the female on the other side, "Batgirl, I may have something going on in my end…" She brought out a grappling gun and fired a latching hook that trailed up to the air and caught itself on the ledge of the roof. "…I'm taking a look," she said at last.
The gun propelled Spoiler upward, and she maneuvered herself to land on the roof. Now was Cassandra's chance. Still raining, Cassandra had hazy concealment to her advantage, with the added bonus of it being the night. She studied the penthouse carefully, spotting multiple well-suited henchmen patrolling various portions of the roof estate in several areas, indoors and out. Finding one suitable spot, she braced, then leaped over the distance and let the force break her fall.
She landed smoothly on the ledge. Looking through the window, she saw a lengthy, decorated hallway where no bodyguards were currently present. Viewing the window itself, it was locked from the inside. Under the shroud of the window's ledge, Cassandra used the force to expel the raindrops that fell on the suit to dry, if she didn't, then walking in the penthouse while wet would be problematic. Her suit forcefully dried, and she made sure again that no one was in the hallway, then, by using the force, she undid the lock on the window. The latching mechanism undid itself with a hushed 'click.' She telekinetically opened the window's door by pulling them outward, dropping herself inside, and then pulling them back to close them.
Now, she was inside, the torrent of rain muffled by the penthouse's interior, the lightning's violent roaring lessening; Cassandra scanned the hallway to find no one was still coming any time soon. Knowing the layout from building schematics provided by her father, Cassandra knew she was close to the target. The hallways were just as lavish as she saw them afar from outside in the rain; wooden, polished floors, collected tapestries, and ornate objects that Rubert Thorne enjoyed, the hallways were bathed in relaxed orange light created from wall lamps and chandeliers.
She put herself to the wall, hugging it, and then remembering where she was at in the penthouse's layout, went in the direction of Rubert's personal private, secluded area. Cassandra traveled through the hallway and put herself in a corner when a guard was moving in from her front. She put herself flat against the wall, stepped in a shadow that was cast by a grandfather clock, and had the force make her disappear as if she were part of the shadow. The black-suited gangster, armed with a hidden pistol and a walkie-talkie, swayed his head and left and right to find anything suspicious in the hallway he was currently patrolling, he passed Cassandra without a second thought. He continued to patrol the hallway and turned to the corner, leaving her sight, though she sensed him still walking away from her.
Coming back out of the shadow, she kept hugging the wall and covertly walked closer to Rubert Thorne's main residence section. She turned through several corners, encountering more guards but with the force, she would've been a simple shadow to them and shrugged her existence off. If she happened by a corridor that was being spied on by security cameras, she dazzled the circuity within the device to pause their screens. To the person watching on the other side, they would have seen empty rooms and hallways, not an assassin stealthily infiltrating their boss's home.
Finally, after weaving past guards and cameras, she reached the main doors to Rubert Thorne's personal study, where he mainly resided. The two well-furnished wooden doors were locked, with one camera pointing outward on either door. Using the force again, she made the inner circuitry stop its flow, making the feed pause when she went to the door.
With one hand on the furnished wood, she sensed that there were two beings on the other side, in the next room over specifically. On the other hand, her mind cast out the in-built locks within the doors. She telekinetically manipulated the pins within the locks and made the bolt recede to the door frame. Slowly, Cassandra opened the door, aware that no one was at the other side, nor were there cameras as Rubert Thorne would conduct his most secretive buisness here. She entered the lavish room closed the doors, and relocked them with the force.
The room was just as lavish as the corridors she was in: decorative art and tapestries hung on the wall, plush furniture at specific locations, and the ceiling was a wide window that showed the dark, rainy sky above where raindrops pounded onto its glass frame.
Sensing the force pulse in two beings, Cassandra snaked her way through the lavish room and into another hallway, though this one would be where the bed and study rooms would be. Coming to a stop behind a door, she noted that it wasn't locked.
She heard the unmissable sound of an argument elapsing on the other side. Enhancing her hearing, Cassandra's audio focus managed to penetrate through the wooden barrier and hear the older voice of Rubert Thorne having a phone call.
"Alright, Bruno," Rubert Thorne said with a voice of attempted consideration. "…I'm listening." Cassandra heard the other person who was in the room breathing, by the sound and rhythm, it was a child. "Okay, yea, no," Thorne said after a while. "If I can make a prediction on these to come, I would say that your little teacher Damask ain't gonna be around to help you out anytime soon."
Cassandra tensed up, Thorne shortly chuckled, "Why? Well, his colleagues in the UN ain't gonna like the stuff he's been doing when word gets out. And I got a funny feeling that Bat-freak and his club are gonna give him the time of his life when they find out, too, that your buddy ain't a saint everybody thinks he is. So face it 'Ugly' you can be the captain when his boats sink, or be a rat and survive when shit hits the fan."
He waited a bit, "Now hold on, I ain't threaten to rat him out," he got defensive, "That's just a word in the street." He paused and got angry after hearing Bruno, "Well, ain't that just sweet, loyalty even if he kills yah, hope that sweet ass A'Daire doesn't follow your lard ass." He clicked a button and threw the phone onto the couch. He blew out a breath of exhaustion.
The child, a girl, possibly around the age of eight, commented with concern, "Didn't mom say that cursing was bad, Daddy?"
Rubert bellows out a soft laugh and puts on a caring tone, "Only at the dinner table, baby girl, when it's business…well, you gotta show people you're serious. Others,
The girl didn't say anything for a moment, "So if I wanted Disneyland again, I could curse to show I really, really want to go?"
Thorne laughed again, "Maybe when you get married, sweetly, you could do that to your husband."
The girl's response was that of disgust, "Yuck, I ain't gonna get married."
The father's reply was more of a joke than an actual answer, "I'm sure you will, honey. But it's your bedtime."
The daughter made a sound of disappointment. "Okay, daddy…" she got up from where she was and made her way to the door. Cassandra, registering this, went away from the door and made herself flat against the wall next to the door and away from where the girl would go to her room.
The door cracked open, and a little girl with blue eyes, blonde hair tied in two buns, and in a pink smock exited out of the room. Since the girl was young, Cassandra had no effort to telepathically remove her presence from the girl's point of view. The girl would have closed the door but instead peaked her head in the room she left one last time, "Good night Daddy."
Rubert Thorne replied to his daughter in the same loving voice she gave to him. "I love you too, sweetie." The girl had a warm smile on her face when she shut the door, though not fully. She left the door and walked further into the hallway only to stop, about-face, look in Cassandra's direction in a curious yet confused look, then scratched her head out of nonchalant dismissal. She opened the door to her room and closed it behind her.
Hearing the girl go to bed. Cassandra let out the most quiet sigh of relief she could possibly make. Then, she reverted back to her mission. The room's door cracked open, Cassandra silently opened it just enough to slide in through. The study that Rubert Thorne was in and Cassandra found herself in was a warm place with kind pictures, dimly lit, bookshelves against the walls, a large Television screen, and a live fireplace.
Rubert Thorne sat himself on the couch that faced the lively fireplace. Unaware of the dark assassin behind him, he smoked a cigar while in transit thought. Now, his end will come soon.
The first thing Cassandra did was to enter his mind and render him to sleep by a mental command. The man did so; he dropped his cigar to the floor, limbs going slack, and his head dipped backward a bit. With his resistance nullified, she took a moment for herself to create a way to kill him without the act itself being viewed by law enforcement as foul play.
Reaching a conclusion and a solution, she twitched a finger, and one of his blood vessels began to be blocked. His body convulsed at first, then he awoke from his forced slumber, clutching his chest, and unsoundly fell to the carpeted floor. Walking around the couch, Cassandra saw the man struggle to do anything.
His eyes were in total alarm, face in pain, Rubert Thorne tried to reach the phone that was on the couch, yet the cardiac arrest he was in weakened him. The man stayed on the floor. His heart failed not long after she strangled his artery with the force. He died on the floor as Cassandra watched every single moment of his suffering.
Completed with that, Cassandra went next to the body and then viewed the room in an objective way of thinking. An overweight, old crime boss found on the floor, a lit cigar extinguished, a glass of brown alcohol on the coffee table, a phone he tried to reach on the couch, and a curious, sleeping, young child that he tries to keep away from his business.
A combination of stress from the pressures of being a mobster, a father who tries to keep his family away from his perilous business, and a bad diet that puts a toll on his already aging body would be hard factors that the law and the bats would have to take in. Without any real evidence of a break-in, foul play, and or any real man-made cause of his death that they would be able to detect, authorities and some of his associates would have to concede to the idea that a simple heart attack killed the mobster, not a rival or a backstabbing cohort.
Perhaps they could suspect something was at a foot, yet with no clear-cut evidence, their suspicions would only be a theory.
Satisfied, Cassandra didn't even do a complete turn to leave the scene when the door cracked open and revealed that the girl had woken up all on her own. The girl saw Cassandra, bringing on a face of petrifaction, then her eyes darted downward, where from her point of view, she would only be able to see her father's head as the couch restricted the view of the rest of his body.
"Da-daddy?" She whimpered out.
Before she could utter a scream or cry, Cassandra issued a force suggestion to the little girl. "Sleep."
What was an open-eyed, scared little girl now was a girl with closed eyes and a body going limp. Cassandra quickly jumped over the couch and caught the girl before she could make a sound her body crashing onto the floor. The girl in her arms, Cassandra looked back at the dead mobster, at the little girl, then outside of the room. She walked out and went to her daughter's bedroom.
The door swung open, and the girl's room was a lot bigger than Cassandra had expected. Pink-colored, feminine toys about, a fluffy bed with fuzzy warm animals, the room was the embodiment of a childhood room for a girl of her age.
Casandra walked across the room, careful not to disturb the toys on the ground. She cautiously placed the sleeping girl onto her bed, specifically in a position where anyone would fall asleep in. Then, Cassandra placed a hand on the soft forehead of the sleeping girl and began to infiltrate through the girl's memories; Memory Walk was the technique's name her father called and taught her.
Quick flashes of images popped within Cassasndra's mind as she went through the girl's most recent lived-out moments. Playing with her brother, arguing with her brother, having her mother pick out clothes for her school days, having…experiences with a family, Cassandra painfully saw. The girl shifted and squirmed under Cassandra when the recent memory of finding her father on the ground with a horrible shadow monster looming over him was brought back to visualization.
Cassandra simply plucked away the event, erasing it like how a gust of wind can undo a sand imprint on a beach. She then made the girl believe that she simply went to bed and slept, not actually waking up and finding her father's corpse.
The girl's troubled look faded when her features relaxed, and she was sound asleep. Cassandra, done with washing away the evidence, went to her feet and just…stared down at the sleeping girl.
If Cassandra was in the same position, to find her father dead on the floor, she too would be overcome by great sadness and great anger. Other than her father, she had nothing else in the world. To lose him would just…she wouldn't know what to do. Would she go berserk, overwhelmed by the dark side? Would she consider ending her life? Would she go on a search for her long-lost mother since she would be the only blood relative Cassandra would had?
Looking around the room, the girl sleeping wouldn't lose absolutely everything when her father is discovered to be dead. She would still be loved by a brother and a mother, never mind the comfort of being a child of a mob boss ending soon. Cassandra did have some comforts in the past, of course, she remembered fondly of her father's villa in Athens. That was the only few parts of her life that might be considered "normal", has Cassandra saw it.
Gazing further, Cassandra saw frames of the girl's most cherished moments immortalized on the wall. She saw the girl with her family on a hiking trip.
Cassandra remembered the time as a thirteen-year-old, being dropped into a dangerous, remote jungle with no supplies or necessities other than what she could gather while being constantly hounded by her father, who wielded a lightsaber. In hindsight, it was a memory that emboldened her from surviving it. But back then, having to use the force to sustain her body, battling hostile predators, and evading her father's lightsaber were some of the most terrifying experiences she had faced.
Another picture showed the girl with her family somewhere in Rome, eating fine cuisine. Cassandra remembered being starved deliberately by her father in brief times of her life. She went on through miserable days without food and water, the force may have been strong in her and did support her, but even then, it wasn't enough. Yet her father did the same torment to himself, as well, and she watched him perform almost effortlessly in all the tasks he wanted her to do.
Was her father cruel…perhaps…but needlessly unfair…not exactly. When asked of his parents, her father never seemed to adopt the look of melancholy. The memories of his own father and mother weren't as fond to him compared to the memories she had with him. She dropped the issue when sensing he himself didn't want the subject to be brought up altogether. Her father also had times when he had explained the story of his past, though he didn't truly divulge it.
More of the point, she was his legacy and whatever he had to endure in the past, she would have to as well.
In one final look at the innocent room she was in, she finalized her thoughts. To amuse herself, she closed her eyes for a quick moment and imagined how differently her life would have been if she weren't the daughter of Hego Damask.
Suddenly, her consciousness was blown away from her physical body, as if she were a leaf that was whisked away from a branch of a tree and carried by a powerful and unruly air current. Overwhelmed by the raging turbulence, she surrendered to its animatic flow, and the force unraveled the dark veil that cast over the future like a jet stream parting away a smoke cloud. The force showed her many bifurcating streams of possibilities that could have her own life in the right circumstances.
In one life, she could have been a daughter to a full family: a father, a sister who cared for her like a mother would, and wonderful siblings.
In another life, her calling of an assassin wouldn't escape her destiny, and she would have been trained to be a weapon by someone else other than Hego Damask. A different father? She looked at one path. By her mother? She saw another.
By chance and cosmic alignment, events could've made her a hero of some sort, running around crime-infested cities in her own colorful costume to partake in the ever-present crusade against villainy. On a divergent path, she could have been an assassin and follower of the dark like she is now, but instead of a Dark sider, she would have been a leader of a great and skilled group that hid in the shadows.
Cassandra tried to find deeper meaning behind these images and places she's taken to, but like dipping your head in a muddy stream, her thirst for knowledge brought her only a clouded sight, and her vision ended before a proper answer could be reached.
Her reverie ended, and Cassandra was brought back to the room, with the small landings of the rain still beating down on the penthouse's roof and the little girl sleeping on her bed. Realizing that whatever otherworldly vision she had held her down like a statue she lingered here for far too long than she had any right to be.
Leaving the girl to sleep, the dark assassin quickly, though silently, left the room and the inner penthouse in the same direction she came in. Again, using the force to stun the cameras, unlock and relock doors, remove her presence from patrolling guards, and finally reach the nearest window that led to the wet and frigid stormy night. Scanning the area outside, she saw that no other interloper or pesky individual was watching that part of the building yet.
Opening the window and closing it, she crouched on the window's ledge and performed a force-imbued jump across the rainy air. She landed on a window frame with her hands grasping for perches. The young assassin looked down and jumped onto a balcony, then she jumped again, landing on a flat rooftop. Cassandra, after that, ran and jumped across rooftops in a non-organized fashion in case anybody happened to watch.
Sure that the night and the storm that gripped Gotham would conceal her for the most part, Cassandra begins to think about what happened. In a grand sense of looking at it, the cosmic force—the universal power that funnels its energies into the living force in the entire universe—spoke to her in a vision.
But was it truly a vision of different lives she could live in, or was it an esoteric warning about the future? What would the warning be about? Her father? The plans he had for the heroes and villains and their various teams and cabals?
Continuing to run across the tops of buildings, she remembered what her father professed about visions the force occasionally gifted people such as them. Precognition in that celestial type was said by her father to be often clouded and unreliable. Even if the visions were to be believed, predictions, as he said, shouldn't be the basis of their success. The dark side couldn't be rushed and herded to its ascendancy; it needed to grow on its own, while Cassandra and Hego helped its nurturement by encouraging hatred and anger wherever they could issue it. They created their own future, destiny, and pathways with the force as their proxy, not the other way around.
And yet…
When picking out details of the vision she had received, they seemed so real to her rather than some possible road she could walk. Why does it feel that she felt true belonging was at the hands of one of those pathways, yet when feeling for her current chosen path with her father, it seemed so manufact—
Cassandra stopped when she spotted a figure that was on the same rooftop she just landed on. Her inner thoughts blinded her so much that she forgot to survey the area for any onlookers. Thanks to her mask's night vision, she saw the figure in their distinctive detail despite the hazy rain while the figure in question registered Cassandra's presence, equally as surprised.
A pointed ear black cowl that was part of a cape from behind as well, a dark grey bodysuit that withheld a yellow utility belt at the hip, black gloves with black boots at the bottom, the mask showing the lower face, and a portion of the eyes, and the most distinctive was her orange hair at the back the flowed and the bat symbol on her chest. These were the identifiable features that proved to Cassandra that this was Batgirl, one of Batman's sidekicks.
Batgirl got done talking in a comlink conversation by the way her right hand was halfway down and her mouth slightly opened. The hero, rain in between, clearly noted that whatever Cassandra was, she wasn't a normal pedestrian by any means. Cassandra felt and saw Batgirl's body tighted and prepared for a fight while her right arm was about to press the comlink in her mask.
Time slowed down for Cassandra as she weighed her options. Killing the bat before her would be the easiest route, but the results would be dangerous to her and her father. Running was another, but when Batgirl contacts the rest, that will give the alarm to the Gothamite vigilantes that a suspicious unknown person was spotted not too far from Thorne's residence, and a welfare check on the mobster would be warranted. And that would lead to trouble.
She had to fight, Cassandra conceded to herself, fighting without killing as her father wanted. In a flash, she remembered what her father said about this possible predicament. "Though our enemies don't have a clue about the force or our true selves, we cannot give them any information about our alliance and powers to the dark side. Therefore, we must act in ways that hide our true power. You must fight without truly fighting. You must be skilled without revealing your true risk you pose to them. You must fool them to believe that you are no meaningful threat, and they will rue the day they have underestimated you…"
She knew what to do, though mediocrity wasn't her first choice. Batgirl's right arm twitched to activate her cowl's comlink, but Cassandra stopped her when she finally attacked.
To be Continued