章 1112: 10
Chapter 10: The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night
It was strange to Max, just how quickly he got used to having someone else around. He had been afraid that having Rose there would have jostled his desire for personal space, but he realized shortly into the living situation that he didn't really have any.
Weird, for someone as admittedly selfish as him, sharing breathing room, food, and more didn't bother him nearly as much as it probably should have.
The ebb and flow of their cohabitation was fine for the most part over the next three days.
Rose was a fine house guest who was A-okay with sleeping in Max's old bed in what used to be his room back when his parents were still alive. It was enough space, and she only ripped on him once about how kiddy it was.
Max had no problems sharing the food in his cupboards with her either. He wasn't short on sustenance in the household, and it turned out that Rose could actually cook. Such a discovery had surprised him to no end. Of course, convincing her to do it for him after that point was a problem he still hadn't managed to solve yet.
As far as the day-to-day went, Max would leave for school every morning, and Rose would do… whatever it was that she did while Max was in class. She never said much about it and he didn't care enough to ask. Just as long as it didn't involve him, she could come and go as she pleased.
When Max came back in the afternoon and Rose was there, those were the times when actual moments would occur. Any static between the two, positive or negative, tended to arise during the stretch of time between Max coming home and the two of them splitting up and heading out for their respective evening tasks.
After slogging through his homework and eating a light meal comprised of a sandwich and some chips, Max threw himself across the longer of his living room's two couches. Being lazy was the plan, at least until it was good and dark outside. At the moment, the sun was just beginning to set.
He heard Rose's footsteps from down the hall, but didn't bother looking up. He already knew who was staying there with him for the time being. It wasn't like he'd see a brand-new surprise boarder if he wasted his energy to look.
"Scoot your ass over, Sparks," A nice demand to make upon entering a room. Unfortunately, Max wasn't likely to comply.
Said aforementioned teenage thief let out a belligerent snort in return. The big couch was his nap spot, and he had been just about to doze off so he could get up later to do Null-related things, "There's another sofa in here. Sit over there," He told her, relaxing his head against the arm of the chair.
"And yours has the best view, so scoot, or I'll just sit on you."
Max leaned his head back over the armrest to look at Rose and try to continue their verbal joust with another remark, but stopped cold when he saw her walking out of the hallway with her hair down, wearing nothing but a white tank top, a pair of black panties, and of course an eyepatch.
His first instinct was to yell at her to put some pants on, but he then asked himself why he would ever want to do such a thing. Instead of saying anything about his house guest's lack of dress, he silently made room on the couch and let Rose sit, pretending to watch TV until he had finished burning the image of her without most of her clothes on into his mind out of the corner of his eye.
The fact that she'd spent the entire time after sitting down putting on lotion made it that much more an important thing for him to do.
"Enjoying the show?" Rose said out of the blue, bringing Max's attention back on the rest of his surroundings, namely the smirk on her face, "…I'm not talking about what's on TV."
Oh hell. Of course she would have seen him checking her out. Her eyepatch was on her left and he was sitting to her right, she wasn't blind. If he let her get the upper hand on this, he would never hear the end of it. He just knew it.
Max made a show of leaning to the other side of the couch, resting his head on his folded arm as he half-glanced at the screen in front of them, "I have seen boobs before, you know," He would have added that she wasn't as fine as she thought she was, just as an extra jab. However, it would have been a damnable lie, "Get over yourself."
Self-esteem boosted at getting the eyes from Max, Rose sat back, satisfied at the outcome of her actions, "I'll get over me right after you do."
Max kept his attention off of her for as long as he could, but a half-naked girl sitting eighteen inches away had a strange tendency to attract the attention of most teenage boys, "…Why the fuck are you wearing my shirt?" He pointed out, after admittedly staring at her rack for longer than any woman should have allowed him to.
"Oh please, Sparks. None of my shirts are anything to lounge around the house in after a shower," Neither was a white tank top in Max's opinion. Not when there was a guy around, and especially when it was getting progressively more see-through thanks to the moisture on her skin, "I didn't really get a lot of warning, so I didn't have much shit packed when I started this little mission of mine."
"Do I have to go out and go buy you some clothes to wear?" Max asked with a yawn before his brain continued to travel to further conclusions and a look of horror etched itself on his face, "Oh God, please tell me I don't have to go out and get you any tam-."
"Sparks, shut up!" Rose shouted, her face going red for the first time since she'd met him. Why was her sword never within reach whenever she actually felt like using it on him?
Max realized he'd taken a step over the line of good taste even while he'd been saying the sentence and edged a tad bit farther from the livid assassin's apprentice, "Excuse me for trying to be an old-school gentleman and see to your needs."
"Right," Rose deadpanned, slouching back in her seat, "An old-school gentleman who's been staring at my tits for the last five minutes."
Max openly gestured his arms in her direction, "Well, they're right there. That's like saying, 'Hey, there's a really awesome thing! Dude, it's right here! Hey, it's great! No, I didn't say you get to look at it!'" He explained bluntly, "This wouldn't happen if you were wearing pants. But since you're not, you're fair game."
With that, the two settled into a silence, but it was anything but comfortable. At least Max had accomplished his mission of leveling the playing field between the two of them. Now it was awkward for the both of them instead of just him.
"…I'm just gonna go take a nap in my room."
"Yeah, you go and do that."
XxX
(With Null – Later That Night)
Dark couldn't come fast enough to get Max out of the zone of awkwardness that was his apartment. It was almost a relief to throw on the Null suit, despite the potential dangers of being shot up, arrested, or otherwise killed or maimed while wearing it.
Most of those same dangers existed at his home while Rose was there, and there he didn't have the luxury of wearing the suit to try and keep himself safe from them.
"I need to start checking myself, or else I might get cut," Max said to himself, now dressed in his Null outfit, effortlessly navigating the high elevations that came with downtown nightlife in Gotham City, "Gotta pick my spots better for shoving my foot in my mouth, I guess."
He had basically become accustomed enough to the attraction/repulsion aspect of his magnetic control to give his jumps a titanic boost whenever he was jumping off of or away from something metal, as well as cover the distance for jumps he couldn't finish on his own by reeling himself in toward a metal anchoring point.
Parkour kids could all eat their hearts out. This was some next-level stuff he was getting himself into.
Stopping at the edge of a roof overlooking a busy main road, Null had a thought, a very stupid thought, as he watched a city bus drive below.
"…Why not?" He stared at it for a moment before jumping straight off the side of the building, aiming for the bus as best he could, "Whooooo!"
A seventy-foot fall should have turned him into a bloody splatter on the pavement, but with the use of his attraction and repelling powers, he was able to lock his body's aim onto the bus, and slow himself down into a safe landing once he reached it.
Both feet impacted off the top of the roof, as Null landed in a shaky crouch, magnetically sticking himself in place. He almost couldn't believe that it had actually worked. He'd expected to have to save himself by reaching out to something higher up along the side of a building to keep from killing himself. But there had been no need.
As long as he was landing on something big and metal, such as a motor vehicle for instance, he could control his fall almost perfectly.
Coming to terms with the fact that he was alive, and in one piece, he began to laugh, proceeding to turn around and repeat the process, jumping onto the roofs and hoods of oncoming cars like stepping stones.
Horns honked loudly due to angry, frightened drivers, but it didn't bother Null in the slightest. He never dwelled on any of them long enough to cause any real trouble.
Besides, who else got to do these sorts of things? Most people with powers probably thought they had better things to do with them than play in traffic.
It just so happened, that Null did not. It was a Thursday night, and he was extremely bored. Teenagers did not tend to do intelligent, productive things when they were bored and had no immediate focus to channel their energy into. This was one of those times.
While in the midst of playing his more extreme version of Frogger, he landed on the hood of an unmarked van.
Unfortunately, the people inside had heard too much about the urban legends that haunted Gotham's underworld.
"It's the Bat, already?"
The man in the passenger's seat pulled up a shotgun and blew out the entire windshield trying to ventilate Null.
*BOOM!*
Null had to stick a hand to the hood and fall over the front of the vehicle to avoid the shot, just barely before it came, 'What the hell?' He thought to himself, heart thumping in his chest. He kept his legs pulled to his chest to avoid them dragging on the street.
"Damn it, Ed!" Null heard one of the voices shout through the open windshield, "That wasn't the Bat! Did he look like a Bat to you?"
"Who cares? He was still on the hood!"
"We haven't even found the Ravager bitch with the bounty yet! I want to get at least close enough to plug her before we start makin' noise!"
"Wait, what?" Null asked, popping his head up over the hood. He had to duck again to avoid another shotgun blast, "Alright, that's enough of that."
Pointing his right hand at the road, he let out a big burst of repulsive magnetism, causing the front end of the van to flip up in the air. Null let go as the nose of the vehicle pointed straight into the air, the forward momentum of it causing it to continue flipping.
He smoothly landed on his feet in the road as the van landed on its roof in a catastrophic crash, sliding on the pavement until it crashed into a median barricade, bringing it to a stop.
Null just stared at the accident he had caused until the sound of twisted metal wreckage bending about faded from the open air. He couldn't even budge a vehicle in training the other day, but he had just flipped a whole van?
Sure, he probably couldn't do it again if he tried, but that didn't matter. He had already done it once when he needed it.
"…Sweet," Null said, intentionally underselling his own accomplishment before he got stuck on it. He walked over as a few of the thugs that weren't too hurt to move tried to crawl out, guns in hand, "Nope!"
He proceeded to knock them all unconscious with the exception of one, the one that had been in the driver's seat.
Roughly dragging him out, Null threw him against the side of the van and held him there. The man had said something that had stuck in the thief's craw, "You were saying something about a bounty and somebody named Ravager. I'm gonna need a little bit more out of you than that."
His free hand buzzed with electricity as he held it close enough to the man's head to let him hear the sound.
XxX
(With Ravager – Elsewhere in Gotham City)
The night hadn't exactly gotten off to a rollicking start as far as the girl known in certain circles as the Ravager was concerned.
"Methinks I should have thought this through a bit more before coming out tonight," She said to herself, putting away her sword and ignoring the bodies that now littered the social club for the latest criminals that she had deemed it worthwhile to offer her services to, "Goddamn it, how am I supposed to get hired by anyone when every crime family in the city knows there's a bounty on my head?"
This was the second time it had turned into a shoot first, ask questions later situation. This time there had been far more people to contend with, and after dealing with it once, Ravager had no patience to do so again.
That of course led to the scene of the slaughter she stood in the very center of. She hadn't taken the name 'Ravager' just because it sounded imposing. Deathstroke had done his level best to turn her into just that.
The girl in the half-mask took a moment to look around at the building that was riddled with bullet holes, discarded weaponry and spent shells all over the floor. All from their attempts to claim the price on her head upon sight. Those efforts quickly turned to a desperate and futile fight for their very lives when it turned out that she didn't take kindly to their actions,
"…Maybe I should have tried an easier-going syndicate than Russian arms dealers?" Ravager ventured to ask no one in particular as she started for the exit.
One injured gangster slowly pulled himself up on an overturned table, an automatic weapon in his hands, "Hurk! Ukrainian… you bitch," His finger pulled the trigger as Ravager took notice of his voice.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
He tried valiantly, but missed every shot before Ravager darted around the cluttered room and cut him down, slicing his head off with the table as a chopping block this time to make sure that he was dead, "Right. Ukrainian. Sorry," She acknowledged the ethnicity in correction as blood spilled, the body dropped, and the severed head rolled along the ground, "…Don't want anyone to think I'm racist or anything."
Rose Wilson definitely wasn't racist.
She hated everyone equally.
Grumbling to herself about her awful fortunes when it came to job hunting, she went out the door into the alley only to see the blinding lights of several cars turning their high beams on. She didn't hesitate or try to adjust her vision to the glare for a second, instead pulling the door shut and diving to the floor as powerful automatic weapons ripped through the windows and walls in an effort to end her life.
Outside, a small, meek, balding man with thick glasses and a suit and bowtie held a puppet dressed up in the traditional mobster attire of a zoot suit, hat, and a lit cigar. The puppet had a long scar going down the right side of its face.
As the dummy and ventriloquist stood and watched, several heavily armed gang members continued to shoot into the building until their magazines ran dry while a few others stood guard near the mouths of the alleyway.
"Ya still alive, sweetheart?"
Yes, Ravager survived, but not without a scratch. A round had nicked her face, and she was none too pleased by it, almost seeing red in anger at being cornered by the Scarface Gang, 'I'm gonna shove that dummy down that ventriloquist's throat and cut his arms off!' She seethed internally, knowing what the next move for Scarface's goons outside would most assuredly be.
Second verse, same as the first.
"Light it up, gents!" Scarface's voice rang out before his underlings poured a murderous storm of rounds into the building.
Ravager stayed as low and as level with the floor as she could, crawling her way behind something -anything- sturdy enough to give her a bit of cover. Eventually there wouldn't be anything she could duck behind at all, and she would be just as full of holes as anything else in there. It was as simple as that. She had to find a way out, or at least off of the ground floor where their aim seemed to be exclusively focused.
She grabbed a gun off of the floor and shot out the remaining lights in the already dimly lit social club, turning it pitch dark inside. Being able to see wouldn't help her dodge bullets from outside. It would however better let her disguise her movements so that she could try and escape.
'This is bullshit,' Ravager thought, quickly crawling across the floor to the narrow staircase in the corner, 'I'm crawling! I don't crawl! Ever!'
So intense was her anger, that upon reaching the second floor and taking a momentary rest, leaning against several thin, stacked crates, it took her longer than it should have to realize that they were grenades. A vicious grin affixed itself to her face as she grabbed several for her own, planning on making immediate use of them.
She moved carefully to the window during a lull in the shooting and peered outside to see that the men were gearing up for another set of shooting into the building. As she could now see without the headlights completely blinding her, Ravager was able to pinpoint the ringleader and the jackass ventriloquist holding him.
Pulling the pin, she hurled a grenade at the ventriloquist like a fastball, feeling quite a measure of satisfaction when it beaned him in the head and he dropped like a stone.
The weapon bounced away from him in front of one of the cars and detonated, blowing it sky-high and killing more than a few hapless thugs. Everyone that escaped the blast ducked for cover to avoid the shrapnel, debris, and fire.
A flaming piece of trash hit the ground near the wooden dummy's head before the entity responded, "Get me off'a the ground ya moron!" Scarface demanded, by way of his mentally afflicted ventriloquist, "That stupid gitch! Get up and kill her!" He ordered the others, mispronouncing the 'b' in his attempted slur.
"Should've cooked it before I threw it," Ravager complained to herself, regretting the execution of the grenade toss as she reached the roof of the building and slipped away.
XxX
(With Null)
After pulling all of the information he could get out of the gangster in the street, Null found himself in a panic. Four million dollars! Four million dollars sat on the pretty little head of his houseguest with the poor disposition.
Not only that, but every lowlife in Gotham City knew about it, which begged the question of why Rose never told him! Did she even know about it? If not, it was more imperative than ever that he found her.
Rushing from the freeway where the short fight and the accident had occurred, Null made his way to a private parking garage where he immediately chose a ride and made a dash for the driver's seat, breaking the lock and plopping down in the driver's seat, his hands moving underneath the exposed steering column for the wires he needed.
"Am I really about to steal a car?" Null asked himself from the front seat of his selected vehicle before a second thought came to mind, "Wait… can I even drive?"
It was just another one of those things that he never got around to being taught while his parents had been alive. It was okay though. Grand Theft Auto games should have been an adequate enough teacher.
And Selina had also been an adequate enough teacher to show him how to hotwire older car models in case the need ever arose, so this was definitely doable.
A batarang stuck itself into the hood of the car, prompting Null to roll out and away from it in case it was an explosive or one of the more creative versions of the Bat Family's signature weapon, "Oh crap!"
Nothing happened however, causing him to feel rather foolish as he stood up to try and play off his previous panic, even as Batgirl stood in front of him, looking more like she was disappointed in him than she did a vigilante that was about to beat him to a pulp, "Were you about to steal that?"
"No," Null said at first before realizing how much he hated lying, "…Yes. But I was going to leave it somewhere else later. I've got to move fast."
"Where?"
"I don't know. That's half the problem."
And he was being serious. Once again, there wasn't an ounce of lie in anything he was saying, per usual. God, why did he have to be so earnest? It was hard to be angry with him when he was so straightforward about everything.
"Damn it, Null, what am I supposed to do here?" Batgirl asked him, "You've got a free pass. If you're going to waste it, I figured you'd do something more dramatic than steal a car," He was too careful to dip back into criminal activity for something so small.
That was fine then. He wouldn't tip her hand so quickly against him for something that he wasn't sure he could drive anyway. Maybe he could move on-foot until he could snag another ride on a train? Either way, he had to get moving. He figured that the severe wreck involving heavily armed criminals attracted her nearby, but it wasn't his problem how she found him or even that she found him.
"Batgirl, can we talk later?" Null said, bouncing on his toes as though he were about to bolt at any particular moment, "Right now there are a bunch of psychos after a friend of mine," He explained before a presence invaded his expanded field of awareness, "I think that's one now."
The dark parking lot was lit by blue light crackling from a moving source, one that was slowly walking their way.
As it came closer, they both saw that it was a man holding electricity in his hands, smirking at the sight of them.
He wore a black outfit with a red V down his chest that started at his shoulders. His gloves had red veins on the backs of them, connected to a device around his wrists.
"Electrocutioner," Batgirl whispered softly, prepared for a fight. Null filed that bit of information on this particular villain's name away for later.
"So you're the freak running around messing up everybody's hunt…" Electrocutioner said, flexing his fingers as electricity crackled in his hands, "That's fine. If you're doing that, you probably know where she stays, don'tcha?"
"Blow me," Null deadpanned before addressing the black-clad redhead, "Batgirl, I kinda need your help. Not to fight," He quickly specified as he sensed her move into a fighting position, "I need you to help me look for Ravager."
Batgirl looked a bit blown away. Null choosing to stand and fight? Against anyone? That was extremely unlike him, "But can you-?"
Null cut her off with a wave of assurance, "I'll be fine. If things get bad, I'll just run," Now that was more like him, "Besides, I think I'm bad at looking for people. I've never found anyone I've actually been looking for in this city."
He seemed confident, something that Batgirl wasn't used to seeing, "Are you sure?"
"Just… find Ravager for me. Shoot a flare or something if you do," Null asked her, "I can't let any of these guys just kill her."
Spoken so resolutely, this was a stark departure from the flighty young man who only seemed to ever do anything when money and his own neck was on the line, "Why do you care?" She asked quietly.
Null didn't feel like they had the time to dive into his who reasoning for doing all of this. Time was wasting, and every second that they lost was another that some gorilla could bear down on Rose without anyone around to help her, "Because I want to help her!" He snapped, "Robin said you were looking for her anyway! I'll help by smacking down these guys all over the place wherever they show up. Just signal me when you find her, would you?"
There were so many questions to ask. So many that needed answering. But the fact of the matter was that Null knew the important part of what they knew; that the awful elements of the city would be out in force searching for Rose Wilson, all to kill her for a large sum of money.
While protecting criminals wasn't normally their priority, Ravager was going to be murdered, and they knew about it in advance. While the more violent criminals were searching for her, this would be a good time to thin the herd of lawless and keep them from tearing too much of Gotham City.
The help, no matter how minor it would wind up being from Null would be much appreciated.
"…Make sure Gotham PD can get ahold of him after you're done with him," Batgirl said, patting Null on the shoulder once before taking off for her nearby Batcycle.
The Electrocutioner just laughed as Batgirl departed with a shot of a grappling gun. She had been the only one he'd been concerned with because she was the only one he knew. To him, Null was just some runt playing dress-up.
"Don't piss yourself when you feel those volts hit you, brat," Electrocutioner threatened and boasted, electricity still crackling in his hands, "Tell me where the Ravager is, and maybe I'll let you die with some dignity."
"I'm gonna shove my foot so far up your ass I can use your teeth as toenail clippers," Null said, before dodging a blast of electricity. He saw it coming well in advance, as Electrocutioner had to actually point his hands at him to fire.
Null ducked back amongst the cover of the darkness and the cars that littered the parking lot. Electrocutioner fired at what he perceived as Null's shadow, only to miss and hit the bodies of the vehicles.
Other than a stray light illuminating the parking lot every so often, there was very little light. It didn't matter though, as the Electrocutioner had his own light source. There was no way ducking and dodging was going to save the kid.
Null realized this, as he wasn't adept to disappear right in front of someone's face. Electrocutioner still had his general direction figured, even if he couldn't outright see him.
'Maybe I can fool him,' He thought to himself. He had no idea how effective electricity would be on him, but he didn't want to find out in the middle of a fight with a killer. Closing his eyes, he reached out around his field of static awareness.
Normally it was something he used to tell when people were getting close to him, but since getting his magnetic control he realized that he could feel metal objects. He could establish control without looking at things, but it was extremely difficult and required his full focus.
Electrocutioner was waiting for any sign of Null so that he could fry him wherever he stood, only for a door to suddenly slam nearby behind him, startling him into reacting. There was no way the youngster had managed to get behind him, could there have been?
"You're not getting away!" He fired heavy volts at the car he heard the door slam from, only to see that no one had gotten inside, as if the door had slammed itself shut, "What?"
He felt the sole of a shoe lightly touch down on the back of his head before it grew heavy and his entire body fell forward. Then it was darkness. Painful, painful darkness.
Null stood on Electrocutioner's head as the man lay unconscious on the pavement, facedown with blood spreading out from his face. It was probably from fresh cuts on his face, or his nose being shattered when Null stomped it into the ground.
"Huh," Null said to himself, turning Electrocutioner over with his foot to put the man on his back, "…That was really easy."
Thank goodness he had never shut the door of the car that Batgirl had spooked him out of. Electrocutioner had been so used to fighting stealth nuts like those of the Bat Family, and people who had backup that he believed that there had been someone back there.
Whether he thought it had been Ravager making a move on him, Null himself, or anyone else, Null using his magnetic control to shut the door got enough of his attention to let the roundabout young thief finish him off.
Null spared a moment to nudge at the unconscious Electrocutioner with his foot, getting a spaced out moan of pain from the thoroughly defeated man, "If this is the best that Rose is gonna have after her, I think I might've been worried about nothing."
He didn't have the time to dawdle though. Nobody gave a damn about finding him. The people with real firepower would be out looking for Rose.
XxX
KGBeast was getting more and more aggravated as the night went on. He had been searching for this 'Ravager' for days, but there was a shrinking chance that he or anyone would find her. Too many people were searching at the same time.
As with hunting, with so many loud, boisterous personalities stumbling through the brush and making noise, the prey would get spooked and flee.
Less hunters would of course mean less of a racket, meaning less wary prey, which would make for an easier kill in the end.
KGBeast waited for several of the more boisterous rabble-rousers that had been causing trouble all night long to emerge from a safehouse where they emerged with newly refreshed weapons and alcohol on their breaths. They made their noise about how they were going to put a hole in the target, and what they were going to do with the money once they got it. It was quite the annoying sight for him.
"So many rats scurrying, little girl never show her face," He said, getting their attention and dropping off of the awning of the building, eyeing the criminals before him like a predator, "KGBeast think... pest controlling in order."
"Is this asshole threatening us?" One of the offended crooks said, talking tough with his advantage in numbers.
"He ain't so tough no more. These freaks in masks are all da same," The ringleader said as he saw one of his guys sneak up behind KGBeast with a pistol in his hand. If he kept the Russian man distracted for just a few seconds, they would all be down one of their competition.
The man who attacked from behind found himself being skewered through the chest by a bayonet that KGBeast manifested from the cybernetic attachment on his right arm.
It was quick and vile. Straight through, front to back, through the sternum to all of the gooey innards that rested behind the protective plate of bone.
The man squealed in horror and pain as he was lifted off of the ground, still stabbed clean through, kicking and writhing weakly as his cohorts watched in fear and disgust.
"No," KGBeast said, letting the bayonet retract back into his weapon arm, letting the man drop to the sidewalk, bleeding freely, "Us masked freaks are not to being the same."
"S-Say, we can tell our boss you're teaming up with us!" The terrified hitman said as he and his accomplices backed away from the violent killer as though he were a predator that would cut down the first one of them that moved, "You'll get the lion's share of da bounty! Maybe even more work! I know he'll take less! I know he will!" He pleaded.
KGBeast didn't even make a show of pretending to think about it, instead ruthlessly turning his gun arm on the lot of them, cutting them down in a mist of blood and a rush of bullets ripping through the crowd.
His bullets reached through his targets and flew into the streets, hitting several vehicles and causing them to stop or crash for various reasons. A pileup formed in the road as everyone still alive to do so panicked and fled.
There was no subtlety to his slaughter. No sense of restraint or limitation. Obstacles were like targets, made for killing. Anyone that would prevent him from taking the head of Ravager, or anyone looking to cash in on the prize for killing her first would be neutralized with extreme prejudice. He would be the only one making any kind of profit that evening.
He wasn't doing the dirty work and sharing any kind of reward with anyone, least of all some 'boss' barking orders from behind a desk in a seedy office. He had lowered himself by working for those types enough for one lifetime. Never again.
"KGBeast isn't to be need carrying dead weight," He said, the barrel of his cybernetic attachment still smoking from being recently fired, "Only to be making it."
XxX
(South Side of Gotham City – GCPD Headquarters)
It felt like rain was coming as one man stood on the roof of the police headquarters, awaiting the arrival of the man he was trying to signal. The dark clouds in the night sky served as the backdrop to a bright yellow spotlight, projecting the image of a bat into the air.
He would come eventually. He never failed to whenever he was called by the Bat Signal. This, the Commisioner knew for certain.
Commissioner James Gordon was a stern, strong man with short, white hair and a thick mustache. He wore glasses and a brown trench coat that he kept open for easy access to his badge and firearm underneath.
"Commissioner."
Gordon shook his head. It didn't matter which direction he turned in as he waited. Batman would always come from the direction he wasn't looking in. It would have been funny, if this were a time for jokes.
"Batman," Gordon said in greeting before cutting right to the heart of the matter. There was no time to waste, "This is a serious problem. A real mess. I've got my officers all over the city. They're calling in homicides left and right. Have been for days."
"It's over a lot of money for what they think is a soft target, Commissioner," Batman explained, moving away from the ledge, over to Gordon. The commissioner was his chief ally in the fight against Gotham City's corruption. His link to those that worked through the system. Letting him know what was tearing apart the city he was sworn to protect was the least he could do, "And the worst thing is, the ones you're finding dead probably haven't even found the mark yet."
Commissioner Gordon didn't need to be told what that meant in regards to the corpses that had been turning up for the last few days. He had been dealing with the garbage that Gotham City could throw at people long enough to read the writing on the wall, "They're just killing each other to make sure no one else gets to it first," He mused to himself, slowly shaking his head. The hair-trigger fools, "How the hell are we going to put a stop to this?"
That was the million dollar question. Or the four million dollar question, actually. Honestly, there was no way to put a stop to it. The best thing they could do was contain it for the time being. Dealing with the chaos that came with lucrative bounties was a complicated issue.
The only thing Batman could do was be honest about what was going to happen, "More people are going to die before this ends," "Right now everyone's rushing to get the money first, trying to strike while the iron is hot. Right now the best thing anyone can do is weather the storm."
An answer of passiveness wasn't what Gordon wanted to hear, but he knew full well that Batman's brand of passiveness did not involve turning the other cheek, "I'm keeping my people on the street," He informed the vigilante.
He didn't show it in the slightest, but Batman was glad, knowing that there was no way the Commissioner would sit back and leave his city to the wolves until they were done with it, "Good. We need them there. Police presence will help settle things down, especially if we can round up more of the troublemaking sorts that would be interested in this."
He already had his apprentices out hunting and was just about to join them in doing the same.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Cathedral Square)
Null had endured his fill of Gotham's rotten side for one evening. He just wanted to lie down in his own bed and sleep before school in the morning. The sooner he found Rose the better, but that didn't seem to be a task he was up to fulfilling.
How hard could it be to find one girl wearing a very distinctive outfit? It was blue and orange with a sword for crying out loud!
Eventually, by Cathedral Square's subway station he did catch sight of the colors that comprised Rose's Ravager gear and he made a beeline right for her. She saw him coming as he had made a concerted effort to keep from sneaking up on her. It didn't look as if she'd had an easy time of things either as he landed a jump from high in the air.
"I finally found you," Null said happily as he jogged the rest of the way up to her. She was the first good thing he'd come across since going out that night, "I've got to put a GPS tracker on you or something. Maybe give you some kind of two-way communicator... or just get you to carry your burner phone on you when you go out."
He was babbling. He knew it. It was just because he was relieved to find her with all of her parts attached to her. She was a little dinged up, but no worse than he was, more or less.
Ravager saw their reunion as less than fortuitous, remembering that Null was about improving the quality of his life. The easiest way to do that was with cash, and he would get a lot of it if he killed her, "Sparky, what are you doing looking for me, huh?"
There was a chance that he didn't know about the bounty yet. A small one, but it existed.
"Four. Million. Dollars," Null said slowly, noticing Ravager flinch and go for her sword, "Wait. Are you nuts? What are you doing?"
The small chance had gone right out the window, "Stay back!" Ravager tried and failed to hold back the snarling curl that came to her lip. If he got within sword range, he was going to be cut, no questions asked. She couldn't trust anyone right now, "…What are you doing?"
"Looking for you," Null explained, keeping a wary eye out in case any other unfriendly folks came around to try and get a piece of Ravager, "Lunatics have been out trying to find you since you got here. Did you know that?"
Ravager's super-soldier serum-induced psychosis under the stress of being hunted had manifested itself throughout the night. First in the form of excessive violence, and then as rampant paranoia for what awaited her around the next corner, "Yes."
"You did? What? Why didn't you tell me then!?"
An argument was set to break out, when Rose let out a gasp as the image of Null's head exploding right in front of her eyes ran through her mind. Without warning, she suddenly grabbed Null by the shoulders and shoved him down to the ground, following along with him, "Get down!"
*BANG!*
Right where Null's head had been, a big chunk of brick had been shot out of the wall. Had it not been for Rose, Null's brains would have been spread all over the street.
"Scatter, Sparks!"
He didn't need to be told twice, as both teenagers scrambled to their feet and took off running in an effort to escape the barrel of whoever was shooting at them.
XxX
Floyd Lawton clicked his tongue audibly, more than markedly annoyed that he had missed his target, "I never miss…" He muttered irritably before packing up his rifle and heading on to another place.
The man known as Deadshot wore a red suit with a silver and yellow crosshair insignia on his chest. He wore yellow boots and gloves, and a silver mask covering his entire head with a red scope covering his right eye. On both arms his suit sported wrist-mounted revolvers with the ammunition visible around the arms.
Deadshot had been able to track the two kids for a shot so easily because they had been unaware of his presence. Now he would have to set up another one with them aware of the presence of the world's greatest shooter breathing down their necks. It wouldn't be as easy a second time, but he was sure it could be done.
"I'll just take out a knee or something on the boy if I find him. Hurt him bad enough so I can catch him and he can tell me where the girl is," Deadshot planned to himself as to how he would approach the next run-in with Null or Ravager, "But how did she know it was coming? She wasn't even looking this way."
XxX
"Hell's sewer! That was damn sniper bullet!" Null said to himself, scurrying through the back alleys. He hopped onto an aluminum trash can and used a magnetic boost to shoot himself high enough to reach an open window, "How'd she know that was coming?"
And speaking of 'she', Null cursed out loud when he realized that he had lost Rose again. He hadn't even paid attention to the direction she'd run off in. If it had been possible, he would have kicked himself for letting her slip out of his sight.
Well, worst-case scenario he could always just follow the inevitable sounds of gunfire when they sprang up. Hopefully the other city noises wouldn't drown them out.
This was turning out to be an absolutely dreadful evening so far, "I just want to go home now."
It wasn't in the cards however.
His entrance had been extremely noisy, and he heard many, many footsteps clattering upstairs to come after him. He had made his hiding place in an apartment complex close to the cathedral nearby. If Null was correct on how turf was set up in the city, he had probably stumbled upon a nesting point for one of several Irish gangs.
...Or maybe he was just thinking that because he was about two blocks away from the biggest Catholic place of worship in Gotham.
"I hope it's not wrong for me to just assume that," Null grumbled to himself as he ducked behind a corner so that he could try and think, "I don't want anybody to think I'm racist or anything," He turned his head around the corner again and quickly pulled it back as a shotgun blast nearly claimed his head, "What is it with me and shotguns tonight!?"
"It's a freak in a mask! Right there, boys!"
Null covered his head as the shooting started. And what did they mean, mask? He didn't wear a damn mask! It was a hood! It was barely even that since he had to wrap it to make it like that in the first place!
He was sick of all of the shooting, as he was fairly certain he had lost a good portion of his hearing that evening. He was tired of looking at people that would put him six feet under before they would tell him what time it was if he asked.
He was tired of the Bat Family never showing up when people were screwing with him, yet they always showed up when he was doing something wrong.
"Who the hell are these people, and where do they keep coming from?" Null complained before finally getting fed up. He stood up, despite having taken a headcount of criminals that numbered higher than ten, "You know what? Fuck this. I'm dragging her home, and if I've got to break everybody's legs to get to her, I guess that's what's got to happen."
It didn't matter. Heroes were for quitters that could figure out how to make things work for themselves. He was never going to be that kind of person again, even if he had to wing it in some situations. Like right then for instance.
It might have been a combination of his own fatigue mixed with the fact that he was utterly fed up with every asshole and their brother thinking they were going to find the golden ticket and magically bust a cap into someone he was rather fond of. It might have been a mix of sheer adrenaline mixed with the sheer extra electricity pumping through his body and causing a chemical reaction.
Either way, his apprehension took a backseat and he could see clearer than ever. Think faster than ever. Move sharper. He felt like he could smell colors and taste sounds... and all of the ones he had been subjected to at that exact moment were disgusting.
He needed to get out of there.
Null could hear his own heart pounding in his chest before he suddenly ran out from behind cover, straight through the hallway full of bad guys. The first one closest to him noticed and turned his gun to him, only for Null to run past, touching near the back of the barrel.
The weapon exploded in his hand.
Without stopping his sprint, Null ran past them all, ducking, swaying, jumping, moving, doing whatever he could to keep them from getting any kind of shot at him. Every time he got close enough he touched their weapons and causing them to explode in their grasp.
Many fingers were lost, and some who were aiming with their weapons close to their faces took severe burns and damage from the heated debris flying into their faces.
Null stopped at the end of the hallway at the window he had been eyeing from the start and turned around. Thirteen men lay on the ground, moaning or yelling in shock and pain at their missing fingers, burned faces, missing eyes, or whatever injury they suffered due to Null making their equipment malfunction.
He looked at his own hands and turned on his electric control, high enough to hear a taser's buzz from them. It was the amount he had been using when he had been fighting just then. He never thought not being able to hold a gun would actually be helpful, "…I love these stupid powers."
XxX
"I could have just let Sparks get shot and been down a bounty hunter," Ravager muttered to herself as she fled down into the subway, trying to keep herself from any open areas, lest she have to contend with yet another sniping attempt, "Why'd I dive on that jackass?"
Why indeed? She hadn't trusted him for a moment, and yet had a big enough problem with a sniper splitting his skull like a watermelon with a round to do something about it herself.
And how did she even know it was coming? Goddamn precog. One of the children that Slade had with that other woman, his ex-wife, he had been the one with the freaky powers. Jericho. The one Slade wanted her to kill one day. She wasn't supposed to have any.
True to form, she hadn't even lucked out and gotten one that she could consciously use. The story of her life.
A pair of gun hammers clicking caused her to freeze in place like a deer in the woods while she continued trying to work her way down the stairs to the train platform.
Case in point to her terrible, no-good fortunes.
"Fuck-a-duck!" Ravager shouted at the sky before turning around to face her new opponents. They were two men wearing black outfits from the old west, complete with white hats and ivory-handled six-shooters. There were only two western-themed villains that she knew of in Gotham, and they weren't very highly regarded as anything but violent enforcers.
Tad and Tom; the Trigger Twins.
They certainly weren't masterminds, and their campiness made her want to blow chunks. If anyone was going to kill her tonight, if there was a just God, it wouldn't be done by these two losers.
Ravager's grumpiness at her predicament showed all over her face and in her body language, though the Trigger Twins misinterpreted it, "This gal's exhausted. Poor lil' thing's been running away all night, haven'tcha?"
'I will make you eat the other's heart,' Ravager thought threateningly to herself without saying it aloud. She was only allowed one outburst per run-in and she'd used it already, 'That'll show you if I'm tired or not.'
"Now, c'mon brother. Let's make it fair fer the poor lil' thing," One of the two twins said to the other before addressing Ravager with a nasty smirk, "Go ahead. Draw," Both Tad and Tom Trigger started laughing cruelly as the second one caught on to what the first was doing.
It was all a joke. The moment she grabbed the handle of her sword they were going to shoot her down in cold blood. Even if they let her reach for it, it was a sword, and they were thirty feet away.
"If you insist," Ravager let out a sigh and slowly started reaching for her sword before suddenly reaching down to her thigh with the other hand and pulling up a Berretta. They never saw it, and she didn't miss.
*BANG! BANG!*
"GAH!/HURK!"
Both of the Trigger Twins fell to the ground on the stairs, writhing in pain as Ravager walked up, stepped on one of them to pin him down, and fired into him repeatedly, ending his life brutally before repeating the process with the other one. All the while her face was a mask of irritation at how things had been going for her.
Courtesy had to go to the Ukranian weapons dealers she'd axed previously, for leaving her a perfectly good small arm firearm to take for her own personal use.
Ravager kept shooting until her clip ran dry and tossed the empty gun aside, swapping it out for the revolvers that the Trigger Twins had dropped when she'd first shot them.
Picking them up, she made a show of twirling, tossing, and catching them like a trick shooter before stashing them away and flipping the middle finger to the two dead gunslingers, "…Don't take your guns to town, boys," She spat, "The fucking Trigger Twins? Are you kidding me?"
She'd started with random mobsters and was now onto a pair of Black Bart wannabes. Was there anyone she wasn't going to get the chance to kill or be killed by tonight?
It was all making her so angry!
...More so than usual at least.
Honestly, if jerks were going to come out of the woodwork to try and take her out, couldn't one of the ones that showed up be tough enough to take a few good hits so she could vent some of her rage? She had quite a good reservoir of it built up.
Deciding to take a bit of a rest after fighting and running all night long, Ravager took a quick seat at a bench by the train platform, 'Now what am I going to do?' She thought to herself miserably.
Now that everything with her host had blown up in smoke, perhaps she could try and head home while he was still running away from whoever had sniped at them? Her entire life was in a single bag that she could pack up in five minutes. She could be gone onto the streets, looking for another place to stay before the sun even came up.
She didn't know why she found it so depressing. She should have been used to it. Floating around from place to place had been what she was accustomed to. It was how she had spent most of her teenage life, never getting settled anywhere. Ever since her mother had died.
There wasn't even a definite place to stay, even with her own father. He was always moving, and as he had shown by sending her on this mission, he could exile her whenever he wanted and feel nothing for it.
Heavy bootsteps coming down the stairs that she had killed the Trigger Twins on attracted Ravager's attention. She got up off of her seat with a snarl only to bear witness to a masked man that stood a full foot taller than her, with a body that had to weigh almost three times what she did.
His left arm was a lethal weapon that Ravager kept a wary eye on, knowing that this was a trade assassin. She didn't know quite who it was, but no one had been coming up to her with good things in mind, so she expected nothing positive from the imposing figure before her
"You is hard little girl to be finding," KGBeast said casually, as though he were speaking of the weather, "…I am to be killing you now."
"Who are you supposed to be?"
"Last person you are to be ever seeing."
XxX
(With Null)
*SHOOMP! BOOM!*
Null covered his head as he ran rapidly down an open street. From up above, a few roving killers had decided that any person wearing weird clothes fit the bill as Ravager and started attacking him. One of them had an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attachment.
He enjoyed using it.
*SHOOMP! BOOM!*
Null felt the ground underneath him shake as another blast narrowly missed catching him in its range. He could hear the grenade launcher being reloaded and turned around when he heard the airy sound of it being fired again.
Working his magnetic control, Null tried to stop it, only to fail to get a read on it, causing him to be blown away by the explosive projectile, "FUCK!" He exclaimed as the impact knocked him away like a rag doll.
"Ooh, you got 'im! No, hold on! Load another one! I wanna watch him go boom."
"Wait, he's getting back up?"
'Okay, that didn't work,' Null thought to himself, picking himself up off of the ground, 'I have to actually be able to lock onto it to catch it out of the air,' Apparently he wasn't going to stopping bullets anytime soon, if ever, if that was the case.
In any event, he was a sitting duck for another grenade launcher shot. What was odd to him was that they hadn't fired it yet. By Null's estimation, by the time he'd gotten back up, his leg should have been somewhere across the street two seconds ago.
Looking up to where his tormentors had been attacking him from, he got his answer.
Batman cutting through the lot of them like a human buzzsaw. Every punch or kick he threw was meant to subdue and debilitate violently. He made sure that the only time he had to hit anyone was once, because they didn't get back up afterward.
Null had never seen Batman before, and in a matter of seconds, he left an impression that lasted.
He was so quick, Null hadn't seen anything like it before, and he wasn't even using any of his trademarked tools to fight. It was all his own brawn doing the work. Simply pure martial arts skill and brute force. Any delusions about possibly lasting with Batman in hand-to-hand combat just because he had the supersuit vanished like smoke into thin air.
The man in the black cowl caught him staring, his sharp eyes cutting over to the younger man, suddenly after all had been defeated by his hand. Null took an involuntary step back but refrained from running away. He hadn't done anything wrong.
Batman simply continued to stare down at him, and Null tried to do his level best not to compare it to a predator/prey situation. He didn't want to back down and scurry away in fear, despite the fact that he couldn't even will himself to maintain prolonged eye contact.
"Get out of here, and get off the streets," Batman ordered, leaving no room with his tone for Null to argue. He'd probably had a long night as well, without having to step in to save Null's sorry behind.
A behind which didn't need to be told twice to vacate the premises and avoid the gun-toting lawbreakers out for blood. He'd come across more than enough, "Thanks! Bye!"
Bye? Who said 'bye' to Batman? That was so lame. He was just thankful that Batman had no opinion on how cool someone was supposed to be.
'Why do I give a crap what Batman thinks anyway?' Null asked himself as he quickly made his way to the nearby subway station in Cathedral Square. There was no way he was risking spending any more time out in the open above ground if he didn't have to.
It was on the way down the stairs to enter the station that he found an unwelcome surprise of two dead bodies, full of bullet holes. Apparently the term double-tap just wasn't enough for whoever did this when it came to overkill.
It was a red, fleshy mess. He scurried on past, feeling somewhat ill at the sight. And it didn't seem to be over, whatever it was.
Farther down, Null could hear the sounds of automatic weapon fire, interrupted lightly with semi-automatic weaponry. A handgun, at least to his ears. He should have known, seeing as how he had heard more than his share of them go off around him.
Curiosity got the best of him, and he crept down to the bottom of the stairs, peeking around a corner to see what was unfolding on the train platform. If it was too bad, he could have always just turned and run away.
And he really wanted to after seeing a gigantic man with a gun arm firing and tearing into a thick pillar, trying to get at whatever was behind it.
But he saw familiar silver hair and a blue and orange outfit poking her head out from behind cover, returning fire as best as she could with two revolvers, until she ran out of ammo with both. Ravager actually needed his help, or the gorilla shooting at her would actually kill her.
Null activated his magnetic control and grabbed a metal public waste container that he threw at the back of the man's head. As he threw it, he dashed behind it. Immediately after the container made contact, the man turned around and lifted his weapon arm, only to receive a powerful jump kick to the face from the charging thief.
As the shooting had stopped, along with a host of other sounds not related to gunfire, Ravager took another look and found Null landing from his kick, stumbling a few steps as his momentum had carried him farther than he had anticipated.
"Sparky!" Ravager exclaimed, with no small amount of relief in her voice.
Null exhaled deeply, relieved that his headstrong move had actually worked. He hadn't had anything in mind if that gun arm had managed to get off a few shots on him, other than to be chopped up by it like hamburger meat. It had worked out though, so he was a hero now, "Don't worry, Ravager. Your new addiction is here."
Ravager stared at Null for several seconds, highly unamused at his cheesy entrance, "On second thought, I want KGBeast to get back up and shoot me now."
"This can be being arranged."
Null felt a chill go down his spine as he felt the large man Ravager had identified as KGBeast stand back up behind him, his weapon arm transformed into a blunt, hammering tool that he swung at Null's head.
He ducked and immediately turned, punching KGBeast in the chest and letting off a jolt of his bio-electricity as he did, "Clear!" Null said, doing his best impression of a defibrillator, only to see it hardly affect his target at all, "…Nothing?"
KGBeast's arm attachment turned into a bayonet, "No," He stabbed forward, only for the attack to be parried by Ravager's sword, "You two are working together?"
Ravager and Null both looked at each other and back to him without saying anything, neither forgetting the tension between the two of them from earlier in the night. It hadn't even been that long ago.
"Then you are die together."
He grabbed Null, but quickly threw him aside after being shocked just from making contact with him. Null flew through the air and smacked the wall harshly while Rose moved to avoid the strength of KGBeast's deadly attacks.
For some reason, he was stronger than her outright. That shouldn't have been possible. Even someone at the peak of human ability should have still been weaker than her. It was part of the whole point behind the serum she had been given when her father had taken her in.
With a soft whimper, Rose was overpowered to the point where the flat of her sword was pressing down on her shoulder, blocking KGBeast's bayonet and serving as the only defense keeping her from losing her right arm entirely. KGBeast turned the blade from aiming downward to the side, aiming for Rose's neck. She was able to duck when she heard metal slide against metal.
KGBeast grabbed her by the back of her hair and held her down as he slammed a knee into her sternum. Something in her had to have broken. Ravager would have sworn that she felt something collapse from the severity of the blow. Her legs gave out from underneath her as the wind left her lungs in a hurry.
The Russian contract killer turned his bayonet arm downward and stabbed to skewer Ravager as though she were a piece of trash on the side of the highway. The finishing blow was stopped just short of ending the girl by an invisible force that he couldn't seem to get past. It felt like trying to drive a stake into the ground with his hands; as in, he could get farther than he had, but it took more strength than he'd prepared to use, "What is this?"
Null felt as though he were about to have a brain aneurysm trying to hold KGBeast's stab back, 'God! I can't give my brain a hernia, can I?' He grunted wordlessly to himself in exertion, feeling like one of the powerlifters he saw on TV in the World's Strongest Man competitions, 'I tripped a gigantic metal guy and I'm struggling here?'
To be fair, when he'd stopped Metallo, he hadn't had the best footing in the snow, nor had the mammoth metal man's balance been as stable as KGBeast's was, as he'd had one foot stuck in the air when it was stopped. In this instance, leverage and momentum were not on Null's side in the least.
It was enough for Rose to get her breath back and grit her teeth in anger. Sword in hand, she lunged forward to stab through her would-be attacker, only for it to miss under his other arm. KGBeast endured the cuts that came with tucking the blade into his armpit, using it to pull Ravager in close and throw her away by the scruff of her neck like a feral cat.
She landed roughly in the pit next to the platform on the train tracks. Her entire body felt like one great bruise.
To rub salt in the wound and make matters worse, KGBeast took the time he'd bought himself by stomping on the sword while holding onto the handle and pulling up, breaking it. Now she was disarmed altogether. That was when he turned his full, undivided attention to Null.
He got five long steps into his charge at the unarmed boy before Null got his magnetic magic working. All it seemed to do was make it harder for KGBeast to run on his right side. Once the man reached him and slammed his metal fist in Null's direction, he gave up trying to halt him and ducked under, diving and rolling under a punch that destroyed the wall behind him.
KGBeast's normal arm grabbed a few throwing knives he'd stashed at his belt and hurled them at Null. Most missed, but one hit him in the back behind the shoulder blade, "Aaah!" Null cried out as the blade sank into the flesh and muscle.
"Little children aren't to being any match for KGBeast," KGBeast gloated, even as Null pulled the knife out of his back and threw it back faster than it had come with a little magnetic push behind it. KGBeast merely moved his head out of the way to avoid it, but when it went all the way into the brick wall behind him, he had to admit that it was quite the impressive amount of force, "Is almost embarrassing, but must be killing you."
Null watched his arm switch to the gun again as the remorseless Russian turned to him. Null had already started to run before it was ready to fire, but it only took a second for the weapon to be ready for action. Loud gunfire echoed through the open subway station as Null covered his head and darted between the thick support pillars keeping the place from caving in.
He jumped down on the tracks and took momentary cover behind the edge of the tunnel, popping out for a bit when he heard KGBeast's gunfire go in the other direction, aimed at Ravager. He pushed his left arm out at KGBeast and tried to yank the gun in his direction instead of letting the man turn with the direction Ravager was running in.
He still couldn't get as much control as he wanted, as KGBeast fought it every bit of the way, but it was enough to keep Ravager from being riddled with bullets as she made her way off of the train tracks to a safer position where she had more room to move.
It was maddening though. He thought that perhaps he was just too tired to use his powers to their full capacity? It was the only variable he could think of separating the level of strength he had shown earlier from right then, "Come on! I flipped a full van five hours ago! I can't stop one guy now?"
"Just keep trying, Sparks!" Ravager instructed him, somehow outrunning automatic gunfire from someone trained to hit his mark properly, "I think you're doing something!"
KGBeast looked over at Null and then realized that he was the one who was doing whatever it was that was making his weapon work out of whack. He had figured that it was just malfunctioning, "That be making you this 'Sparks' person?" He asked as he turned his attention to Null, "You have to be dying first then."
"Like hell!" Ravager picked up one of KGBeast's discarded throwing knives as she charged him directly. She was able to get close enough to try and stab at him with the tiny weapon, but he blocked her arm with his gun-limb. Ravager dropped the knife from her hand and caught it in her other, spinning around and backstabbing at him. KGBeast blocked again, this time with his fleshy arm. The knife slipped straight between two of the knuckles on his hand.
KGBeast flinched at the injury and elbowed Ravager in the face, knocking her to the ground. He kicked her back down onto the train tracks only to narrow his eyes in irritation as Null caught her and kept her from crashing harshly on the metal tracks. He set her down and grabbed her hand to take off running down the train tunnel.
"First they fight. Then they run," KGBeast said to himself, dropping down onto the tracks, running after them to give chase through the dark passageway, "Next they die."
Null ran along, in step with Ravager, both with limps in their strides because of the beating they had been taking. Still, being beaten up was better than being dead. But it didn't seem like they would be able to avoid even that much for very long.
The sound of bullets whizzing overhead and off of the walls as they kept running. Even though they couldn't see, they could clearly hear pounding footsteps falling in the distance behind them. Something like a dark tunnel wasn't going to stop a one-minded killer like KGBeast. Once he had a target in his sights, that target was going to die by his hand. That was all there was to it.
"Hey, Rose," Null thought out of the blue as they continued to run, "You ever seen Rock n' Rolla? The Guy Ritchie movie?"
She didn't know what he was getting at, but anything to take her mind off of their pending demise, "Yeah. Why?"
"You know that scene where Gerard Butler is getting chased by those Russian guys on foot for like, five minutes straight on-screen?" He asked, out of breath and weary from the entire night of action, "...This reminds me of that."
Ravager had a remark set in response, but held it back when she swore she could feel the ground moving, "Sparks, do you feel that?"
He did. Null's heart rate picked up when he realized what it probably was, "What time is it?"
She never gave him an answer. Something else did instead.
Around the bend behind them, a bright, harsh light shone, giving KGBeast enough of a view of them to properly fire for a few seconds, just before the train came. He wasn't crazy enough to stand on the tracks when it came, but there were only so many options available to avoid it, and he wasn't giving up his pursuit for a little thing like the danger of being run over.
Everyone pressed themselves to the same wall as tightly as the could as the train rumbled past them. Null and Ravager never stopped moving away, sliding their feet to take them sideways. Similarly, KGBeast never stopped giving chase.
Every shot he tried to fire hit either the wall or the train itself due to the curved tunnel. There was no way he was going to shoot them there, 'With hands it is then,' KGBeast said, turning his hand into a bayonet one last time as he squeezed through the small space, steadily catching up to Null and Ravager with his longer steps.
Null knew he was coming and turned his head as much as he could to look at Ravager, who was aware of the same thing. The only advantage they'd had over him before was that he was taking them on in open space. Neither of them wanted to say it, but both knew they were in quite the predicament.
The extra electricity coursing through Null's brain had him thinking so hard and fast that he felt he would burn himself out. If that were the case, at least he would do it coming up with a way to do what he'd set out to do.
After all, he was selfish. So much so that he wouldn't ever stop until he got what he wanted. What he wanted at that moment more than anything else was to get the two of them out of trouble, "I need you to trust me!" He shouted at Rose, voice barely audible over the sound of the loud train rumbling over the tracks.
Ravager didn't say a word at first. Such a request was asking a lot, "..."
"Rose!"
"Alright!"
There wasn't any choice, really.
"Grab me! Tight!" Ravager wrapped both of her arms around Null's chest and squeezed tightly just as KGBeast reached them, lifting his hand high overhead in the narrow space provided to cut them down. A gleam in his eye, Null lifted his left hand up and flicked his right, sending KGBeast's weapon attachment into the side of the train.
They didn't stick around to see what became of the move, as Null's left hand initiated the magnetic pull that carried them along with the train until sticking them to it.
KGBeast's eyes went bloodshot and wide as searing pain ripped through him. He looked at his left arm and the bleeding stump that remained. What had formerly housed his prime weapon of choice on it was gone, ripped off by the train that had carried off his prey faster than he would ever be able to follow.
Once again, he was left handicapped. But this time it wasn't in an effort to overcome the greatest warrior that Gotham City had ever known. There had been a measure of pride that he'd taken in losing his arm to ensure that he escaped and outdid Batman.
No, there was no mark of pride to take from his disfigurement in this instance. This time around he had lost his arm to mere children. Just a little boy protecting a psychotic little girl.
KGBeast fell to his knees right then, a pool of his own blood forming on the ground around him as he let out an wall-rattling yell that echoed throughout the subway.
XxX
(A Little While Later – Vincefinkel Bridge)
Both Null and Ravager sat high up on the tallest point of one of the bridges separating Gotham City from the mainland. KGBeast hadn't followed them, and no one else had come after them trying to attack Ravager for her bounty.
From where they sat, the view of Gotham itself was incredibly imposing. Right now it was full of people at each other's throats for the chance to try and get at Ravager's.
Null had his hood pulled back as it was just he and Ravager alone with no one able to see them, no one knowing they were there. The time they had taken to sit and rest had been plenty of time for him to process just what they had been through that evening. What he had seen.
In the end, it all came back to what he hadn't been told. Something that could have possibly prepared him for all of this, "You hid this from me the whole time," Null said, in low spirits, "Why didn't you tell me that you were dealing with a bounty that Slade put on your head?"
They were going to talk about it. They kind of had to, unless she planned on trying to kill him. Even if she cut out and ditched him now on the bridge... all of her stuff was at his house. She'd have to come back around him to get it sooner or later.
Ravager tugged off her half-mask, letting her long, silver hair blow in the light wind. Bruises and scuffs littered her face in several places from the rough night she'd had. Talking wasn't what she wanted to do. Sharing was not her thing. She was good at stabbing and shooting things. Unfortunately, she was without a weapon at the moment.
"I didn't expect this from you," Ravager said, referring to Null actively seeking her out and fighting to help keep her safe, "I wouldn't have expected it from anyone. It's 4 million dollars, Sparks! I thought if I told you there was that much to make off of killing me, I wouldn't have survived another night around you."
Her explanation seemed to rock him to the core from the stupid look on his face. She didn't see why. He was a person that was all about getting paid. That was just the way it was. He'd said so himself! She'd heard him! What else was she supposed to think?
"I expected you to turn your back on me, the same way any other criminal I've ever met would have," She concluded, standing up and turning away to stare at the water that the bridge spanned. It didn't matter if he was put off by what she had to say. She felt bitter enough saying it herself.
Staying at Max's place had been the most comfortable she'd been since being taken in by Deathstroke. She didn't have any expectations to live up to. Her every action didn't have someone watching her, waiting to determine if her last step had been a failure or a success in their eyes. But it didn't last long. Her guard had to go right back up after she'd thought about what Null would do once he caught wind of the money he could have made off of her.
Null stared at her long and hard, an incredulous look on his face. It was offensive, that this was what she'd believed of him? He thought he'd garnered a better opinion from her than that.
"You're stupid, Rose," Null stated tactlessly, as he stood up and walked over behind her, "What kind of scumbag do you think I am, that you think I'd just kill you and turn you over for a payday?"
Ravager whipped around like a venomous snake, taking none too kindly to being called stupid by Null of all people, "Why wouldn't I!? You said it yourself! You're selfish! You only ever do what you want to do, to get what you want! You're saying you wouldn't throw me under the bus for 4 million dollars! Liar!" She said with a shove.
So now she was calling him a liar?
Null grit his teeth and tried to count to ten, only making it to four before shoving Ravager right back, just as hard, "That's right! I'm selfish! I'm a selfish son of a bitch, and if I want something bad enough I'm gonna get it, no matter what!"
Ravager was more surprised than offended. She'd gotten under Null's skin before, but she hadn't ever seen him angry about anything in her time around him. Even when she'd pulled lethal weaponry on him, he seemed to take it as more of a treacherous inconvenience than anything to be upset over.
Here though, he was absolutely livid with her. His face was red, and it wasn't from any blood on it. It was because his sincerity was being questioned.
Max Gabriel, the boy under the hood, was a fairly simple young man to understand.
There wasn't much he tried to hide. He was self-aware enough to point out a few of his more blatant flaws and embrace them openly enough to speak of them aloud. That complete transparency of personality, that honesty of self, made it really grate against him that Rose would think such a thing of him.
"Well right now, what I WANT, is a goddamn friend!" Null continued, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Someone who's actually kinda happy to see me! Someone to talk to! Someone to have my back! Somebody who actually cares if there's some freak out there who wants to put a bullet in my head or shove a grenade down my throat, and someone who'd actually be willing to do something about it! I liked to think I had that! You!"
Ravager found herself taken aback. She remembered what he said when he agreed to let her stay with him, but she hadn't thought that he'd been talking about her directly when he said he'd wanted someone to be friends with, "W-What? Me?"
Null was too miffed to register the surprise on the visible lower part of her face, instead continuing on with his tirade, "I thought you were the only person who could really get me. That I could really talk to without hiding either Null or Max. Just… being completely straight up, all the way. But I guess I was wrong if you thought I'd trade something like that in for blood money from a guy I want to punch in the balls!"
He turned around on his heel and walked away. For a moment, Ravager thought he was going to leave her there, or tell her not to show her face around him again. Not that she would do it just because he said so. She'd kick his ass if he thought he could order her to do anything. But the thought of it was tough to swallow.
Fortunately, Null hadn't taken on a fair portion of Gotham's criminal underworld just for the sake of telling her to go away. He was taking his prize home with him, come hell or high water.
"Now shut your face, and come with me!" He more or less demanded, "I'm bleeding, I'm hungry, I'm tired, and unlike somebody, I've got to go to school in the morning!"
Yes, he was aware that referring to Rose as his 'prize' in any capacity would end with him being strung up by his ankles in Robinson Park. That was why he didn't say it. He just muttered irritably to himself as he started agilely navigating his way down from their elevated position.
The sheer audacity of everything that had just transpired stunned Rose long enough that by the time she realized she should have been holding Null's head under the surface of the nearest body of water until he stopped moving, they were already good and well on the way back to the apartment.
"…You know you're not getting off scot-free for talking to me like that, right? I'm taking that one out of your ass tomorrow, Sparks."
"Oh yeah? Well maybe tomorrow I'll care."
"Uh-huh," Rose said, walking up to Null and plucking something out of place off of his bloody shoulder, before holding it up for him and flicking it away, "Somebody tagged you with a tracker. You're welcome."
Null stared at Rose as she walked past him and continued on before sighing to himself, deciding to leave well enough alone, "...Goddamn, Batgirl," The only possible person that had so much as laid a hand on his shoulder all night.
He could kind of see Rose's point about not trusting anyone. It wasn't for him personally, but after everything he had seen thus far, he was really starting to get it.
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