Capítulo 36: Issue #34: Ninth VIII - Finale, Part I
How do you find an assassin in the middle of a maze with only your eyes and nose? You follow the bodies.
More so when most of the discarded limbs and entrails point towards a certain direction. The shed I trained in earlier this day–by god, it feels like a week ago–is located in the center of the maze and will probably be where they will be taking Peng Jin and his daughter in the case of an incursion of this size.
Even more so when I heard from Robin that the front of the manor is overrun by police and hired killers of the League of Assassin. Either they'll get help from the national guard stationed somewhere east of Gotham which will take a few hours at least or from Gotham's premier vigilante.
I'm not sure if that is the path they will take, but given the circumstances, hunkering down for a solid defense is the optimum rationale during the League's attacks.
In any case, mother and Jasmine will be there with him, that much I am sure of. It will quadruple the danger she is setting herself, but the woman can't help dipping her toes in somebody's business, especially if that business blows up half of her house.
We near the central area, taking a shortcut through the broken parts of the hedge maze. I honestly don't know if the assassins got tired of running through a maze and decided to make their own path or if I'm looking at an entirely new faction partaking in this fight.
Either way, the broken walls are a blessing to us all, me and Robin, the police and the escaping civilians alike. With the walls torn down, we are able to reach the center of the maze in due time and able to see the chaos that has ensued following the explosion in the manor.
Bodyguards from both under our employ and that of the Chinese state lay dead in a river of their own blood, massacred by the members of the League of Assassins. Thankfully or at least gratefully, their sacrifices are not in vain as a surprising amount of dead assassins lay on the ground, too.
If not for the bullet holes, then parts of their bodies are smashed in or their necks snapped and I can guess which member of our team did the neck snaps. If Olgar is here, then he's more likely to go after my mother which means that she is momentarily safe.
If I don't get there soon enough, she will be dramatically dying and will be telling Olgar to look for me.
"We can't have that." I mutter aloud as I duck behind a pile of corpses, temporarily hiding from a group of assassins that are heading inwards.
Robin swoops in soon after, rolling towards a part of the wall that has been piled on top of a corpse.
"What'd you say?" He asks, tightly gripping a shuriken in anticipation of an attack.
"We need to get in or my mother's gonna go haywire." I repeat my thoughts, rolling towards him while still on my belly. I point towards the group of three assassins. "They're either guarding the exit, waiting for orders, or additional reinforcements. All options sound bad, so we knock them out, take their upper clothing like me, and head inside while hiding in the chaos."
Robin scoffs, a smile on his face "How do you suppose we do that? They're in a tight triangular formation. Batman would need to drop in the middle–Oh."
"Exactly. Ready your shuriken." I groan to a kneel before conjuring a vertical Black Line against the hedge wall and a horizontal Black Line three meters above the group. "Go."
On my orders, Robin aims his shuriken at an assassin, enters the activated Optic Leap and drops in the middle of the pack. While mid-air, his shuriken hit an assassin's shoulder before splitting his legs to strike at the other two's head. The impossibility of his legs' angle astounds me, even more so when the soles of his feet smashes against the skull of our enemies.
In one move, Robin has disoriented and briefly incapacitated three professional assassins. 'That must be why he's Robin.'
I can't dawdle any longer, however, so I drop in after him, although changing the angle of the secondary portal so as to not break my ankle from the fall. Instead of splitting the assassins two to one between us, we silently went with team takedown.
Easy enough to do since I have virtually unlimited energy. Portalling Robin in and out of sticky situations while defending myself from the onslaught of shurikens and katanas is fun. Especially so when you're not being subjected to the gnawing sensation in your stomach which is the effect of your metahuman ability continuously cannibalizing every organ in your body in search of any kind of energy.
Fun.
The assassin finally takes the shuriken off his back when a friend of his gets knocked down by a flying Robin. Continuous use of my Optic Leap–I'm not feeling the name now, actually–has accustomed the assassins to Robin and I' erratic movements, which means now we have to be really creative in its use.
"I named my powers." I inform Robin as I conjure a front-facing horizontal portal on the ground, just big enough to put my feet in it.
Robin notices the portal and backs up from his assassin–I think I'll call him Timmy. Timmy follows after Robin, but he doesn't notice a small vertical portal opening up next to the ground and he sure doesn't notice me sticking my sai into the horizontal portal.
So adamant on taking out Robin that only when the sai has ruptured his flesh does he notice a blade sticking out of his ankles. His screams earn the attention of the other assassin–this one will be called Larry. Larry cartwheels towards Timmy, deftly evading a shuriken from Robin before pushing Timmy out of the way of my portal.
"What'd you name it?" Robin asks as he stands beside me, facing off against Timmy and Larry.
I hesitate to answer for a second, but only to fend off Timmy's desperate attack. I open a small portal in my palms to which his thin Katana passes through and emerges to his side, stabbing him in the shoulder.
"Optic Leap." I finally answer, just as Larry rolls to the side and tries to escape.
Unfortunately for him, Robin notices his plan and silently signals for a portal. I do so, snapping the first set shut, which causes the Katana on Timmy's shoulder to swipe outwards in a jerk like motion. Liters of blood spraying towards us before he can sever what's left of his upper arm off the levitating Katana.
A Boy Wonder-sized portal opens up next to me and a second one ten meters away and above the ground, to which Robin readily enters to deal with Larry. I, on the other hand, strike Timmy's throat, which closes his larynx and stuns him for a brief moment.
Before his training acts up, I travel down the ground and emerge above him with my legs clamping down around his neck while my hands club his face. With his shoulder fucked up, Timmy only has a hand to deal with me which, frankly, is enough given his expertise in combat.
I deal with his only viable hand by employing the technique I used on the Scythe, portalling his hands on to the ground and snapping it shut. His screams are loud and skull-reverberating, so I tightened my grip on his neck to suffocate him unconscious.
By the time I finish dealing with Timmy, Robin comes back and is dragging Larry by his leg.
"Yeah. It sucks." Robin answers, resuming our conversation. "Are we being too arrogant? I mean, talking while fighting literal assassins, dude?"
"Maybe." I shrug. "Do you have a suggestion?"
"Maybe focus on the fight first–"
"About the name." I correct him with an exasperated snort. "I only chose Optic Leap because of the eye opening thing."
He hums for a moment before tilting his head and pursing his lips. "Your codename is gonna be Sparrow, right?"
I nod, which prompts him to snap his fingers. "I got it. Avian Step!"
"Absolutely…" His eyes widened at the sharp smile on my face. "Terrible! I don't know why I even bothered to ask you."
Robin visibly deflates, which reluctantly prompts me to apologize, but before I can, a voice rings out from where the center of the maze stands.
"I like it." The deep voice says her assent as I turn towards its origin, only to find thirteen more assassins, another Angela Jung–
'What the fuck? Are they clones or something?'
Clad in tight leather clothing, their leader, a woman of east Asian descent, has a cheshire grin on her face as she scrutinizes our forms. In her hands are familiar looking sais which prompts me to look at the weapon in my hands.
"Oh, is this yours, lady?" I twirl the bloodied sai, hiding the shock in my eyes as it lands on the unconscious form of Peng Deilan in the hands of an unnamed assassin.
"Shoot!" Robin turns towards them too and has a more visceral reaction to the woman. "That's Lady Shiva. Bruce fought her."
"And she's still conscious?" I ask, confused and a little bit frightened.
Lady Shiva's grin turns into a scowl. "Kill them."
Twelve assassins move forward as soon as her words ring out, although this time I won't have enough time to name all of them.
"Play hide and seek!" I shout, hastily opening up a portal behind my back to which I fall into. The secondary portal is conjured above the stationary assassin that holds Peng Deilan in their arms.
Like Timmy, the assassin is surprised to see me drop into their shoulders as my thighs tighten around their neck. Before they can regain their composure, my sai pierces their back and scrapes their innards to dislodge a vertebra or two.
I'm not sure if I can do that, but the effects of my strike become evident when the assassin falls to the ground. I jump off of him, landing next to Peng Deilan and quickly grabbing her to make a hasty escape.
A wide Katana whistles past my cheek before slicing into the ground a few meters away from. I turn around, Peng Deilan in both my arms.
"You wouldn't happen to know the name of that blade, would you? We've been calling it wide Katana, but I think that's wrong." I ask Angela Jung or at least her twin or something because they have the same face and the same clothing.
She doesn't answer, merely leaping towards me with a downward slash. Evading the blades is easy enough using my portals, but given that I have to take care of Peng Deilan, I use the short prongs of my Sai to barely parry her blade.
With the weight of the blade being pushed with the help of gravity, injury is nothing but assured in this case. Still, a slight pain in my blade wrist is nothing to the pain of my other hand aiming at her eye.
Having regenerated all of my fingers during the fight with Larry, Timmy, and the other guy, I try to jam my middle finger up into her eyes. Try being the operative word for as soon as I do so, she abruptly leans back.
I can only score the edges of her cornea, enough to draw blood. A portal appears directly below my body and transports me three meters to the left, evading a counterattack from her padded knees.
I grab Peng Deilan's arm and clothes and open a secondary portal as far away as I can muster. Apparently, that number is about eleven meters since at that length bile begins to clog my throat and numbness spreads across my extremities.
With me being harassed by Angela and Robin handling an assassin's dozen, I don't need anymore baggage weight so I throw her into the portal before even that little cupcake I snatched off the kitchen is vomited out.
I turn towards Angela as she circles me like a starving hyena, except for the laughing part. She has a perfectly neutral expression, even the blood dripping from her eye is nothing to her.
"Did you know that Olgar killed your clone? Twin sister? Alternate self? Earlier in the hall." I inform her, which elicits nothing but air.
Her swings are heavy, evading it takes more than courage and stamina. That's why I don't bother doing so as I leverage accruing deep wounds that will heal in no time to gain better combat advantage. For every liter of blood that gushes out of my wounds, my sai nicks her in the arm or cuts shallow wounds on her body.
But time is not on my side because we are technically in a stalemate. If and when another assassin joins her, that stalemate breaks and Peng Deilan is out of my hands again.
I portal away from her and next to Peng Deilan–finally deciding that Optic Leap is not that great of a power name and a noun or verb. She's still unconscious, but I can fix that with a slap on her face.
"OW!" She exclaims, glaring at me as she wakes up. Her glare morphs into confusion, then fear along with her face as she notices her surroundings. "Wha–Who are you? Where's papa?"
"Later." I respond as Angela nears us. "I need you to run inside. As fast as you can."
I rush forward before she can, and will object to my orders. Angela thrusts her weapon and I use the same prong to deflect the blade, yet she has learned her lesson. The moment I do so, she pulls back her Katana and wields it with two hands before pushing it back again in a downward stab.
The initial pull screws up my form and the subsequent push manages to break my wrist as the wide tip of the Katana pierces my shoulder with an inch of overhang slicing my lower cheek.
My body breaks down from the wound, falling to my knees from the sheer weight of the blade.
"Damn, girl. How much do you lift?" I ask mirthfully, knowing that Peng Deilan is already on her way to where Olgar and her father are.
"Don't kill her." Orders Lady Shiva, surreptitiously emerging from the shadow of Angela. The blood on her face and clothes betray the ingenue visage she's going for.
Ä smirk appears on my pallid face as Angela pulls her blade back and lets me drop to the ground. Through gritted teeth, I shakily raise my body and lock eyes with her.
I mutter heroically, "You can kill me. Robin and her are–"
"She got me, Sparrow." An assassin throws Robin onto the ground a few meters away from me.
'God, you sidekicks can't do anything!'
"Ok. Fair enough, but she's–"
"Let me go! PAPA!" An exasperated groan escapes my throat as I hear Peng Deilan screaming her ass off behind me.
"Clearly, you guys aren't team players." I scold both of them, gritting my teeth as I press down on my wound. "You gonna kill us?"
She walks up to me and kneels down with an unworried laugh, as if there isn't a vigilante in the manor and a damn alien messiah up in the air.
'Now that I think about it. Where is the fuck is Batman?'
"Don't worry, I won't kill you." Lady Shiva licks my ears, eliciting a roar from Robin. Although I'm not sure if he's angry because she's mocking us or because it's my ear that she's licking.
"You can still portal out of this, S–" The assassin kicks Robin in his side, interrupting his stupid advice.
'I'm not gonna fucking leave you alone, wierdo. You're my friend. Besides, I doubt Batman is in any shape to find a Lazarus pit with the Reaper going around'
Lady Shiva giggles as she gazes at Peng Deilan and whispers into my ear, "Her on the other hand? We need her alive, too."
I breathe out a sigh of relief. "That's good. Then do you mind leaving her here and fucking off?"
"'Fraid, not." She slaps me on the face, a welt immediately forming in my cheek. "Grab all of them and move."
While the assassins wrap their muscly arms around Peng Deilan and Robin, Lady Shiva herself grabs me by the collar of my assassin's robe and drags me forward.
'Go with the flow, Ed. Calm down. Let them tire out and portal out as fast as possible. Damn it, it's not working. Heart too fast.'
The bleeding on my shoulder is still gushing out like a broken faucet, which only serves to keep my heart beating as fast as humanly possible. I can barely even move, my feet merely dragging on by the sheer strength of Lady Shiva.
'If only… yeah.'
I look up into the sky and close my eyes, knowing that Lady Shiva will course correctly if I ever stray off path and lead my mind inside of my brain. A weird thing to do since my mind is my brain, but since I'm not well versed in psionic ability or any of the telepathic stuff, I have to make do with bullshit terminology.
'C'mon, J'onn. Hear me, J'onn J'onzz. Heed my call. To me, my X-men! Teen Titans Go! Breaker, breaker. C'mon you green–'
'Are you in danger?'
The moment his voice rings in my head feels as if I'm being bombarded by a hundred decibel static. An eye threatens to roll back and sever its connection to my brain while the other can't help but close.
Thankfully, Lady Shiva interprets my pain as connected to the one in my shoulder as she merely pushes me forward.
'Need you down here, bud. Peng Deilan and Dick are in trouble. Bleeding, bad.'
'On my way.'
As soon as we exit the hedge maze and appear around the metal fence that separates the estate and the outside world, a throng of assassins appear before us as they cow and handle the SWAT that had arrived to supposedly save us.
Bullets fly like a swarm of alcoholic bees because seldom do they hit their target and, even if they do, seldom do those targets go down. I can now actively say that GCPD is one of the best police departments on the continent as they fight the League of Assassins to a standstill.
Even Lady Shiva is frustrated by the cops, as evident by her tight grip on my shoulder wound. Undoubtedly, the League will be able to escape with most of their men intact, but not within the time J'onn arrives to save us.
"Where the hell are Chesire and Ignition?" Lady Shiva growls at her companions.
"Right here." A long-awaited voice echoes from above, startling everyone who has working ears. Which means everyone looks up to see a man flying down in a suit of blue and a cape of red.
His mere presence brings comfort to those who seek them. His mere form brings dread to those who fear him. Although he's not the original, I dare say that the copy brings as much hope.
"Superman." Lady Shiva mutters under her breath, dread coursing through her tone.
Status de energia semanal
-- Ranking de
Poder 
-- Pedra de
Poder