3
Chapter 3: On-The-Job Training
New York City.
…Hm. It honestly reminded Max of Gotham, only slightly bigger but somehow less scary.
But at least there was no Batman, or any superpowered villains to cross that he knew of.
A shiver went down his spine at that moment, but he blamed it on the deceptive chill of early March creeping through his jacket.
For school he'd made the excuse of needing two weeks in New York to handle what was left of his parents' affairs. It was effective enough. It wasn't like there was anyone that the school could call to verify any of it.
So Max was veritably free of anyone checking up on him, not that anyone would have anyway. The party in Gotham City showed him exactly where he'd stood and how far he'd slipped when it came to any sort of social connection with others. They knew him, but nothing recent as far as his life went. Definitely, none of them would come knocking if he didn't show his face for a short stretch of time.
Depressing? Maybe. But at the same time it was extremely useful for being a damned criminal.
And he was getting to sightsee around New York! Although it was basically to pick up on some quick go-to spots for different instances in case he ever wound up in those areas, but it was still more than a lot of people his age got to check out.
A part of him missed being normal and being able to take in things without having to think of them as something 'work-related', but there wasn't any crying over spilt milk in this instance.
One day, when he was done with the crime and could throw away the Null suit for good, he'd at least have tons of killer stories to tell to his kids and grandchildren.
'Hey kids, do you want to hear about the time your dear old dad went to New York to learn how to not get his ass handed to him by crazy crooks and superheroes?'
The thought was enough to make him laugh as he looked away from his phone app on the train systems and boarded the one he needed to return to his motel.
Life was certainly unexpected.
XxX
(Gotham City - Batcave)
Nothing interesting was happening at school, and Barbara was finding that her daily life was just something she went through the motions on while waiting for the sun to go down. The only thing of note was that she had to work in as a third person on a lab team because her usual partner was out, apparently off to take care of some business of his late family.
She yawned while checking over and compacting Bat-a-rangs to refill her supply of the all-purpose tool. Daytime was so boring.
Well aware that she wasn't alone, as Alfred was watching over the safety controls for the training equipment as Tim took to practicing as they waited for night to fall, Barbara was able to ignore them and tend to her own thoughts.
Not for long though, as people could never let things simply lie.
"What are you thinking about so hard over there?"
Getting out and searching for something at night, "Nothing really."
"You're totally lying."
Setting the Bat-a-rangs aside, Barbara spun around in her chair to watch Tim practice against a few training droids, "So why don't you tell me what I'm thinking if you're so sure Tim?" She was willing to humor him if he was really going to be that cheeky about it.
He didn't even need to stop fighting in order to get out his answer to her, "You're probably thinking about that guy, Null."
Damn him. He really took to the analytical, investigative part of Bruce's training, and it was annoying. He always wanted to try and look for something, even when there wasn't anything to find. And seriously, there was nothing to find here.
"What about him exactly? Null is Null," Barbara said, checking over her utility belt and making sure she didn't need to restock any other equipment, "He's not a big deal at all, so I don't know why you're bringing him up Tim."
"Because you let him go," Tim pointed out with a laugh at her expense, "You didn't even chase him after me and Bruce showed up to handle taking in Tally Man, so don't use that excuse."
"I had to make sure my classmate was still alive," Barbara was beginning to feel a little exasperated by the conversation, "Zeiss and Tally Man were sent to kill him and I didn't know when Null showed up to beat Tally Man. Anything could have happened to Max before that."
"It is odd," Alfred pointed out, receiving a pointed look from the lady for his trouble that didn't even cause him to flinch, "I'm not taking it back."
"You've been looking out for more burglaries than anything else lately," Tim pointed out, getting Barbara's ire back on him and off of Alfred, "Whenever we split up duties, that's what you always pick. We used to have to compromise over who got to take down the street crime because that's where the action is."
Barbara raised an eyebrow belying just how annoying she found the prodding, "And because I want to catch a known serial thief that we're actually aware of, whom you just pointed out that I let go once before, I'm fixated on him?"
"-Like he's got space leased out in your head," Tim said unapologetically, "I guess it's because for once we ran into a guy criminal in Gotham who's actually a teenager."
A guy? Really? Null? He was implying that she was attracted to Null? Just… no. He was a selfish criminal first and foremost. Not exactly significant other material. Second of all, none of them knew what he looked like underneath that hood thing he wore.
"I kicked him off of a roof," Barbara deadpanned.
"Yeah, by accident," Tim laughed. If they were going off of random spurts of violence as eliminators for this sort of thing, no superhero would ever be attracted to another, or to a villain, "You know that you know better."
She didn't have to stoop to his level to get to him. Barbara was more than intelligent enough to know how to philosophically combat everything that Tim was saying. She was capable of debunking every aspect of Tim's theories and setting them off to the side.
…But where was the instant gratification in that?
"Spoiler."
Tim's reaction from that one name was immediate. The wind couldn't have been taken out of his sails any faster, "That's low Barb," He said, idly lashing out with a kick to knock one of the droids away from him.
XxX
(Later That Night – Elsewhere in Gotham City)
Now this was more like it.
Between training the brat she affectionately deemed not-her-problem and laying low after her last big job, Catwoman hadn't had a good night on the prowl for a potential target in well over three months. She was well overdue to sate her desire (more of a need, really) to pilfer things of value from anyone she saw fit.
It was great to be back on the job. Liberating. And if she played her cards just right, there was a chance she'd run across her favorite vigilante in all of the land.
"Selina."
Ooh, speak of the devil. She must have been a good girl to get a present like that so early in the year.
Catwoman stopped her climb, one of her clawed gloves still stuck deep into the brick wall of the building she'd been scaling. Standing on a lower building, cloaked in the shadows of the one she was on, she could see the man who had called out to her.
A grin playing on her lips, she flipped off of the wall and landed smoothly on the rooftop below, "Well, well, well. What a surprise. Normally you don't come around to see me unless I've taken something or you want something. And seeing as how I haven't stolen anything in at least a few months now I've got to ask, what do you want Bruce?"
"Have you heard of any new serial thieves coming out of the woodwork?" Batman asked, not willing to play along with her attempt to banter, "And I mean brand new. Not someone who came in from somewhere else," Whoever 'Null' was, he was local. Born and raised. He had to be. No other kid would take on Gotham City first unless they had been born and raised there and had nothing else to compare it to.
Catwoman already knew who he was talking about. Even if she hadn't heard of anything that he would have done, apparently Maxie had run afoul of the Dark Knight or one of his trainees somewhere down the line. She wondered how bad she pissed him or any of his off… or how he'd managed to get away.
"Hard to say. Nobody tends to start solo here very often," Gotham's crown princess of thievery basically purred as she circled Batman slowly, "That's suicide," For more than one reason.
"I know," Batman deadpanned, "I've never seen all of his face, but he's a kid. 5'11, looks pretty athletic, has a strange green suit that seems to do something with electricity," At least that was what he'd gleaned from seeing him human stun-gun Tally Man and stick to walls with no support, "His name is Null."
"Null you say?" Catwoman said, a smirk pulling at her lips upon hearing Max's alias, "That's funny. It wasn't what I was calling him when he was hanging around me, but it's not bad all things considered. Doesn't really mean anything, but I guess it doesn't have to."
It was probably better that it didn't. Any way to keep it away from his day life was the best for him altogether.
"He's yours?"
"Oh don't be that way Bruce. He's too young for me. You're still the one."
"I didn't know you were the type to train an apprentice," Batman said, getting a scoff out of the feline-themed femme as he completely blew off her jesting advance, "This isn't a game Selina. Where is he?"
Catwoman sighed at the misunderstanding and leaned against the railing, slouching provocatively, "I'm not the kid's keeper. It's just that he was so pathetic I had to teach him something. He wouldn't have lasted one night out there if I hadn't."
"You taught him how to be a better criminal?"
"It's better than what would happened to him if I hadn't done anything," Catwoman defended, no shame in her words whatsoever, "I'm not going to say that giving him a crash course was necessarily the right thing to do, but we're not all rich. Doing the right thing is fine and all, but when you're in the gutter it won't get you out."
The scowl around Batman's mouth softened a hair. She tried so often to seem as if she didn't care for anything. That simply wasn't the case. Selina picked and chose what things to feel morality over, "So whatever his situation is, that's what got to you."
Before she'd become a thief, Selina's life hadn't exactly been rosy. That was to say the very least about it. She wasn't much for sharing the details but suffice it to say, she hadn't exactly had pleasant experiences with Gotham's dark side before she finally got the ability to take her own piece for herself.
"I'm not saying anymore about it," Catwoman asserted. She knew she'd already said too much as it was. His mood changed far too quickly for him to still be entirely in the dark about how to find Null, "Just remember… you don't need to go nuclear on him if you're the one who gets to him Bruce. He's just a thief."
And this he knew. If Batman had one soft spot it was for youngsters in tough situations.
Null hadn't hurt anyone. Anyone innocent at least. He'd actually helped, albeit entirely indirectly. He hadn't used anyone. He wasn't organized crime, he wasn't trying to take control of any market or racketeer. He wasn't a goon for one of the crime families or a henchman for any of the crazies in town, and after checking over his thefts he did what he could to ensure that they were victimless crimes.
But they were still crimes.
He was a punk kid who decided to rip stuff off to put food in his stomach, and it just so happened that he ran into the best possible person he could have to show him how.
Batman looked over his shoulder from where he was prepared to drop over the edge of the building and remained in place for a second, an impassive expression on what was visible of his face, "I'll keep that in mind," With a soft swoop of his cape heralding his otherwise soundless exit, Catwoman was left alone to her own devices.
But her own devices had been altered because of the short conversation she'd just had.
Who knew Batman could be such a buzzkill?
"Goddamn it. I don't even feel like scoping out the score anymore," She muttered to herself, resigning to head home for the night, "I told him better."
-To cover his fucking tracks. And if he hadn't… ooh he was in for it soon.
Selina didn't know how Max had been selling his stolen wares in the past, but she had to make sure to send him in the direction of a reliable fence. Chances were, he was doing it in a way that was traceable, which wasn't necessarily a death sentence for generic items, but if he ever took something that was one-of-a-kind and tried to sell it, he'd find Batman on his doorstep before the money was ever in his grasp.
Stupid kid.
XxX
(Meanwhile – New York City)
The best way to keep the capes off of his back was a simple solution. You had to keep the police out of it, and the best way to do that was to rob criminals. It was so simple, but it was also incredibly dumb, simply because of the danger factor. Max didn't recognize this however. His resolution to separating the things he took upon himself as Null and his 'normal' life, the importance of which came first, was astonishing.
All he really had to do was keep an ear out, and eventually something would come up where he'd be able to get one over on a villain. He'd take whatever they'd stolen for himself and let them take the heat for it. It'd have to be something he could make count though, for all the trouble it was going to be.
It didn't really take him that long to strike gold in that department, as one of the places he'd been watching for, a museum near Battery Park wound up being hit one night. The report over police scanners declared that there had been something taken by a criminal he'd heard of.
Selina had heard of Copperhead and had told Max something about him back when she'd been giving him a crash course in the fine art of burglary and other criminal activities.
From what he'd been told, Copperhead was one person he figured he could rip off and get away from.
Lying in wait, he moved the moment he felt another presence moving along the rooftops, a place normally reserved for him as in the time he'd been there he hadn't seen anyone else traipsing about up there at night.
It didn't take much to catch up to him. All it took was a bit of pedal to the medal and he overtook him quickly enough to land a jumping kick to the back that sent his target headfirst through a rooftop greenhouse window.
"Man, for a contortionist he was pretty solid," Null mused, remembering the feeling of the blow he'd stricken. Anyway, it didn't matter now. He'd just gone headfirst through greenhouse glass. He wasn't getting up anytime soon after something like that.
Any other steps he would have taken toward entering the greenhouse ended when he heard a threatening hiss that sounded like the type an anaconda or another mammoth snake would make.
The rest of the hole that Copperhead had created after being kicked into it was torn open enough for his full form to emerge, apparently little worse for wear and incredibly miffed.
When Null actually got a good look at him, what he wound up getting hadn't been what he had expected.
What stood before him was a large snake-man in blue jeans, rust orange in the color of his scales with black marks. Trailing behind him was a long tail, further confirming that this wasn't quite a human being. Slung over his shoulder and hanging by his waist was a satchel containing the valuable that he'd stolen, but that was the furthest thing from the would-be thief's mind at the moment.
'Holy shit, I heard that was a suit!' Null thought to himself, grateful that Copperhead couldn't see his expression underneath his hood, 'He was supposed to be some sort of contortionist! Goddamn rumor mills!'
If anger could be conveyed through the eyes of a snake, they would have been through Copperhead's. He sized Null up, his tongue flicking out into the air as he observed him, "And just who are you supposed to be? You're a stupid-looking one."
"And you look like you should have your own show on Animal Planet," Null reflexively said before he realized that he'd just insulted the big snake man. But by then his mouth was already running as something of a calming mechanism helping him to cope, "Say, you didn't happen to swallow whatever it was that you took did you? I know snakes do that."
Copperhead reached into his satchel and pulled out a small package that was covered up from Null's view, "I don't like to eat things that weren't… alive at one point. What does a kid like you want with me?"
"Well I figured, you're a criminal, so who's gonna care when I rob you?" Null said, "What are you gonna do anyway, call the police?"
"How about kill you instead?" Copperhead hissed out with his flickering forked tongue, "I wonder what a rotten brat like you would taste like."
Wait, wasn't he at least partially human himself? And he was into eating other people?
Even so, all of this had a point to it, and running away empty-handed without as much as a fight wasn't it.
"I'm not backing down from you. I might be younger than you, smaller than you, weaker than you, and way less experienced, but I-," He then froze after thinking everything through. He had nothing on this particular bad guy at all, "-Think this was a horrible decision."
"I agree," Copperhead said with a laugh.
Null heaved breaths in anticipation before deciding to just go with it. He wanted the experience? Well that included the dangerous portion of things as well. Gritting his teeth, he clenched his fists and ran forward to engage the snake-themed crook.
Copperhead dropped his loot and chuckled despite his former anger at his situation. A kid in over his head would be quick enough to kill before getting away, "Everyone wants to put on a cape and be a superhero these days."
"I'm not a hero," Null said, throwing caution to the wind and going right at him to land the first punch, "But I appreciate the 'super' part!" Copperhead caught his fist in his hand before it even reached his face. Swinging the youngster's arm downward, Copperhead lowered his head and charged Null, slamming the top of his head into his entire body like a bulldozer.
Sent flying, Null flipped through it and landed on his feet only to find Copperhead right in front of him, arms over his head in a double sledgehammer motion that he swung down on top of him. Null dodged to the side and ripped away with punches at Copperhead's exposed body as fast as he could throw them.
Feeling the pain from the punches and the shocks that came along with them, Copperhead whipped his tail at Null and smacked him right across the face, knocking him to the ground.
Null winced and dabbed at the cut that had been sliced into his cheek by the mutated metahuman's whip-like appendage, "Okay, that really hurt," The tail wrapped itself around his leg and dragged him across the roof despite his best efforts to hold on to something.
Mercilessly he slammed Null into the brick wall of a stairwell and then into an A.C. unit, throwing sparks and debris all over before dropping him with an added shake as he tossed him aside.
The thief let out an agonized groan as he picked himself back up, "God. Why is everybody better than me!?"
"I was an assassin before I became this," Copperhead said, emphasizing his altered physiology as he took great satisfaction in the clear pain the boy was in, "I used contortionism to get to my targets to kill them. But I have to say, there's something special about running straight through someone as annoying as you."
Despite taking the beating of his lifetime thus far, there wasn't really anything else Null could do other than face it head-on and piss his foe off further.
"Forget stealing from you!" Null taunted, "I should just make a pair of shoes outta your ass and give 'em to my girlfriend," At least the tail wasn't wrapped around his leg anymore.
Copperhead punched at Null, only for him to divert it by blocking at the inside of his forearm. Null dropped a heavy uppercut into the snake-man's belly in response, but Copperhead grabbed his arm and dropped an elbow down between his shoulder blades, dropping him to the roof again, much to his amusement.
'Am I even hurting him?' Null had to wonder it as Copperhead picked him up by the loose hood wrapping around his head and neck and threw him again, this time off of the roof, "Shii-, GAH!" He bounced off of the side of an elevated train track and fell from that point forward, 'What's with people throwing me off of-!' *CRASH* "…Roofs…" He weakly spat.
Once again, after falling a minimum of three stories, he landed on a car. This time face down on the top of one of many parked along the curb of the street. He basically headbutted some poor bastard's sunroof upon making contact. He'd have had more sympathy if blood wasn't leaking from his head like milk from a cracked coconut.
Copperhead stared down off of the roof at the thoroughly tenderized brat that he'd hurled off of the building they'd been on, "I couldn't have aimed him any better if I'd been looking," He boasted to himself, "Time to pick up what's left then."
He slithered his way down and stalked his way over to Null before reaching out for him with his tail. As if being jolted back to life, Null grabbed Copperhead's tail in his hands the moment it got close and went through the broken sunroof into the car.
Hissing in panic, Copperhead struggled, but Null had taken the initiative and pulled a good length of his tail through, tying it to something before hopping out of a car door on the side opposite Copperhead. Jumping back onto the roof of the car, he treated Copperhead's cranium like a soccer ball and took aim with the hardest low kick he could throw, "Thar's a snake in mah boot!"
The result upon the strike landing? That feeling that you get when you hit a baseball just right. Perfection.
The monster went slack across the top of the sedan, and Null decided that now was his best chance to run. Whether he was unconscious or dazed, whether he'd actually won the fight or not, it didn't matter. He slipped the satchel off of Copperhead and jumped off the car before taking off running.
The sound of metal being torn caused him to turn around in time to see a car door fly at him. He rolled out of the way to avoid it, but quickly found himself pinned to a passing light post, once again by the tail. Unfortunately it soon grew much worse than that.
"I never kicked anything that hard in my life!" Null said, struggling in vain as the grip of Copperhead's entire body surrounded him and constricted ruthlessly. He really was something of a snake. A human's spine would never let them do anything of the sort, "Stay down fool!"
"You wrapped my tail in a seatbelt," Copperhead said to the trapped thief spitefully, "I was a contortionist when I was a human. Really boy, did you think that would hold me?"
"It worked for like… ten good seconds," Null squeaked out, feeling the air rush out of his body. He couldn't fight it, no matter how he tried to writhe and flex to try and give himself some room to breathe.
Copperhead's body squeezed the light post hard enough to cause it to groan underneath the pressure, to say nothing of what he was doing to Null's body. The snake-human hybrid could feel the boy's bones cracking and Null could feel his vision growing darker.
"You're less than worthless," Copperhead taunted, feeling Null's muscles and bones give way, "The only good you'll ever do anyone is as food," He heard Null try to say something back, but the complete lack of air getting to his lungs prevented him from saying anything, "What was that?"
Instead of words, he received the response in the form of an electric shock emanating from the entirety of Null's body. Copperhead let out a loud yell and his muscles went slack enough for his quarry to fall to the ground, free of his coils.
Null sharply sucked in as much air as he could from where he was on the ground, "Love ya mom. Love ya dad," His head was swimming too much for him to stand back up just yet. Oh sweet mother of Jesus, if it weren't for that suit not only would he never have escaped, his back would have been broken before he had.
But he still had the satchel, and he'd hit Copperhead with the equivalent of five separate stun guns. And he was exhausted because of it. He hadn't been running and jumping comparatively hard, and while he'd been taking a beating he knew he was more fit than this. He felt one hair shy of crashing out entirely, running on absolute empty.
He had no idea why that particular move made him so tired, as the electric discharge was just an aspect of the suit and whatever powered it, but he figured that from then on it would be best to NEVER do that again.
That was the last decision he made before his eyes felt too heavy for him to ignore, 'No, I can't sleep now,' Every move he tried to make drained whatever he had left even more, 'Get up!'
Copperhead eventually rose, his body suffering the effects of being electrocuted with tight muscles and fits of pain running through his system. His body could endure a lot, but his hide wasn't nearly tough enough to just shrug off things like that.
Fortunately the perpetrator of his pains lay motionless on the ground barely ten feet away.
Well wasn't that convenient?
Close to being in a rage, Copperhead stomped over to Null and picked him up by his neck before grinning cruelly and unhinging his jaw. He normally didn't devour things whole, but the kid had been enough of an annoyance that the sort of slow death that would come with being eaten alive seemed suitable.
"Didn't know kids for bein' part of a healthy diet, even fer snakes."
Copperhead closed his mouth and looked over to where he could see a muscular figure standing on the lowest level of a fire escape. He was clad in an entirely black bodysuit with a cat-themed cowl that left his mouth and scruffy lower jaw uncovered, as well as fists wrapped up in heavy, thick tape.
With no fanfare whatsoever, he dropped down into the alley and walked out into the open, his hands up and prepared for combat. No nonsense whatsoever.
Sparing a glance at Null, Copperhead scoffed and tossed him away, choosing to place all of his attention on the newcomer, "Word was that you retired, Wildcat," He spat the name like a curse.
The identified 'Wildcat' grinned at causing the villain annoyance just from his mere presence, "Eh, semi," He said, "I ain't out lookin' for punks anymore. But when they're tearin' shit up in my neck a' the woods, why not spend a night crackin' some skulls?"
The night was just getting worse and worse for the human reptile. With a flicker of his forked tongue he mused that things could have been worse. After all, Wildcat didn't have powers. Even if he'd taken quite a bit of time dealing with the kid in the suit, he still had more than enough to handle some cape that didn't even have superpowers.
That was what he thought anyway. And then the fight started.
Newly reawakened, Null sat himself against the side of a car and watched the ensuing battle between man and snake. What he saw only made him wonder even more just what he'd gotten himself into.
A stocky, ripped guy in a costume that reminded him vaguely of a cat (what was it with people who had cat themes around him?) physically annihilated Copperhead.
Whereas he had been fighting to survive and escape from Copperhead the entire time, Wildcat unleashed the vilest beating onto another being that Null had ever seen. He'd done it all with nothing but his bare hands. Pure boxing.
"Where do these guys come from?" Null muttered to himself, unable to take his eyes off of the display before him as Wildcat dropped Copperhead one last time. He didn't get back up, and then Wildcat turned his eyes to Null, who then took Copperhead's satchel off to hand over to the hero, "Uh… hey, I got what he stole! Thanks for helping me stop him!"
Rule number three. No haul is worth your life or your freedom, and this jig had long since been up. Physically speaking, Null couldn't have fought back or run away anymore if he'd even been inclined to do so. He didn't exactly have a scrapper's mentality to begin with.
And that aside, for God's sake the guy still had Copperhead's blood dripping off of his fists! There was such a thing as self-preservation!
"Well look at this," Wildcat said, looking over the battered youth before him, "They just keep makin' 'em younger, don't they?" He said, picking Null up and dusting him off, "Took guts to try and take on Copperhead kid."
'Not really. It was either fight him or let him kill me,' Null thought to himself, but smiling on what was visible of his face. Not only had the guy saved his life, but he was treating him like a good guy, "Yeah, you would've seen my guts if that lasted any longer. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather have the skills."
"Eh, can't be that bad if ya actually walked away," Wildcat said, playing off the beatdown that Null had just taken, of which he'd caught the very tail end of, "All ya need's some schoolin'."
A grimace crossed Null's face underneath his wrap hood. Yes, he was aware of that. It was the entire reason he'd come to New York in the first place. And other than ripping off small change from street criminals and drug dealers in town, the first time he'd stepped out and tried anything on someone he thought would be fairly simple to deal with, he got beaten black and blue for the most part.
Training with Selina had mostly been about procedure and how to do the job properly. What combat training was covered was only done to make sure he actually knew what it was like to be in a real fight. He had slight knowledge of one martial art; kickboxing. And that was from classes as a kid that he retained knowledge from because it was a good workout and the reflexes helped with the sports he'd tried to play before his parents died.
"Right," Null said, turning around with a click of his tongue, "I'll look into that," He was miffed enough that he wanted to say more, but he was pushing his luck as it was, "Later."
"Wait. I can't just let ya go," Immediately, Null figured that there was no way his fortunes could possibly be that bad. Wildcat knew he was a thief. Of course he did, the guy was a superhero! And now he was going to jail, "You're probably the type that'll get yourself killed, and I can't send a rookie hero off when he's as green as goose shit like you. I'd never be able to live with myself."
Really?
Thankfully it was dark and Null's eyes were shaded by his hood, because he was certain that he had the dumbest expression on his face above his mouth.
Wildcat… thought he was a hero?
That was just fantastic. No kidding.
Null shrugged, trying to appear that he'd kept his composure, "So, what now?"
"Well I guess I can show ya how to throw a half-decent punch. I'm a pretty good trainer," Wildcat boasted, pointing his thumb at himself, a five o'clock shadow surrounding his grin, "The more brats like you do this, the less I've gotta step out and handle it myself."
Underneath the hood, Max had to think to himself. Which option would be dumber? Lying to Wildcat about being a superhero in order to get some kind of training from someone who clearly knew what they were doing and was willing to share, or turning him down and going off into that dark night to deal with whatever came his way next?
He'd gotten lucky twice. Robin and Batgirl kicked his butt, and Copperhead almost crushed him like a grape. If one were to go off of the old adage 'three strikes and you're out', the next time he ran into that sort of trouble unprepared, he'd find himself pushing up daisies.
But he'd come to New York to cut his teeth and learn something that could help him back in Gotham City. The opportunity was being dangled in front of him like a big, juicy steak, and even though there was obviously a dangerous hook in it, all he had to do was keep the thing from hooking his jaw so to speak.
Hell, he could lie for long enough to get himself trained. And then he would never come back to New York. Wildcat would never even know he'd trained a thief to fight back against his own colleagues more than likely, and if he did, Null didn't even plan on operating on his turf.
Life was certainly unexpected.
XxX
(Three Weeks Later – Gotham City)
There was a numb feeling reentering a familiar environment after you spent a certain amount of time away, something that made you feel tired walking back through the doors of your own home, even if you'd spent the entire time either relaxing or working. It could have been something of a traveler's syndrome. Max didn't know how to describe it exactly.
What he did know was that Wildcat worked the hell out of him. In one month, he'd packed on four pounds of muscle. The man knew what he was doing, as harsh of a taskmaster as he tended to be. When he trained people he knew would be fighting for their lives, the man didn't mess around.
For the little hovel that it was, it was really good to be home again.
Shutting the door to his apartment, Max set his bags on his couch and set his lunch on the counter in the kitchen corner, taking a deep breath of relief at making it back. He unwrapped half of a sub and prepared to take a bite, "Whoever's in here, come out," It wasn't a big place, so if anyone else was around there were signs.
Signs like the foreign smell that came with other people intruding on your ambient space.
From the back, Selina came out with a smirk on her face. She looked markedly out of place in her high-end clothes to be slumming it around in his neck of the woods. That alone made the intrusion odd, not mentioning the agreement they'd come to the last time they'd run across each other.
The two just stood away from each other, and Max decided that if they weren't going to talk, he was going to eat, and did just that until Selina spoke up, "You just going to stand there, Maxie?"
It took a moment of chewing before the teenager responded, his mouth half-full, "I'll be honest, I've had dreams that started out exactly like this," Max said, "Some of them involving you actually," He added shamelessly, continuing to munch on his sub as she just stared him down, "…I'm not apologizing."
It was far from the first time she'd been hit on and with as lazily as Max had done it, it wasn't even worth rising to comment on.
"Cute," Selina said before getting to the point, "And you've been where exactly?"
Max went to his refrigerator and winced at the smell after looking inside for something to drink. Of course all of his perishables went bad before he got back. He left so quickly he hadn't even checked for them. Gross, "What? Did you miss me or something?"
Selina hissed at him and wondered if scratching him would be too disproportionate a response, "Batman put two and two together and figured out our little connection."
That actually prompted Max to stop eating for a moment. 'The Man' himself actually asked about him. That was disconcerting. In essence though, he was probably just keeping tabs on the new blood. It was kind of his job after all, to gauge the threat level of the crooks and lunatics that ran around Gotham City.
And Max knew he wasn't one of the more notable crazies, "So? Unless you're telling me he knows who I am and he's in the back right now too? Because I don't see you and him staying in the same place and leaving all of my furniture where it is."
"Oh, you don't even know," Selina said with an impish demeanor about her. Max didn't even want to know. He'd been implying a fight, but it was clear that she hadn't been thinking of the same thing, "But no. If he thinks you're my protégé, he'll try and make you quit or he'll try and turn you."
And what exactly would be the reasoning behind that? Max had been under the impression that the few heroes who did know about him thought very little of him, "But he thinks I suck doesn't he?" Max legitimately asked.
"That won't-. Wait." Selina cut herself off after picking up something in the inflection of his voice, "The way you said that. Are you saying you don't suck?"
'Oh boy,' Max thought to himself, choosing to take a seat on the counter in his kitchen as he regaled Selina with just what he'd been up to since his bout of self-realization after his run-in with Tally Man. If anyone was going to know, it might as well be the woman who set him unto a life of crime in the first place, "Well I spent most of the time learning some stuff."
(Flashback – A Few Days Ago)
"That's it kid. Ya can't kick or punch from that close, but just remember the knees and elbows."
'I'm a liar,' Null thought to himself as he continued to work with Wildcat in the alley outside of a gym near Battery Park. The man seemed entirely content being a standing dummy for him to target with everything he'd been learning over the last few weeks, 'I'm a damn liar, and I'm lying to a superhero.'
But it was so worth it.
Wildcat was one of the finest boxers in the world, period. It was his main tried and true method of dealing with absolutely anything if he had the choice, but it wasn't the only thing that he knew. Under his belt were several different martial arts styles, and he knew enough about them to not only teach them, but to teach separate chunks of them to a single person in a method that allowed him to use bits from whatever he gave them.
His reasoning for teaching Null the way he did was simple.
While Null didn't particularly fancy any style, he used all of his limbs routinely to attack. Training him to box didn't mean much if he still chose to throw kicks that he never learned how to do properly, so he wound up teaching him a wild mishmash of what the man could fit together.
The result was no single particular fighting style in the formal sense, but enough of three or four others to have one of his own. One that he could actually add to if he came across something that worked for what he was doing, so even after he left he could get better without having to learn something brand new from the beginning.
It had been one hell of a two week training camp. Sleep and eat during the day, exercise from sunset until the meeting time with Wildcat, suit up and then train all night.
Fortunately, any crime that occurred was not handled by said vigilante. He had been steadfast in his stance that he was retired, and because the trouble wasn't near his neck of the woods in upper Manhattan.
Along the way he'd learned plenty about Wildcat as well.
What was most alarming was just how long he'd been in the game. From the things the guy told him, he was at least over 70 years old and didn't look a day over 35. Apparently he had some sort of limited kind of immortality, something or another about nine lives, that translated over into his longevity.
All of it made Null wonder if he'd ever meet anyone in the same boat as him that didn't have some sort of superpower or super-amenity available to them that made taking part in such a life convenient.
"I can't wait to quit," Null muttered to himself, taking a seat and catching his breath after a particularly grueling session. He was in good shape, and the suit made doing everything that much easier, but Wildcat was wearing him out, "One day soon."
"Kid," Wildcat said, shaking his head, the visible portion of his face affixed in a knowing smile, "…Ya ain't gonna retire. Ain't no such thing as retirin'," He reached out and tapped Null on his head, "Once ya put on that hood, gave yourself that name, and started fightin', ya can't stop. Somethin' or another won't ever let ya."
Null shook his head, "No. When I'm done, I'm done. Let somebody else that actually wants it get a piece of this craziness. It's for the fucking birds."
Wildcat let out a bark of laughter before slugging Null on the shoulder, "Back in the day, I was only supposed to do this long enough to clear my name. That was way back when you were a twinkle in the twinkle of your granddaddy's eye."
From the wrinkles on his face, Wildcat didn't look much older than in his thirties. From what he was saying, he'd have to have been pushing well past his nineties, "…How old are you?"
"Older than you'd think or believe kid," Wildcat said, throwing an arm around the shoulder of his temporary charge, "And there are still people way older than me that look even better."
"That isn't saying too much," Null jibed, "From what I can see of your face you've got the mileage of an old leathery boot on it."
A growl came from Wildcat before he spaced himself away from Null and put his dukes up, a smirk on his face, "Alright brat. Since ya seem recovered enough to shoot that mouth off, let's see what ya got."
Null held back a curse. Saying what he had said meant that he was about to get more free-sparring, which was basically an excuse for Wildcat to kick the crap out of him and nitpick his fighting at the same time.
(End Flashback)
"Mmm, so you trained with Wildcat," Selina said, sprawled out on the couch, an appreciative look on her face at Max's ability to net himself a temporary tutor, "There aren't many more people you could have found that are better at straight-up fighting than him," He trained her after all, but that was another story, "…Man bangs like a loaded freight train too." She added, relishing the grimace that crossed Max's face.
"Okay, first of all," Max made a quick false retching noise before talking again, "Second, you know him?"
Selina nodded, "It's pretty common. A lot of superheroes and villains know each other, or at least of each other. You probably could have gotten him to teach you something out of costume if you knew who he was outside of the suit and dropped my name."
Instead of hiding that he was an aspiring thief and letting the man think that he was a hero-in-training. Wonderful. So he didn't even have to put his future neck at risk to get what he needed, but wound up doing so regardless because of circumstances. There seemed to be a pattern forming there.
But no excuses. That would always be the thing. No excuses for why anything occurred in his life, especially when it had been something well within his control.
Sitting next to Selina on the lone couch in his home, Max leaned off to the side to relax after his trip back from New York, "Anything else you didn't tell me? Like, does Superman or The Flash fill in whenever Batman's out of town or something?"
"No, remember he has the two kids and Nightwing for that."
He had of course been being facetious when he'd asked that question, but of course it had a legitimate answer to it, "Right. I forgot."
"Oh, cheer up Maxie. I didn't just come for the gloom and doom warning. I'm actually here to help," Selina told him before holding out a manila folder teasingly in front of his face, "If I say I got you a job, would you take it? It was sent my way, but eh. I'm not really feeling it."
That, and she didn't like the client. She knew who it was even if it hadn't been marked. The employer wasn't her type; too likely to get back at her if she felt a fleeting need to cut out on the deal in exchange for a better one. But if she turned it down outright, that would be trouble. If Max filled the spot instead, even if he failed, he would be the one to bear the brunt of the client's displeasure at the failed mission.
If it went well and good came of it for the young man, Selina would say that he owed her one down the line. If it went badly and he came back pissed, with a new set of problems, and not in a body bag, because that part was important, she would say that he could consider the pains he'd gone through for the mission she'd pawned off onto him as payment for her training.
He was tough. He could take it.
"And of course, the pay is all yours."
The second she said that, she knew she'd made a mistake from the way Max's face changed, "All mine? No finder's fee for you?" He asked, skepticism lacing his voice.
Selina pursed her lips in thought before she wound up killing her own, "How much did you make in New York?" It was an instant bullseye from the grimace he gave her, "You're too careful to do this for a living."
If Max had have taken the risk of trying to steal while he was being trained by Wildcat, he certainly would have run the risk of attracting the ultra-physical hero's ire, but he wouldn't have found himself caught in a position where he had nothing to show for his nearly month-long trip. He had much less than he'd originally left with. Between food and paying for a place to stay, he had well under two-thousand dollars after everything was all said and done.
Kickass fighting moves were cool and everything, that much the aspiring thief couldn't put a price on, and they would help to make him a lot less dead later on down the line, but as it stood, he needed money now. Again.
Selina was dangling a job right in front of his face. Nothing would come her way that wasn't worth the pay, and she was giving it to him.
There was a catch, and he knew she wasn't doing this out of the goodness of her heart even though there wasn't anything on the surface to spook him, but it was a Selina job. Trouble aside, the kind of money that was obviously going to come with that couldn't be scoffed at by someone who was running low on funds.
Tenatively, Max felt the need to accept what was being handfed to him, "It's just a theft?"
"Just a theft," Selina parroted to him soothingly, "As if I'd give you any of my bounty work. Find your own if that's what you're after," She masked her absolute need for him to take the job with a defiant detachment to it, like she had bigger fish to fry elsewhere.
That simply was not the case. If he turned it down, she would be taking it. She really wouldn't have had much of a choice.
But he was thinking too hard about it to turn it down. The more he thought it over, the better the chance at a sweet payday would sound, and he needed it. The skepticism quickly drained out of the boy's expression and Selina grinned. He wasn't going to back down.
Good old Max. He was really too good to be bad.
XxX
(Mid-Gothan City – Eastern End of Sprong River – Miller Harbor)
The first weekend back in Gotham City, and he had a job he didn't particularly want. But money was money, and something this clandestine would definitely pay more than stealing the crap he'd been lifting before.
Cargo harbors were creepy places in general. At night, they became that much more unnerving. They were also great places for illicit acts.
Lots of space filled with nothing but storage containers. A maze-like setup throughout. Empty service streets leading to separate areas and warehouses that were desolate at night. It was a good place for criminals to congregate.
Granted, there was still Batman to contend with, and he knew full well everything logical about harbor areas that the criminals did. Those that chose to go there anywhere to ply their trade were either relying on the law of averages, or they were a cut above the average street goon in some manner.
Without a clue as to who his client was to be, Null approached the meeting area dressed in his full suit, the camouflage of the actual outfit changed to suit the environment. Lying atop a stack of metal crates, he let loose a breath as his equipment changed colors and patterns to match it.
He'd gotten there as early into the night as he could and remained there for hours, just waiting. It was all for good reason.
The plan was simple enough; get the drop on whomever it was that was doing the hiring. So at least if nothing else came of things, he had that much of a leg up on them. If it was a trap, he would be there first to spring one of his own on the ambusher.
As he overlooked the scene, he swore he could see a figure trying to blend in with the dark nearby. He trained his eyes on who or whatever it was and tried to make out definite features, but as he focused in he felt something disturb the field of static that always seemed to be around him.
A slight static shock was his only warning that something was nearby, right behind him. Twisting from his belly to his back, he turned over with a kick that knocked a pair of hands holding onto some sort of weapon away from aiming at him. In the same motion he rolled up to his feet, ready for whatever was after him.
He was just going to pretend that the 'whatever' wasn't holding a sword. But she was, and it was definitely a 'she'.
The would-be attacker was a teenage girl with long white hair, wearing a half-mask that covered the upper portion of her face above her mouth. Half orange and half black, it also lacked an opening for her left eye. Her outfit was a form-fitting black getup with no sleeves and vertical openings at the hips. Any skin that might have been exposed by such attire was covered by a sort of silver armor underneath that vaguely resembled chain mail. She wore orange gloves, boots, and a belt that more than likely had weapons and combat equipment attached.
Something about that rang familiarly in his head, but he overlooked it just as soon as it came to him.
Because the most important thing was the sword strapped to her back. A sword that she happened to be wielding at the moment.
She took a slash at him, but Null forewent trying to retaliate in the slightest, taking a swan dive right off of the stacked containers down to the paved ground. He landed in a roll, avoiding the downward stab the girl took when she jumped after him in pursuit.
The girl grinned when he rolled in the direction of another set of containers and worked to corral him, back-to-wall for an easy kill. Max let her back him up with cuts in his direction. Anything she wanted as long as she didn't hit him.
His back touched a wall and the girl instantly struck, viciously stabbing forward at him, only to be surprised when she not only missed and stabbed through the container, but when her target's feet stood directly on her weapon. Looking up at the rest of his body, she saw his hands somehow sticking flat to the wall, holding him up.
Null kicked at her head, but she pulled her sword out and dodged simultaneously. Planting his feet on the container, he jumped right at her like a missile.
"I can see right through you!" The girl shouted, taking a killer swing at him as if she were a batter and he were the ball. It was an easy attack to go through with, especially when she'd already foreseen that scenario the moment she moved away from him, "Die!"
What she hadn't foreseen was missing by the slimmest of margins. With inhuman body control and reflexes, Null twisted his body underneath her slash and hit her with a full-body tackle that he heard drive the air right out of her. He shouldn't have been so satisfied with the knowledge that he was hurting a girl, but chivalry stopped when she pulled out a sword.
The move didn't seem to do that much either, as the dangerous teenage girl simply brought her knees in and planted her feet at his hips once they hit the ground. She tilted her body back as she pushed her legs outward and sent him flying.
With another container in his flight path, Null flipped enough to land with his feet on the vertical surface and cling in place. Twisting on his toes, he set himself back and planted a hand on it for better positioning to look down, "You know I'm not Catwoman, right? I don't have boobs or anything," He said, patting his own chest for emphasis as a joke, "See? You can stop swinging that thing at me anytime you want."
The girl chuckled in response, but didn't approach him to attack again, "Are you scared? Most nerds would think a girl with swords was hot."
Wait, what? "…Did you just call me a nerd?"
"No, you're a really cool guy," Sarcasm detected and duly noted, "And I know you're not Catwoman. That's why I'm trying to murder you."
Null opened his mouth to unleash a profanity-laden diatribe against the crazy bitch with the sword, but found his voice caught in his throat upon hearing another one that gave him chills and caused any latent survival instincts he had to kick in.
"The message sent was intended for one person only," A serious, dangerously astute-sounding man said, attracting not only Null's attention but the girl's as well, "And that person wasn't you, whoever you are."
The sight of the speaker almost made him come undone and fall from the wall.
A man who wore a black bodysuit that seemed to be made of the same kind of armored material that the girl wore. On his head was a hard mask/helmet colored half orange and half black with only one eye-hole. His frame was adorned with orange harnesses and belts. As a result, the man was armed to the teeth with blades and firearms, notably one large broadsword on his back.
"Deathstroke," Null said aloud. It wasn't of his own volition. He thought it, and simply could not muster the mental faculties to filter himself.
On the list of people that Selina had run him through containing people he may or may not interact with as far as how to deal with them if he came across them, Deathstroke the Terminator was on the very short list of people that she told him without exceptions to refrain from crossing.
He'd come from the direction of the shadowy person Null had been observing earlier. That caused Null to make an observation on his current situation, "…You were just hanging out and waiting for her to kill me, weren't you?" He'd been bait to make sure Null's attention was kept on him while Ravager scoured the area to actually find him.
Deathstroke crossed his arms and looked up at the wall-bound thief, "I realized when you arrived that you weren't Catwoman. I asked for a professional and she sent me a boy, so I planned on sending her back a corpse," The girl made to make good on that threat until Deathstroke cut her off, "Ravager, stop."
She froze midstep before she could attempt to pounce on Null, "But you just said-."
"I said I planned on it. Past tense," Deathstroke said, "Then he fought back, and I got to see some of what he can do. He didn't do a bad job of sneaking his way here before you could find him, and while the thief's role in this mission isn't expected to fight… he did better than I would have figured he should have."
The last part was verbally pointed directly at Ravager, who instead of responding to him stood for glaring murderously at Null. She in turn got one right back in return from him. He wasn't going to take that now of all times. He didn't care if she had a sword or was Deathstroke's… whatever she was.
Deathstroke ignored the two and mused to himself aloud, "So now what to do with you?" He asked rhetorically, "I could just-," He pulled his assault rifle out with one hand and Null had a red dot trained on his eye before he'd even thought to respond. That kind of quickness was insane, "-But that would be a waste, when I can actually use you."
Yes. All he needed was a person to do the actual infiltration and theft. The boy wouldn't be expected to fight, and from the short skirmish with Ravager he could clearly move as needed. Also, it would be easier to ensure he behaved and didn't double-cross him in some manner the way the chance always existed that Catwoman would. He seemed to know the name of Deathstroke, and the reputation that came with it resonated with him.
"Well, let's do it then," Null said, trying to get past the tension in his chest at having an automatic weapon trained on him at the hands of one of the baddest men on the planet. This was the entrance to the rabbit hole, and once he went down it he would have a hard time ever getting back out again.
He was being hired, and this was all a part of the interview process, just like with any other job.
Only this wasn't mopping up for a 24/7 convenience store in the wee hours of the morning. It was working for an infamous mercenary; with some hostile girl protégé of his who barely seemed able to reign in her utter disdain for him, probably because she couldn't kill him in less than two minutes. It was a high-pressure situation if Null had ever seen one.
And when you were alone and nervous, the best way to hide it was to ignore the danger with snark.
Turning his head to Ravager, a grin was clearly evident under Null's hood as he looked down at her, "Hey! It looks like we're gonna be partners. So how about a team name? My name is Null, and yours is Ravager… and I've got no idea what to make out of that."
"Can I stab him?" Ravager asked Deathstroke, "Just through the shoulder to make him shut up until tomorrow?"
"Why would stabbing me make me shut up? That'd make me yell," Null pointed out, "The shit would hurt."
*BANG!*
The single shot from the assault rifle punched a hole in the metal, right next to Null's head. He didn't flinch. If he'd moved, he probably would have gotten his brains splattered all over the place. Deathstroke had barely even moved. If his arm had even felt any sort of recoil from the gun, Null hadn't seen it.
"Children. Play nice now," Deathstroke said in a chiding tone of voice, "Ravager, don't kill him. Boy, don't make her kill you. I'm expecting the two of you to hold up your ends of the job. Failing wouldn't be advisable for either of you."
Null could only think that this was going to be one long weekend.
Life was certainly unexpected.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone