บท 1110: 8
Chapter 8: Survive and Advance
Motherfucker.
Of course they were going to be split up, because it had been decreed that Maximilian Gabriel could never feel comfortable with the circumstances surrounding him at any given moment.
Life had to keep throwing him junk balls to keep him on his toes, and its latest trick pitch had to do with the mission to strike at Deathstroke.
Not only was Max (in his guise as Null) to be along for the ride, the mission was to be enacted in phases, with each phase being the responsibility of a team of heroes. A team that Null and Catwoman would be split up between.
This was closer to the shark tank than he ever wanted to be in the first place. Now he was going inside of it?
"I just want to say right now that I am symbolically protesting this entire arrangement," Null declared as he walked with Selina to the place where he was to be picked up for the mission. It was embarrassing. It felt like he was five years old and standing at the bus stop with his mother or older sibling.
Catwoman rolled her eyes. Fortunately, Null wasn't the sulky type when things didn't go his way, but if nothing else he was certainly passive in his misgivings, "As long as 'symbolically protesting' means that your butt will be along for the ride when it starts, you can bitch about it all you want when it's over."
"Whoa-whoa-whoa," Null said, speaking aloud to the closest thing he had to a mentor, "I do not bitch, about anything. I'm a problem-solver at heart," When he wasn't creating more of them of course.
"Right," Catwoman said, slapping the teenage ne'er do well on the arm, "And the solution to this problem is you jumping into this team for a quick mission."
A team full of superheroes. Null wanted to pull his hood further over his head, but instead tried to keep his cool. He wasn't doing anything wrong here. He was helping. At worst, he was riding the fence between crime and justice at the moment, so no one had anything on him.
As if sensing his displeasure with the situation, Selina tugged on Null's hood to try and get him to lighten up, "You're going to be okay. Now I have to go catch a ride with my team," She told him before turning and departing, "Keep your head on a swivel, and you'll be back in school sleeping in class and checking out girls before you know it. Free and clear."
"Right," Null said, grabbing his own shoulder, trying to play off his unease as physical discomfort. Nothing bad was going to happen. This was just another thievery job. Nothing more, nothing less.
Selina had dropped him off on the side of a back road where he was to make it the rest of the way on his own to the underpass of a super highway that ran from Gotham City to Blüdhaven. For once, he sort of wished that these kinds of things could happen at say, a busy intersection or a town square.
'I'm tired of walking on eggshells and being a scaredy-cat about this,' Null thought to himself, fighting back his baser instincts to be frightened out of his wits. He'd been involved in this game for too long already to get shaken at the thought of dealing with the unsafe world of heroes and villains. That cherry had long since been popped, 'Whatever happens, just winds up happening. Deal with it, asshole.'
He made his bed, now he had to lie in it.
It was funny how the prospect of facing one's own mortality in the first place could put things in perspective so easily… and make the fear of death by a more dynamic means less imposing of a thought. At least if some villain wound up snuffing out his lights, he wouldn't have to die from what he had informally dubbed 'electro-cancer'.
After watching both of his parents go out like that and now being aware of what he'd been seeing at the time, Null was certain that very few ways to die would be slower or more painful.
Stepping underneath the shadowy freeway that loomed high overhead, Null could hear nothing but cars passing busily overhead. Looking around and finding nothing but broken down, rusted vehicles, the remnants of old shanty shelters for the homeless, and really nothing that would let him know he was in the right place, Null cupped his hands to his mouth and called out.
"Hey! It's Null!" He shouted, before realizing that there was a fantastic chance that whoever he was working with hadn't the slightest idea of who he was, "…I'm pretty sure I'm getting roped into being here. Well, anyway, I'm supposed to help with this whole Deathstroke thing, so I'm just saying to whoever's here that I made it!"
A heavy series of footsteps thudded off of the ground as the first member of this temporary team made his presence known, "Damn, make a little more noise. I'm pretty sure they didn't hear you over in Blüdhaven."
Null turned to the sound of the voice that had spoken to him, only to get a good look at a young African-American man that seemed to be more machine than flesh and blood. Even half of his face was robotic, looking at Null with a glowing red eye on the left side of his face.
The words were out of his mouth before he realized he'd said them, "Whoa," He then realized that it was more than likely offensive to stare so hard, "Oh, err… I mean, sorry."
Great. If first impressions were everything, Null was certain that everything was coming off just swimmingly already. Mark down yet another superhero who probably wanted to kick him across the map.
The half-man, half-machine sighed before shaking it off. By now, from what he had been told of this Null kid, he wasn't surprised. It didn't make his reaction to his cybernetic parts any easier to endure, but Victor Stone had long since become accustomed to such things, "Forget about it. So… you're the one that blew out Kid Flash's knee again."
That was news to Null, "…What?" He said in confusion, scratching his head underneath his hood, "How'd I do that? I didn't even touch the guy."
Luckily all of those connected to the Speed Force healed ridiculously fast. Kid Flash was already back on his feet again.
"You've got electromagnetic powers and Kid Flash's knee is artificial. Not quite as much as mine is though. Name's Cyborg by the way."
"Oh. Sorry," Null said with a wince before realizing he didn't have anything to apologize for, "But I didn't start that anyway. So what's going on? Do you know where we're going?"
Cyborg nodded and looked around the area, adjusting his cybernetic eye to scan the area the way he had before to notice Null's initial approach, "Yeah, we're heading out in a bit. I hope you know that we're probably gunning for Deathstroke," Null nodded gravely. Good. At least he wasn't so brand new as to think that a fight with Deathstroke the Terminator would be a cakewalk, "For now we're just waiting for Nightwing to show his face."
"Nightwing got here before either of you."
It was probably wrong to get any sort of satisfaction in seeing Null jump so high, but at hearing the voice of their second teammate before ever seeing him, Null leapt ten feet into the air and fifteen feet away, turning around and landing on the ground with a start, "That wasn't funny."
Nightwing chuckled, mentally thanking Cyborg for not stooging his position off to Null despite having his thermal eye on to locate him. Sometimes you had to take joy in the little things.
'Damn superhero boys' club,' Null thought to himself as he could see the smirk on Cyborg's face as well. This had to be some kind of revenge for staring when they first met and injuring Kid Flash.
Nightwing had gotten a laugh, but he had honestly been taking the time he'd kept himself hidden to see what they were dealing with firsthand when it came to this Null character. It didn't take long for him to figure out what made him intriguing to so many others. He hadn't been warped by living like this yet. While Null didn't exactly have an abnormal outlook on life, that was what made him strange.
Most everyone on either side of the fence had some sort of compulsion about them that made them suited to living like this; as either a hero or a villain. He did, Tim did, and Barbara did. God knows Bruce did.
Null was a novelty because he wasn't a novelty. He was… normal.
'Which is probably what's driving Barb nuts about him if what Bruce alluded to is anything to go on,' Nightwing thought to himself with a frown. Null was normal. He acted normal. Normal people were supposed to be good. Normal people were who they fought for. They weren't supposed to become thieves and help supervillains rip off a king's ransom of Kryptonite, 'Everything about the guy screams civilian. But he's made it this long for a reason.'
He would give him the benefit of the doubt ability-wise. No one had managed to stick a fork in him just yet. That had to count for something. If it was talent, it was something they could use for the mission. If it was dumb luck, well Nightwing wished he could get some dumb luck like that to go his way.
They would find out what this guy had to him soon enough, so there was no need to fret over it now. "If you don't have any questions, we should get going. We need to be in position to synchronize the raids."
Null felt the classroom-implanted urge to raise his hand, but slapped down that Pavlovian response to being asked a blanket question, speaking up on his own instead, "Uh yeah, I've got one. I get that there's supposed to be one thief to a team, but why am I on this team?"
'When he couldn't be on one with Selina,' was how he wanted to end the question. Besides, he figured that whoever slapped these squads together would have way more faith in Nightwing's ability to go unseen than his. He was supposedly Batman's first protégé after all, falling out between the two aside.
Both Nightwing and Cyborg looked at each other before the former chose to say anything. He didn't particularly want to talk about it, "Do you really care?"
Honestly, he would have been asking that question no matter who he wound up with. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't actually matter, "No."
No matter the reasoning behind this particular team up, he was still there, and it was like pulling off a band-aid he presumed. The quicker he went and got it over with, the better it would be. Unfortunately, that old adage wasn't true for either pulling off band-aids or for very dangerous missions that one didn't want to participate in.
XxX
(Meanwhile – Gotham City)
It was a simple stakeout that wasn't supposed to take long into the night before turning into a bust.
Batman had been keeping track of an out-of-town arms smuggling crew that had been making moves quietly in Gotham City, thinking that their lack of run-ins with the caped folk had been a good sign to move things forward. However that was not the case.
They had just been waiting to catch enough of the central members with enough guns to put a vital number of them away for a long time. Long enough to completely cripple the operation and leave anyone else scraping about for scraps on the bottom of the ladder.
Batgirl had taken heed of tabs that her superior/mentor/etc had been keeping on the arms dealers and had found that it was a good evening to strike. Business never stopped because the big man was gone. It just meant less room for the workload to be spread out between people.
Not tonight however.
Before Batgirl could even finish counting up the number of crooks that she would need to bring down in short order, the job had already been done for her, almost faster than she'd been able to see and keep up with.
Even in the nighttime, she could see the blur of blue and red cleaning house until there was no one left standing. No one except that blue and red blur, floating in the air, arms behind her back and a bright smile on her face as she levitated in front of her darkly-clad counterpart, "Hi."
How exactly were you supposed to respond to that? Like a friend apparently, "...Hi. Uh, what are you doing here?"
"Oh, like you weren't about to do the exact same thing that I did if I hadn't done it first."
"Not that. It's more like what are you doing here?" Batgirl specified, dropping down from the rooftop she had been lurking on while she had been plotting on how she would proceed with her attack. It was a moot point now, "Isn't there something going on? Are you even allowed to go out?"
"You're right. Kal-El doesn't want me getting involved in this one," Supergirl said, somewhat put off. Her cousin's tendency to stray into overprotectiveness could be a bit much at times, "But he just said I couldn't go on the mission, not that I couldn't do anything. So since Gotham City is going to be short a few heroes for a bit, I figured I could hang out here?" She concluded, asking more than outright stating.
Batgirl took a look at the thoroughly pummeled gang members and the entirely untouched van full of firearms that sat before her. Not a single one of the criminals were able to get to the upgraded weapons before they were overwhelmed by an extraterrestrial force of nature.
Batman didn't have to know that another hero was in his city. If this was what could be expected from the results of having the young Kryptonian around, she'd take the heat for it herself.
"Yeah, sure," Batgirl said, as if she would have turned down the help after such a display. She was pretty much the go-to anyway since Batman was gone on his excursion. Robin was still in trouble for bringing in Beast Boy and Kid Flash under false pretenses for his impromptu manhunt.
It certainly made the night that much easier to have someone else along, and this wasn't just any old type of person to have along.
Supergirl could hear suspicious things happening and begin checking them out before Batgirl's communicator got a hit. Her being around also made the cleanup so much faster, since she could wrangle all of the beaten criminals together to be bound for the police in a matter of moments.
For Batgirl, it was almost like being spoiled for a night while out on patrol. It was also markedly different from dealing with Batman hovering over her while she was working, granting her a freedom she didn't usually get unless he was away. It wasn't much of a wonder why Robin preferred working with the Teen Titans on a lot of things. It was a lot more pleasant for starters, plus the variety of skills that having a teammate without your exact same training allowed.
The actual camaraderie and conversation didn't hurt either.
A slow point in the night, which had been one of the most efficient Batgirl could recall in recent memory, brought the two to check back in momentarily to the Batcave. The equipment there was better for searching for any widespread wrongdoing. Supergirl had basically played street-sweeper earlier and taken out a lot of the petty criminals, so until something else came up they had to wait on something bigger to pop up.
Still, it didn't take long for one of the two to get bored. Particularly, the one of the two that wasn't allowed to actually use any of the equipment. All Supergirl could really do was sit and watch. At least Batgirl was often good for conversation. Robin tended to be as well, but a lot of that was banter.
"So, I got to meet your new specter the other day," Supergirl said with a big grin on her face, only to lose it when Batgirl seemed confused. Well there went that turn of phrase, "I meant Null."
Bringing up the most recent topic she had that also involved Batgirl seemed like a good idea. Also, Supergirl still remembered her conversation with Null, and more specifically than the actual words exchanged, the confusing and somewhat bittersweet way that it ended.
Unfortunately, she had underestimated how much the redheaded vigilante didn't want to explore that particular subject at the moment. Or ever, for that matter.
Batgirl's mouth twisted in sour distaste at Null's mention, "I thought he was alright once, but he doesn't care about anyone but himself," To her, Null might not have been a psychopath but he was selfish, and made no excuses or apologies for it, "Just leave it alone. He's a criminal, and he found an out, so I'm done with it. But if he slips again, he's getting busted. The same as anyone else."
Supergirl winced for Null's sake at the rather cold dismissal. She really must have thought fairly well of him before the Kryptonite theft shot that opinion down, "Kind of harsh, don't you think?"
"I was soft," Batgirl replied, her focus set squarely on the computer screens surrounding the big chair, "If he had been a real supervillain, he could have killed Tim. Kara, what he did might actually wind up killing you, or Connor, or Superman!" She found her hands both gathered gently within the grasp of Supergirl's.
"But he's not. He didn't. And it won't," The blonde Kryptonian cooed reassuringly. It probably ate at Batgirl, at all of them, worse than she could imagine because all of this had begun in Gotham City. Their territory. If it hadn't been Null, it would have been someone else who did it. Someone who actually would have been awful, "Every criminal isn't some mastermind with all of the angles worked out. People can be using them too sometimes."
"So you're saying he was a victim in this whole thing?"
"No. Even he doesn't say that. I'm just trying to say that he's not some maniac that doesn't care about anything but himself."
"Like I said; I used to think that being that way didn't make him that bad. But it doesn't matter now."
Supergirl frowned, remembering the time she spent trying to get a handle on the young criminal, "Null took down Firefly before he could send half of Gotham City up in flames. He didn't have to do that," She recalled. His excuse for fighting the dangerous pyromaniac was terrible, as it tried to make him seem selfish about it, but he definitely didn't manage to pull it off, "Plus, he is trying to fix what he did. I don't think he's really a bad guy. I actually kind of like him."
He seemed nice enough, as in if they had met under regular Earth circumstances (extremely unlikely), without all of the good vs. evil overtones coloring everything about their respective interactions, they could have been friends.
…If Supergirl were to be honest, she really could have used more of those these days.
Batgirl let out a sigh in return. Whatever good her friend saw in Null, she wasn't going to give up on it until he broke it himself, "If you like him, the best thing you can hope for is that this is it. Whenever this deal Catwoman worked out with Batman and the Justice League is over, he has to call it quits."
This is his get-out-of-jail free card. That much was clear given the parameters of the agreement.
"I know that," Supergirl said, hovering in the air near Batgirl's chair, her knees drawn up to her chest as she sat on nothing, "Everyone involved knows. But what if he turned things around and became a hero?"
Now there was believing in someone, and then there was doing so to a stretch, "I think he's more like the type to help himself first."
"You know... he says that too."
XxX
(Along the U.S./Canadian Border)
One of the Broker's properties outside of Gotham City that he had sold to Deathstroke happened to be a large forest home in Vermont, out of the way of any kind of hustle and bustle. It was one of the quieter safehouses that one could have expected from someone like Deathstroke, but Batman had deduced this one as the most likely place for him.
It wasn't too terribly far from Gotham City all things considered, and its proximity was just a skip and a hop away from exiting the country for the significantly friendlier lands of Canada.
"If you think he's at this one, why did you make more than one team to attack all of them at once?"
"Because while I figure Deathstroke is at this one, I don't put it past him to keep the Kryptonite he's selling somewhere else," Batman told her, voicing his concern at focusing all of the help he'd been able to gather on one specific point, "If we get him here, but he's keeping his goods elsewhere, he'll have a failsafe to keep someone else from getting it for themselves."
And it would probably go into effect the moment something went wrong somewhere. Doing such a thing wasn't paranoia, it was just good sense. Batman wasn't about to underestimate Deathstroke's ability to plan for what he would perceive to be inevitabilities. The man had been fighting longer than many people had even been alive.
Although this ran the risk of spreading his assistance thin, it was the best method he had at the time to cover all of their bases and ensure they had the best chance to tie everything up as neatly as possible. Selina told him that from the scant hints that Null had been able to pull from Ravager, they only had a week to find and stop what was happening. Maybe less since she hadn't been specific.
If they were running off of that timeframe, five to six of those days had been spent already.
Despite having traveled with Batman to the insertion point for her particular part of the mission, Selina hadn't spent the time doing so to flirt any. Quite the stark departure for her, but there was a time to play and a time to work. This was most definitely the latter.
"So how is this supposed to work? I just go in and get it, then you swing in and play hero when it goes wrong."
"That's a cynical outlook for you, Selina."
"Oh, you know this isn't my first dance," She said with a sly grin on her face, "Whenever you hero types get yourselves involved in my kind of business, it always goes sideways."
Batman had no idea why it was so easy for him to talk with his female feline counterpart. Normally he couldn't wait for his silent, standoffish demeanor to grind any train of conversation to a screeching halt, but with her, words seemed to flow by comparison.
It wasn't because he understood her. He would be the first person to say that he absolutely did not. Recent events had proven that to him more than ever before.
Selina broke him from his thoughts as the two of them continued through the heavily wooded section of forest via Batmobile, "So are you dropping me somewhere nearby? Are you escorting me to my infiltration spot?" She asked, "How are we doing this?"
Batman always had a way he wanted things done, and a plan to reach his goals in the best-case scenario. She was just making sure she knew what she was getting ready for when the time came to put her talents to work. She was hit with a reply that she hadn't been prepared to receive though.
"It doesn't matter. The real thief is already there and he's found how he's getting in."
If Selina had been the one driving, those words would have been the exact moment where she slammed her foot on the brake for a more detailed explanation. Unfortunately all she could do to illustrate her confusion was to quickly turn her head, hoping that the bewildered expression she knew was on her face told the story.
"Wait," She said, noticeably taken aback at that information, "I'm not the thief for this? Then who the hell is?"
"Atom," Batman told her succinctly, "He was originally called for something else having to do with this, but I thought he would be effective assistance as well. He agreed."
And truthfully, having a man shrink down to a size that could avoid whatever clandestine sensors Deathstroke would have on-location was something he would rather try than have Selina attempt to get her way through a security system she hadn't scouted out first.
Selina's feathers were ruffled at her thunder potentially being stolen by Atom, but she sat back in her seat regardless, "Hmph. Well I wish you would have told me sooner. Then I wouldn't have wasted time preparing so well," All she had to do was get in. It didn't matter where she wound up being caught. That took the challenge out of it, "You really don't know much about how to make a girl feel wanted, do you Bruce?"
"Sorry. The next time I need your help to have something stolen I'll make sure you're the focal point of the strategy."
"That's better."
Batman rolled his eyes behind his cowl, once again wondering just where all of this banter came from whenever he was around her. Anyone else would struggle to get him to say anything more than five-word sentences at a time.
"…Is Null the focal point on his end, or is he the decoy?"
It was fortunate that Batman was a long time expert at disguising his surprise. He honestly hadn't thought he would have seen the day come where someone else could make her give a damn. But as it was, it was a liability, "You should be more worried about yourself right now," He asserted gruffly to get her focused, "Even if Null is a criminal, he's on our side for this. The same as you."
He was on Nightwing's team. As the first leader of the Teen Titans, Nightwing was an expert leader and a proponent of teamwork. If Null wasn't the backstabbing type, this would go well as long as he pulled his weight.
Selina smiled at him, but it hardly reached her eyes, "You don't need to tell me that. Worrying about myself is what I'm good at."
She wasn't concerned one way or another with Nightwing's heroics though. It was Null's that made her stop and think.
Selina hoped that his assisting of Ravager during the mission for Deathstroke was merely a one-time conscience crisis. Because if not, she could surmise that Null might have had a bad habit of picking the absolute worst moments to try and be an upstanding individual.
Damn it. He just had to be a good kid, didn't he?
XxX
(With Null – Somewhere in Colorado)
Null was beginning to see why villains usually didn't win. Not just because they never knew when to quit while they were ahead, but really because every hero's resources were so much better than his. He didn't know how many of them had resources superior to what he was seeing at that moment.
The Teen Titans had their own personal aircraft, the T-Jet. It was far faster than a commercial jet, and even hovered smoother than most military craft did. He didn't even want to know what weapons it happened to be equipped with. How was he supposed to compete with that?
It kept him clammed up for the duration of the admittedly short flight from Gotham City to a location in a small Colorado mountain town.
Cyborg dropped Nightwing and Null off before taking the T-Jet elsewhere to keep it hidden until they needed to leave. From where they were dropped the thief and Batman's first protégé headed in on-foot.
From the look of the cliffside mansion that Null had been taken to from there, it seemed like having a ton of resources was a point of success or failure for these types. 'Mansion' was the only way to describe the home, if anyone even lived there. Null's selfish side immediately asked inside of his head just what he had to do to be able to afford a place like this in his lifetime and live long enough to enjoy it afterward. He then quickly deduced that he probably didn't want to know.
Null rubbed his arms, tension building as he waited for the all-clear from Nightwing to take on the stronghold as it were. There was little doubt in his mind that there would be nasty things awaiting him inside, "This place seems way too nice for someone like Deathstroke to keep," Null said, ignoring the sight of his own breath as he hung around in the snow.
"You kidding? Do you have any idea how much assassinations pay?" Nightwing said, checking over his gear one last time before they went in. He had used nothing since they had left the east coast, but it was a mark of a good operator to check your equipment whenever a moment was free.
"More than stealing I'd guess," Null groused off-handedly, garnering a pointed look from Nightwing, "Hey, I'm just saying! I'm not interested, I'm just saying!"
The pay could have been 100 times what he made as a thief. It didn't matter. Killing others for money was something that Null didn't think he'd ever be able to do. It took a callous sort to kill people that they didn't know in cold blood for a payday.
To consider taking a life to be just business... it was a level of selfishness that he hadn't obtained yet, and hoped he never would.
That aside, they were there now, and there was a decent chance that they would wind up facing Null's former employer. He wanted to make sure that he had the right idea about how things were supposed to happen, "Could you run the whole deal by me again? How are we playing this."
Nightwing looked up from his equipment and nodded, "Sure. It's not complicated," He said, slowly breaking out in a grin, "Just freestyle it. You and me both go for the Kryptonite. If neither of us get caught, great. If one of us does, the other keeps going while the other one runs interference."
So it was basically a game of "who's the better thief?"
A game where the loser had to deal with whatever security Deathstroke had left to take care of intruders. More than likely that security would include hired help of some sort. Great.
"Alright, a race to the target," Null said, taking another good, long look at the target building, trying to scope out potential entry points from a distance. He had a few that had potential, but he needed a closer look before he could try infiltrating. That was just day one stuff, "Cool. So where do you want-?"
By the time Null started speaking to Nightwing, ready to ask if he had a preference about which side each of them focused on entering from, Nightwing was gone.
He had to have been doing the whole stealth-overkill thing simply for the novelty of getting Null's reaction. It merely elicited a scoff from the underage thief this time around. It was alarming once. Specifically, the first time it happened. Now it was just annoying. He could do things like that as well. He just didn't overdo it like some people, "...Fucking Bat-people..."
XxX
(Along the U.S./Canadian Border)
Such a large home, built in a rustic, log cabin style. It did certainly seem like a private destination of sorts, in the scenic area of Vermont and Quebec. If things weren't so serious at the moment, Selina probbly would have joked to Batman about taking her on such a romantic getaway.
The banter was best saved when not on the job though, and for all intents and purposes she was, even if she wasn't getting paid, 'Oh, how I hate pro bono work.' She thought as she traversed the sizable forest home.
In the dead silence, she heard the sound of a handgun moving in the air. In such an easily startled state as she was whenever she was on the job, her hypersensitivity to all that was around her gave her the prompt warning that the sound gave her.
Before the first gunshot even rang out, she had already began to bolt for cover. Bullet holes sat in the floor and the wall where she had first stopped to listen for danger.
Waiting behind a bar situated in the room, she idly wondered what kind of bullets Deathstroke was using. There was a good chance that whatever he was shooting at her with would punch right through the wood that comprised the bar and hit her as well.
"Come on in," Deathstroke said during a lull in the gunfire, "Please, make yourself at home."
Alcohol from broken bottles and glasses on the bar covered it and dripped down on Selina's head as she tried to think of a way to give herself an opening or at least buy some time. Reaching into her boot, she pulled out a match and struck it off the bottom of her footwear to spark it. Tossing it up onto the bar set it ablaze, creating a wall of fire between her and Deathstroke, both giving herself a bit of a screen and a makeshift barrier between him and her.
Deathstroke didn't even flinch at the sight of his possessions being burned by an enemy looking for a reprieve against him. He was a focused man, and losing a lot of booze wasn't a good reason to take his eye off of the prize, "You know... I'd say I saw this coming, but then again, that's what you were expecting-," He suddenly turned and began to fire into the dark of the room, seemingly making the shadows themselves move to avoid the gunshots, "-Isn't it Batman?"
From the second-story loft of the room, the shadow dropped down to pounce, but Deathstroke seemingly floated up to the ceiling of the room, leaving the swooping bat with no prey, and wide-open for gunfire. There was no chance of him missing such a vulnerable target.
Catwoman tackled Batman out of the way as Deathstroke fired down onto Batman. He rolled with the momentum of the tackle and got the two of them out of harm's way momentarily, underneath a pool table to give themselves a moment.
Deathstroke's single eye narrowed behind his mask as he kept his guns trained down at the pool table below. His back rested against the harness system he had rigged up on the ceiling for the sake of the very ploy he had just pulled. Unfortunately Catwoman had been either closer to Batman than he had anticipated, or quicker than he'd thought she would be, 'I won't get a chance to finish that cleanly again. And I was hoping that would be enough to finish this without making a mess.'
He stashed one of his two guns away and reached for something else he had on his person. Something that he had also prepared in the case of a fight against Batman.
Immediately after taking refuge under the pool table, Batman shifted Catwoman off the top of him, taking great care to keep her under the table and out of Deathstroke's line of fire, "Are you alright?" He asked as he saw her favor her left leg.
Catwoman hadn't expected a thank you, but it would have been nice, given the fact that she had been hit, "Ugh. Yeah. It just grazed my shin."
Yes, it hurt like hell and would slow her down if only a tad, but it was better than a straight-on shot to any part of her body. She hadn't been shot in a bad enough place to allow her the excuse to complain or sit the fight out.
Batman's attention stopped when he noticed something with a red light on the bottom side of the table. It took a sliver of a second for him to recognize what it was, and he didn't so much as pull Catwoman along with him afterward so much as drag her.
He had to. If he hadn't it might have been too late before Deathstroke-.
*BOOM!*
-Before Deathstroke detonated the C4 underneath the table.
The entire room was ruined, and the windows had all been blown out, but Batman and Catwoman were relatively unharmed from the blast. Batman had managed to protect Catwoman and absorb enough of the distant shockwave through his cape and the back of his costume.
From his place above, Deathstroke dropped smoothly to the floor, dropping the detonator to the floor, its use spent. It was so close to working, and now the entire building was filled with smoke. That would tip things into Batman and Catwoman's favor if they were all playing the stealth game. Deathstroke wasn't though.
Since he wasn't worried about concealing his own movements, he could focus the full breadth of his heightened senses on finding and reacting to either of his enemies.
The sound of Batarangs cutting through the air gave him all the warning he needed to avoid them, and motion in the smoke prompted him to lift his arm just before Catwoman's bullwhip could strike his helmeted face. The black braided cable wrapped around his arm, letting him get a good grip on the length of it. He fired three shots in the direction of the end and pulled.
Instead of reeling in a bullet-riddled woman at the end of it, he yanked down an entire support for the loft area of the cabin mansion. She had made a quick adjustment, tying off her whip to the support after he had caught it in his grasp, 'How sneaky of you. But now you have no weapon.'
Freeing his vacant hand, Deathstroke turned his gun in the direction of another motion in the smoky room, only for the real attack to come from right in front of him. Batman's fist smashed off of his mask, turning his head to the side.
Gritting his teeth as the punch connected, Batman pressed his advantage forward and threw a kick at Deathstroke's body that impacted off of his Kevlar armor. This time, Deathstroke braced for it and caught the limb across his chest with his arms, taking one away to aim his handgun at Batman's face.
*BANG!*
Batman dropped to the floor right onto his back to avoid the shot, his leg still in the grasp of Deathstroke. Before he could make a move to sweep Deathstroke's legs out from underneath him, he was lifted clear off of the ground with one hand and kicked in the head while held upside-down.
Even with his hands up, Deathstroke's sheer strength made the kick absolutely devastating, stunning the dark knight for a moment. Deathstroke made to point his gun at the man's vitals once more only for Catwoman's whip to wrap around his throat, "KAK!"
The painful sound ripped from his vocal cords as she gave one hard yank. It forced him to drop the gun and pulled him back several steps until he rooted his feet and grabbed the whip to alleviate the strangulation.
Catwoman was pulled toward Deathstroke once he regained his bearings. Unable to stop her momentum, she cartwheeled past him as he drew his sword and slashed at her, narrowly avoiding the blade. Landing on her feet, she ducked a swing at her neck that Deathstroke put his full body into, spinning around. What she didn't avoid was the follow-up spinning back kick that the sword strike suckered her into taking.
Deathstroke spun the sword around in his hands as he kept his two adversaries in sight, "Now is this really worth it? Honestly, did you think your little triple-fake would get you to my Kryptonite wares?" He asked, noticing that none of them had reacted to what he had been implying with his words, "...It was a good idea to send someone that could shrink down to a microscopic size. But an ant couldn't crawl its way in here without my security noticing."
Batman clenched his fists inside of his gauntlets. No wonder he hadn't gotten word from their third while the fight had been going on. Unfortunately, battle didn't give you the luxury to think of those sorts of things, "What did you do to Atom?"
"Now, now," Slade said, wagging his finger, "I wasn't the one who came to your home and attacked you in the dead of night, now am I?"
Catwoman scoffed as she stood up and shook off the cobwebs from Slade's kick, "I know you're just being an ass, but don't try to take any kind of moral high ground here, even as a joke."
Batman was more concerned with what had happened to the size-altering hero he had enlisted the services of, "Slade. What did you do to Atom?"
"As of now, nothing. I'm just fully aware that he's here," The lethal mercenary declared carelessly, a victorious crinkle visible around his exposed eye, "I don't care about him if all he's doing is searching for the stolen Kryptonite. I'm afraid you're in the wrong place if that's what you're after."
XxX
(Meanwhile – Somewhere in Colorado)
For a mountain retreat mansion, the place seemed sterile. All of the furnishings inside seemed brand new, smell and all. Nightwing was certain that his feet were probably the first to so much as touch the clear floors as he skulked through. Looking at all of the trinkets and other small items that weren't exactly bolted to the floor, the hero of Blüdhaven activated his comm. link.
"Null, are you there?" A moment of static rang through his ear before a voice on the other end replied.
"Yeah? What do you need?
"I hope I don't need to say this, but don't steal anything while we're here."
"What?" Nightwing could almost clearly see Null putting down something he'd planned to swipe at that very moment inside of his mind's eye, "Why the hell not? It's a criminal's stuff anyway. Who cares?"
"It's still a crime. Plus, it's all paid for with blood money," Nightwing reasoned smoothly, getting a disgruntled sigh from Null, "Besides, stealing from criminals is dangerous all on its own even if it isn't something heroes necessarily jump on thieves' cases about. You should really get out of that habit if it is one. Trust me."
"Alright, I won't take anything," Null said in an acquiescing tone, "Anyway, I've been all over the place on my end, and I haven't seen any Krpytonite. I mean, it glows bright green and it came in a big lead case. I'm pretty sure he didn't take much of it out of that thing."
"I haven't seen any sign of it here either," Nightwing reported with no small amount of displeasure in his voice, "There's a chance that we might have the wrong hideout, but still, go over this place with a fine-toothed comb. We can't leave until we're sure."
"Gotcha."
Not only had they seen no sign of the Kryptonite, they hadn't come across any form of security in the entire mansion. Could this have been a dummy hideout? Did Deathstroke really have the money to throw around for a false hideaway to fool others? Knowing the man, if he did have the funds to afford such a thing, he wouldn't have put it past him for a moment.
While searching a study within the building, Nightwing stopped after scanning his eyes over the bookcase against the left wall. Who bought a bookcase and filled it with texts for a hideout like this? It was one glaring inconsistency that stuck out like a sore thumb. One he couldn't ignore, and for good reason.
With much effort put into pulling the oversized piece of decoration out of the way, he found a small door resting behind it, one he was grateful to find. He almost sighed in relief. Their search wasn't over just yet.
As it turned out, everything on the surface had indeed been far too normal. The real scope of Deathstroke's hideout lay behind that door. It was nothing like the size of the Batcave. If anything, it was just a little annex built into the mountainside, but Deathstroke wasn't that kind of person in the first place. What he did have was an armory.
The man had more blades and firearms locked away behind security glass than most wealthy people had clothes in their closets, with enough on-hand to outfit the Colorado National Guard if the need arose. And these were just spares that he kept stored in case he needed them. It was like a museum dedicated to modern-day death and destruction.
The weapons could only attract so much of Nightwing's attention though. They definitely weren't the first thing to grab his attention.
No, what gave him pause from the moment he walked into the armory and the lights automatically came on was the sight of a brown-haired man sitting shirtless in the back of the room, one leg crossed over the other as if he were just waiting. Slowly opening his eyes, a grin spread across his face at the sight of Nightwing there and in the flesh.
"Well-well-well," The man said as he stood up, "Looks like Deathstroke's going to get his money's worth after all…"
"Metallo," Nightwing said, his mouth twisting as though he were tasting something bitter, "I thought Deathstroke hired professionals. Not low-class thugs in robot bodies."
"But you're forgetting…" Metallo said as the skin peeled off of his arm revealing the cybernetics underneath, his true body, "…I'm so much more than that," He stuck his arm into a crate full of bullets and transformed his arm into a gun, aiming it right at Nightwing, "Die for me."
Nightwing didn't wait for him to begin opening fire, having begun his retreat out of the armory the moment Metallo began changing his arm's form.
Bullets whizzed by Nightwing's head, impacting off of the carved-out rock of the mountain passageway that connected the armory to the mansion itself. Making it back through the doorway, he only had a handful of seconds before Metallo blew a hole into the wall trying to get at him.
"Come out, come out~," Metallo sang, stalking his way into the study. His attention should have been kept to above him, as Nightwing rocked the bookcase he had moved forward from atop it, sending it crashing down onto the robotic man's head. Metallo tore through it, but Nightwing had gracefully flipped into the air the moment it tipped, choosing to land with his legs around Metallo's neck, his pair of Eskrima fighting sticks drawn.
Drawn and crackling with electricity that he drove into Metallo's neck.
Metallo let out a cry of pain before grabbing at the nimble Nightwing, missing when he jumped off of his neck. Metallo grabbed a large segment of the fallen bookcase and swung it at Nightwing. It was too big for him to dodge in the quarters available to him, forcing him to take the hit and slam into the wall, cracking it with his body.
An attempt by Metallo to punch him thereafter missed, forcing his hand all the way through the surface, tearing the flimsy skin off of it and exposing even more of his metallic body, "Rargh!" He shouted as he ripped his arm through the rest of the wall, tearing it out at the doorway only to get a face full of explosives that the retreating Nightwing had planted and detonated.
Nightwing hadn't expected such a thing to so much as slow him down. But he did believe that it would buy him a few moments of needed time, "Working for Slade? Why would you want to get involved in something like this?"
"What am I doing this for?" Metallo asked, his voice rising dangerously as he made no show of hiding where his Kryptonite heart was, reaching into his flesh disguised chest, moving the fake skin aside to show the machinery underneath, "You should know! Your Bat-daddy had a hand in taking what was mine from me!"
Something that he now seemed to have back.
He wasn't supposed to have a Kryptonite heart. He most definitely wasn't supposed to have one at all. Batman and Superman had worked together to remove all traces of Kryptonite they could find from the planet, at least until Supergirl's ship crash-landed on earth encrusted in the stuff.
Clearly Deathstroke had been rather generous in his payment method for Metallo.
Null, who was privy to the entire conversation via comm link, was focusing on the wrong part of that particular back-and-forth, "*Snicker* Bat-daddy?" In his defense, he wasn't the one that had been discovered. But additionally, his mission was now null and void, because whatever Kryptonite was deposited at this base was situated squarely in Metallo's chest.
"Not the time," Nightwing muttered into the communicator as he prepared for Metallo to come storming after him at any moment, "How much of this crap did you steal, by the way?"
"It was a lot if the size of the case I grabbed meant anything."
"Beautiful," The former-Robin said to himself sarcastically. So that meant it was much more than the two-pound chunk that sat inside of Metallo's chest. He had only been given a pittance of the overall Kryptonite haul.
"It's okay though," Metallo continued from before, "When I kill you and drop your corpses at Deathstroke's feet, I'm getting more than just this Kryptonite heart. This is only the down payment. I'm getting enough cash to fill an armored truck!"
His boast was cut short when the wall was obliterated, and Nightwing's own cybernetic backup stepped through the hole that had just been created. Cyborg wasted no time moving in for backup, bringing forth the kind of knockout power Nightwing needed to start taking Metallo apart, piece-by-piece.
"Good luck with that," Cyborg said, turning his left arm into a sonic cannon that he fired directly at the metal man. Metallo took the blast directly, sending him flying through several rooms in the mansion and allowing Cyborg to meet up with Nightwing and regroup, "D'ya call for some backup?"
"Nice bit of timing there," Nightwing told him with a smile before he realized that they were forgetting someone, "…Wait. Shit. Null. Where are you?"
"Top floor. As far away from all of that banging mess as I can get."
That was not good. When Metallo got back up, he would be pissed. This house wasn't going to be able to stand up to much of this fight. They had already torn up the second level down. It wouldn't take much stress to ruin the supports holding the entire place upright on the mountain. And speaking of the supports...
Nightwing felt the house creak and groan, shifting somewhat downward from its previous position, "Oh no."
Cyborg remembered one of Metallo's newer abilities, drawing nearby metals into his body to improve it and increase his size, and just what was holding the majority of the mansion in the air, "He wouldn't," As if responding to this, the mansion buckled again.
Metallo was using the supports holding the mansion to the mountainside to strengthen himself. Why wouldn't he? Even if he brought the whole thing down, he could survive it.
XxX
(Along the U.S./Canadian Border)
The wrong place.
So just because Deathstroke was there didn't mean that he had the Kryptonite with him. That was an unlucky break, and uncharacteristic of him. Who else in the world would he have trusted to oversee something worth that much money? Still, even if it went against everything that Batman knew of the man, it wasn't outside of the realm of possibilities whatsoever. He had to accept it and move on.
Batman had counted the shots in Deathstroke's gun, and it wasn't with a weapon that had a customized magazine. He had about three more left before he could reload. That was one for both him and Catwoman with one left over, if he didn't miss. He could work with that.
"If this is the wrong place, where would the right place happen to be?" Batman asked, stalling so he could spare a few seconds to think of a way to approach.
"Nowhere you or any of your allies happen to be looking," Deathstroke said coolly, making sure not to give away anything regarding his next move in his body posture. He could clearly see Catwoman trying to refrain from favoring her leg. He was one-eyed, not blind, "Still, you attacked me here, and I can't imagine you coming across this place first or leaving any of the others alone."
Batman wanted to question him further, but his communicator went off, and not from anyone nearby such as Catwoman or even Atom. This was one of the four other teams he had amassed to hit Deathstroke's other locations, "Batman. Batman."
He glared Deathstroke down as one of the heroes local to his neck of the woods called out to him, prompting him to touch at his earpiece to put her through, "Huntress, go."
"It was a trap," Huntress said, "The whole place blew sky-high the moment we got close."
Selina's eyes went wide at that information. The only real thing all of those places had in common to her was that Deathstroke hadn't been there, "You're destroying your own hideouts?" She asked.
Deathstroke chuckled as though it were an obvious course of action, "Well they're not of much use to me if people know where they are, are they?" Really, it was hard to dispute that kind of logic, "They're not all being destroyed. In some of them I've just left a few nasty surprises for intruders. The ones who go there… they should wish I'd only left explosives behind."
It needed to be said, and Catwoman was the one that did so, "You planned for this."
Deathstroke laughed. She was giving him far too much credit, "Not quite. I had a hunch though that by the time my enemies found me out they only would have had a small window left to act," At that, he turned to Batman, "Even if it was your only lead, you wasted too much time focusing on the patsy and you had to rush to-."
Catwoman cut him off. Something in his last statement had put her off significantly, "By patsy, you of course mean-."
Deathstroke didn't mince words, cutting right to the heart of his proclamation, "Null. The boy. The one you handed off my offered assignment to," He said, cutting deeper than the lovely cat burglar's own guilt already had beforehand.
To be called on such a thing by an assassin of all people…
"So you actually do remember him," Catwoman said, her tone icy enough to soothe even the bloody bullet wound on her leg.
"Catwoman!" Batman snapped at her, knowing her well enough to figure that her temper was mounting. She really did like that boy for whatever reason, and this talk was merely riling her up.
"Of course I remember him," Deathstroke remarked callously before deciding to take one last shot, "…He was a good little decoy, and he served his purpose."
If Deathstroke hadn't been expecting such a move from her, if Catwoman weren't injured in her leg, and if Deathstroke hadn't spent the majority of his life dodging precise gunfire on one battlefield to the next, she might have gotten him. She certainly dodged the three shots he fired the moment he saw her move.
If… if… if. But the fact of the matter was that 'ifs' didn't mean a thing in a fight.
Her razor-sharp claws almost cut into his mask with her first swing, but despite her skills, and her anger dulling the pain she should have been feeling, she was still injured and Deathstroke was the superior hand-to-hand fighter under regular circumstances, let alone with a handicap in his favor.
Also, he still had a sword. That was important.
Moving out of the way of Catwoman's attack at his head and throat, Deathstroke drew his sword back to stab it forward through her when a timely smoke bomb from Batman went off, obscuring his vision.
The blades on the side of Batman's glove grazed Deathstroke's mask as the two passed one another by, but no real contact was made as Deathstroke moved through instead of trying to stab or slash Catwoman or even Batman.
He thought better of trying to go for the killing blow, exiting the smokescreen and leaping up to the loft area that was missing a support beam with one bound.
"You shouldn't have come to Gotham City, Deathstroke," Batman threatened, "No one ever seems to leave the trouble in that place behind."
"Maybe so," The intelligent mercenary rebutted, "It's such a shame but I'll have to cut out this time around though."
"Nothing's stopping us from taking you down right now."
That must have been the magic phrase, as Deathstroke's posture became markedly more relaxed, "You would think so, wouldn't you?" He said, "How long has it been since you've made your way inside?"
"Nine minutes and fifty two seconds," Batman replied, somehow having kept a perfect count of their mission time in his head from the very moment they had infiltrated. And that was despite all of the fighting and near-death situations.
Deathstroke simply nodded in return, "...Three, two, one," The entire cabin rattled violently and he took the opportunity to make a break for the open window as a second explosion broke out and part of the roof collapsed, barring the path behind him.
Batman and Catwoman started to follow, but Deathstroke was inhumanly quick and had the advantage of knowing when and where the explosions would go off, having chained them to do so in a certain order. He hadn't intended to fight to the death from the very beginning.
Why would he? Killing Batman wasn't worth any money to him, nor any benefit at the moment. The second that changed, Batman would know. Everyone would.
"Remember. I fight on my terms, Batman," Deathstroke said as he departed into the deep woods around the cabin as the trees started to catch fire, "I decide who dies, and when. Maybe next time."
XxX
(Meanwhile – Somewhere in Colorado)
Nightwing and Cyborg only had mere moments to act once the mansion started coming down.
Thinking nothing of remaining there any longer, Nightwing and Cyborg both made a break for the massive windows that overlooked the long plunge down below, hundreds of feet in the air. Both of them fired grappling hooks into the cliffside and fully exhausted the length of the support cable, still forcing them to drop four stories to land on the ground as the mansion began to come crashing down.
The two former teammates got as far away from the destructive crash as they could. The crushing, crumbling, cracking sound of wood, metal, and rock tumbling hundreds of feet and hitting the ground split the quiet of the previously tranquil night.
Cyborg stared at the rubble with an ill feeling in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't hear Null's voice, and neither could Nightwing, despite the team leader's efforts to try and reach the young thief. This was not how any of this was supposed to go. They had been the ones who should have fought whatever enemy they came across together. That had been the plan, and that had been what happened. Null had stayed away, and would have until he was called.
That stopped being advantageous once Metallo had tried to destroy the entire house. Now Null was buried underneath tons of rubble. Just how durable was that suit? According to Batman's protege's, it didn't enhance his body nearly enough to survive something like that.
"Null!" Nightwing shouted, trying to get through to him on the communicator, "Null, answer me! Are you there? Say something! Anything!"
"Heh-heh-heh..." The laughing voice from within the rubble was most definitely not Null. Metallo shoved his way free of the mansion debris covering his body, standing at least twice his original size due to all of the extra metal comprising his cyborg body, "I told you, I'm so much more than what I used to be."
Nightwing clenched his jaw, realizing that there was still work to do. An enemy to deal with.
Pulling out a pair of Wing Ding projectiles, he hurled them right at Metallo, the monstrous cyborg taking them right in the chest. They were made of metal, thus he ingratiated them into his form, only he hadn't expected them to be electrified. Once again, temporarily affected by the shocks, he was stunned long enough for Cyborg to blast him in the upper-right shoulder with his sonic cannon, knocking him off-balance.
Nightwing and Cyborg rushed the stunned Metallo, Cyborg reaching him first with his enhanced speed. Cyborg let out a great yell as he drew his fist back and leapt for Metallo's head, slamming a forceful punch off of his cranium. No matter what, his brain was still housed in the skull portion of his cybernetic body and it could be rattled and damaged just like anyone else's.
Cyborg landed on the ground and grabbed around his leg before lifting and throwing him up into the air over his head, "Guys like you give machines a bad name!" He shouted as Metallo soared over one-hundred feet into the air, head-over-heels. Nightwing hit him in the air with several exploding Wing Dings before Metallo's body smashed into the snowy ground in a heap.
'That stupid Cyborg brat hit me!' Metallo thought to himself before the words that had rolled through his mind stuck themselves there, 'Wait... that Cyborg hit me,' He concluded as he stood back up, the small remainder of fake skin on his face torn off from the impact of Cyborg's blows.
Despite the beating he was beginning to take, Metallo had found a boon. One of the people stomping a mudhole into him was one of the worst possible matchups available if they hoped to defeat him, and they apparently didn't realize it yet.
Cyborg launched another attack, moving forward to pry Metallo's chest cavity open and force out the Kryptonite powering him, only to wind up in a hand-to-hand test of strength with him, "Kids like you should have sat down and left this to the real heroes," Metallo taunted before slamming his entire body into Cyborg's, "Now it's too late!"
Despite his best attempts to quickly fight Metallo off, Cyborg found that the cybernetic portions of his body began to be ingratiated into Metallo's body. Nightwing watched in horror as Cyborg's body melded to Metallo's, to the extent that his head rested in place directly in front of the doors on Metallo's chest that led to the vulnerable Kryptonite.
"Ugh!" Cyborg grunted, trying his best to move, but he couldn't get his body to so much as budge, "Damn..."
"Cyborg!" Nightwing shouted as the worst case scenario seemed to happen right before his eyes. Not only had the cliffside mansion collapsed with Null seemingly inside, Metallo had incorporated Cyborg's mechanical parts into his own body to make his form that much more monstrous, "Damn it, Metallo!"
Going for the most obvious target area, the Kryptonite heart, put Cyborg in danger. In fact, attacking most of Metallo was tantamount to attacking Cyborg as well. Trying to take apart his body until only the head remained, the way Superman usually wound up defeating him, was hardly an option unless he wanted to risk killing Cyborg.
Metallo cackled at the hesitance he saw in Nightwing's body language the moment he realized that Cyborg now comprised a part of his body, "Thanks for bringing the spare parts for the upgrade," He said, turning his arm into a copy of Cyborg's sonic cannon that he had seen earlier. With Cyborg's technology now a part of his body, it was in his capabilities to duplicate it for himself, "Let me give it a little test."
Nightwing flipped high in the air to avoid being targeted with the sonic blast. The shot resulted in snow being blown all over. Landing on his feet, Nightwing took a punch through the snow spray.
He had always been able to avoid being hit by moving vehicles in the past when it came to dealing with street crime. If Nightwing had his wits about him though, he would have compared Metallo's punch in that form to being hit by a speeding racing motorcycle.
Everything went dark for a split-second, but when the lights turned back on, Nightwing found himself trying to push himself up in the snow. On his knees, looking down he could see the blood leaking freely from his face staining the snow crimson.
Metallo walked over, reveling in the hopelessness of his enemies. As far as he was concerned, this was only the beginning, "First you... then the big, blue Boy Scout and anyone else gets in my way! I'll show Metropolis and the world who the real Man of Steel is!" He stood over Nightwing and lifted his leg to step on him, prepared for the satisfying sound of bones breaking and Nightwing's body squishing underneath him.
Only not quite. And not for his lack of trying either.
Despite his attempt to stomp down on the masked hero, Metallo found his foot stopped by some kind of invisible force. No matter how much pressure he tried to guide it forward with, it would only budge a few inches before being pushed back to a manageable position, "What the-?"
"Nightwing! Move!"
Nightwing didn't need to be told twice, scrambling up and away from Metallo in the direction of the voice that had called out to him. He almost ran into the legs of Null, whose supersuit was now white in color, to match the snow that it had likely camouflaged into while he had been down and out. The hood around his head was pressed close to his scalp, slick with his own blood. His hands were up, pointing at Metallo, while his face held a look of great focus and effort on his face.
"Rrrrrrgh!" Null grunted, feeling as though he were trying to press more weight off of his own body than he had ever tried to in his life. In theory he was. He still wasn't quite sure how his magnetic powers worked, but Metallo struggling against him was certainly making him test just how far they could go, "Rah!"
Eventually, with one mighty magnetic heave, Null threw Metallo back, sending the metal mammoth stumbling and toppling onto his back. Null dropped his arms, breathing heavily.
Nightwing's vision was blurry, but it had been given enough time to stabilize enough to make out the fact that Null was alive and in one piece. That certainly put them in a better standing than he had previously thought they were in, "You're alive?"
How he survived the mansion collapsing was beyond him.
Null stared at the downed Metallo before turning to Nightwing to address him, "Uh, I guess? What is that thing anyway?"
"Metallo," Nightwing informed him, "A villain from Superman's neck of the woods," Which was one of the last things Null wanted to hear that night.
"Goddamn it," Null cursed, remembering Selina expressly forbidding any activities around Metropolis, for all the good that wound up doing in the end, "I didn't even go to Metropolis, and I'm still dealing with Superman-level stuff. How are we supposed to beat this guy?"
Nightwing got up, clearing the blood from the wound on his face. For someone who wound up coming out of left field to save him, he forgot that Null didn't exactly know a lot about who was out there to tangle with, "No. He's not some kind of cosmic threat. We can beat him. Take his head off or rip the Kryptonite out of his chest. But that might kill him since we don't have anything to replace it with."
Null glared at Metallo as the cyborg stood back up off of the ground, "That asshole tried to drop a mountain on my head. If he dies, he dies," He said, going wide-eyed once Metallo turned around and he could get a better look at Cyborg stuck inside of Metallo's body, "...Wait."
How long had he been out for?
"I've had enough of this," Metallo said, "I'm not here to babysit! I'm here to kill you and get paid!"
"Babysit?" Null spat in the face of the perceived insult, "I'm the only one that's under 18, I think," His playing off of Metallo's threat didn't sit well with the homicidal cyborg, noticed when he saw Metallo form jet-packs on his back, "Uh-oh!"
Thrusting his hands forward, Null attempted to catch Metallo in place, and he was able to disrupt his takeoff long enough for Nightwing to rush forward and attack again. The exact moment that Null lost control and Metallo rocketed forward, Nightwing kicked him in the head hard enough to send him off-course, crashing into the mountainside.
"Whew!" Null exhaled, impressed at Nightwing's speed and timing. Whether he had planned such a move, or if it had been dumb luck, he wouldn't have known, and he didn't necessarily want to, "Wait, Cyborg!"
"I know!" Nightwing told him, "He's tough enough to take that much, but we've got to find a way to get him out."
Metallo turned his arm into a machine gun and began firing at Null and Nightwing. Null hit the deck and began to crawl through the snow, using his supersuit's camouflage aspect to try and keep from being targeted. Nightwing took refuge behind the wreckage of the mountainside mansion.
Nightwing cringed as bullets ricocheted off of the mountain rock and the stray metal supports scattered around him, 'Come on Dick, think. There's got to be something we can do to hurt him without damaging Cyborg.'
'This sucks!' Null thought to himself, slowly spreading his arms out through the snow in Metallo's direction. He only had one way he knew of to fight against him, and his best bet was to establish some kind of magnetic connection while he couldn't see him. If he could, maybe he could stop all of the shooting, 'What is he, the Terminator? He's like a walking, belt-fed gun!'
God! There had to be a killswitch in that stupid robot, or something.
Metallo could feel Null's magentism screwing around with his body again and swung his body around, shooting wildly in the hopes of hitting the little pest, "Haha! Where are you!? I want to see this ground turn red!"
Eventually, Null stumbled upon something that he hadn't been able to identify the first time he had grabbed Metallo. He was holding onto something that wasn't Metallo at all, "No way," He whispered to himself before grabbing a tight hold of it and using the control in his left arm to tug away at it, "Come on now."
He could hardly believe he had managed to distinguish what he had found from the rest of Metallo's grotesque body, but now that he had it was time to do something about it.
Laying on his belly, Null reached his left hand out through the snow and clenched his fist to complete his hold before focusing on magnetically pulling something away.
Metallo paused in his efforts to murder Null and Nightwing when he felt a very integral part of his metal frame begin to separate from himself. Cyborg had been unresponsive after the integration had been completed, but began to stir when his body began to break away, slowly but surely, "...Huh? What the...?"
"Hey!" Metallo shouted, trying to hold Cyborg in with his arms, part of which included a portion of Cyborg that was very violently being removed from him, "Stop! You can't do this! How are you even doing this!?"
Nightwing peeked out from behind his cover to see what was going on and quickly contacted Null over their communication link, "Null, what are you doing?" He asked.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up," Null replied through gritted teeth. He hadn't been expecting it to be any easier than stopping a kick, but trying to separate Cyborg from Metallo's body was another thing entirely, "They're not... together. I can feel a split."
The same way he could feel the false part of Kid Flash's kneecap that wasn't supposed to be there, he could feel the difference between Cyborg and Metallo. Metallo could only take over robotic parts that weren't under some other sort of sentient control, which was why he hadn't ingratiated Cyborg's head along with his operating procedures, cutting the brain off from being in system contact with the rest of the parts. It had been a clever way to use the size he had amassed to bypass one of his weaknesses.
Unfortunately for him, they hadn't been together nearly long enough for Metallo's will to overtake that of Cyborg's in his own body and turn it into nothing more than parts. If that had happened, there would have been no way to distinguish Metallo from the rest of what he had used to previously build upon his form.
Hope sprang up in Nightwing's chest. They had a real chance to come out of this without losing anyone, "So his body isn't-?"
"No! Gotta concentrate!"
And that was just what Nightwing did. There was no way he was going to disrupt the concentration of their wild card secret weapon. Cyborg had been their heavy-hitter, and without him they needed to find a way to get around the fact that Metallo outclassed them physically if they wanted to live.
They had done so, and it wasn't the sort of thing Nightwing was going to let go of without taking full advantage. All he could do was be ready to make his move. He didn't know just what that move would be or when it would happen, but he would just have to work it out on the fly.
Metallo could feel Cyborg slipping out of his chest and took a step back to try and fight it off, but it wasn't the kind of pull that he could fight off with brute force alone, "I didn't come all the way out here to lose!" Where was the person doing this to him? If he could just find him he could kill him and make it all stop, but that wasn't in the cards for him. Not on this day.
"Well I didn't waste my Wednesday night flying to the mountains in Colorado to get killed by some Iron Giant reject!" Null shouted at his enemy, holding his left arm to focus more heavily on ripping the cybernetic Teen Titan free. He could feel Cyborg separating the rest of the way from Metallo, "Left... Hand... Rule!"
Cyborg had been pulled out enough for his brain to regain undisputed access to the rest of his body, letting him fight his own way out from that point forward. His super-strong flailing along with Null's efforts to grab and tug him away did the job and then some, "Get off of me!"
Freeing Cyborg's body from Metallo's frame violently tore the front of his body and some of his interior apart. Most specifically, it yanked the doors to his Kryptonite door clean out. Nightwing sprang his attack, leaping at Metallo and shoving his Escrima sticks into the open compartment, electrocuting the inside of Metallo and allowing him to forcibly pry the Kryptonite right out of him.
Metallo screamed the entire time, but there was nothing he could do about it. It was already over. All of his limbs were ruined to the degree that he couldn't have gotten Nightwing off of him even if Batman's first apprentice had taken an eternity to do the job, which he hadn't.
The massive metal construct that was Metallo dropped lifelessly with nothing powering it or controlling it any longer.
The fight completed, Null turned over onto his back and stared up at the black night sky, ignoring the blood coating his head and sticking his hood to it. He was basically holding ice to the wound as it was, so the swelling would be fine, "...Hope I don't need stitches."
"You'll be fine," Cyborg said, walking over to the resting thief, a smile on his face as he looked down at him, "Thanks by the way. You did good."
The praise was nice, but Null had never been one to fight for recognition. In his mind, he was over fighting things like Metallo, period, "Don't mention it. Just take me back to Gotham City. I need to listen to a nice, relaxing drive-by in front of my house to calm down," Hearing crunching in the snow, he turned his eyes over to see Nightwing on the way over, with a piece of Metallo in tow, "Whoa, you got his head? That's pretty gruesome."
Nightwing rolled his eyes, "His head is really the only part he needs to survive for a while. He'll be fine like this, at least until we can get him somewhere to sustain him."
Cyborg, nodded, flexing out his fingers and still testing the rest of his body to make sure too much hadn't been disrupted as a result of the fight, "I can handle that. And the Kryptonite as well."
Sitting up, Null peered at the fist-sized brick of Krpytonite that Nightwing carried in his other hand. They'd come all that way for scraps, "That's not the whole thing. Not even close," He told them, now fully able to see it for himself, "There was more than that in the case. Way more."
It didn't need to be said that victory aside, they had failed.
Yes, they had obtained Kryptonite from a dangerous individual that would have freely used it to harass and target Superman and Metropolis at his first opportunity.
Yes, they had shut down one of Deathstroke's hideouts by way of completely destroying it.
But no, they hadn't been able to take the entire mother lode of Kryptonite back into safe hands. It was still out there, floating around in Deathstroke's hands, or worse, someone that would definitely put it to use with reckless abandon.
They could dwell on that later though.
"We thought you were dead," Nightwing said, looking over at the heavily breathing Null as the young man sat in the snow, catching his breath, "You probably could have run away. We wouldn't have known. So why didn't you?"
Null turned his head, the lower half of his face free from cover by his hood twisted in confusion as he considered the question, "Aside from really wanting to bust that guy? Death wish, maybe? Pick whatever sounds the best to you, I guess."
It had never crossed his mind that running away would have nullified his little arrangement. That hadn't been why he'd gotten up ready to fight when he probably could have faked his death… gone back home somehow and never showed his face as Null again.
He still would have been in trouble with the hero community for his part played in the events that led to this moment. He still would have been slated to die from electro-cancer, with no one willing or able to help him. He might have died soon, he might not have, but he never would have had an excuse to look at his supersuit again; the thing that had brought him no end of trouble.
Maybe… he liked being Null? Not everything about it, of course. But enough that tucking his tail between his legs and running off into the shadows wasn't how he wanted to go out at the end of it all. If it ended, he was going to do it on his own terms, and that was that.
'Yeah,' Null thought to himself. That was what wearing that suit, being Null, meant to him. Taking life by the balls instead of letting life do the same to him first. It had been his entire reason behind everything.
His actions had consequences, and the way things were they would be farther reaching than he'd first thought a little two-bit thief could have incurred. But he knew that now. Whether for good or bad, anything he did, and the costs that resulted, they were all on him.
"I don't know why I did it," He eventually settled on saying. He didn't know what to tell them. He didn't know what to tell himself, "I mean, I'm a criminal, but I don't want to be a bad person. God, I can't even imagine how stupid that must sound to anybody who's not me."
"Yeah, pretty much," Cyborg said bluntly, letting the air right out of whatever wisdom Null had been trying to squeeze out of his introspective moment, "Is this really where you want to have your existential breakthrough though?"
Looking around at the metal sticking out of the snow all over the area, Null frowned and grunted. Tin man had a point, "My ass is going numb from the snow," He said, "Can you guys take me the fruit home already?"
"Sure. I'm done freezing my balls off too. Cyborg?" Nightwing said, getting the battle-hardened Teen Titan to call for the T-Jet to hone in on them to fly them home. He then turned and extended a hand for Null to take to help him stand up.
Null stared the offered appendage down for several seconds before chuckling to himself and grabbing on, letting Nightwing pull him to his feet. Why not? After fighting a battle like that one, some camaraderie wasn't that much of a stretch for him, "Do you think this still counts towards my amnesty?" He asked off-handedly.
"Eh, I don't know," Nightwing said as they all began walking to where the T-Jet had hovered to a landing, "I guess you'll find out if we end up making a stop to drop you off at Blackgate."
"Hey, that's not funny."
XxX
(Undisclosed Location)
Rose squinted her single eye in the face of the sunrise's glare as she watched a LexCorp aircraft take off. After hauling that damned Kryptonite case as far and as long as she did, she now had a better appreciation for Null doing the same thing on foot while running from superheroes.
As the auction had ended, Deathstroke had sent her out immediately to deliver the goods, and to do so quickly and discreetly. She had no idea how the buyer coming to collect it in a gigantic twin-propeller transport was discreet, but at that point after the money and Kryptonite had already changed hands it was not her problem.
She pulled out an active burner phone and dialed the number that Deathstroke made her memorize to call when her mission was complete, "It's done. Go ahead and check. Your accounts are looking that much fatter, and I'm light a whole lot of Kryptonite."
"Good. Any complications?"
"None," Rose said, a sigh in her voice, "No phony wire transfer. No hidden team of hired killers to double-cross me. Nothing. I'm kind of disappointed to be honest," It wasn't much fun, and she had been relegated to designated delivery girl. Illegal delivery girl delivering weapon specs and glowing green rocks, but still a delivery girl, "So what now?"
"I'll leave that up to you."
"Wait, what?"
"Consider it a test. Take what I've taught you, what contacts you believe you have, and I want you to make four million dollars all on your own." Was he serious? Deathstroke was cutting her loose? He was giving her free reign to go and do whatever she wanted? "I'll give you 150 thousand to start, and from there everything you make and spend will contribute to the total. It's yours to use."
Finally, after all of the work she had put in to try and get his recognition. For the better part of a year she had molded herself to what she believed would be to his liking as a warrior. So far she had never gotten anything more than a nod of acknowledgment. Compared to that, this was positively reassuring.
But no. It couldn't be that easy. It was simply too good to be true. It was too straight-up to be anything that her father gave her as a task, "That can't be it," She knew better. She was just waiting on the other shoe to drop, "What else is there?"
"I'm putting a price on your head as well," And there it was. Still, even expecting something outrageous when it came to the hoops she had to jump through didn't necessarily prepare her for this, "Survive until I come to retrieve you myself, and if you have the necessary money, you pass. If I'm not pleased with your performance, I'll be collecting on your bounty myself."
"You'll kill me!?" Rose exclaimed, 'I wish you would try old man!' She wanted to scream it, but she couldn't. Not only because she knew he would take her up on it, but because she didn't want to say it at all.
He was still her father. As awful an excuse for one as he might be, he was the only one she had. He was the only family, the only person she had in the world, period.
But right now this wasn't a father/daughter thing. It was a mentor/protégé thing.
"If you're as good as you should be, it won't be necessary. Show me that I haven't wasted my time with you, Ravager. I'll be seeing you later."
Rose didn't even bother hanging up, instead dropping the phone to the ground and running it through with a sword. The act of pushing a button simply didn't alleviate nearly the stress that outright breaking it did, and this most certainly was a stressful situation.
So this was it. One year, and now she was put in the position of being better than he'd imagined she was, or being nothing more than a liability that he would quickly cut out. The connection cut out, and Rose was quite certain that she wouldn't be able to reach him again. Not until he came for her, whenever that wound up happening.
But it would happen, and she would be alone until then because of one simple fact that had not been lost on her from the very moment it came up.
"Contacts? I don't have any contacts!" She shouted at the sky, "All of my people are your people, you son of a bitch!"
Rose Wilson wasn't exactly a people-person. Deathstroke hadn't let her out to see many people that she wasn't set to fight and/or kill. All she had were his contacts, and those contacts would put a bullet in her as soon as they knew where she was after Deathstroke put a price on her head.
She didn't know anyone that could help. She didn't even know where to start. She didn't know of anyone she had met since she had started training with Deathstroke that she didn't want to stab in the face.
Well, there was one person that she knew of in a pretty decent place to get a jumpstart.
And on the plus side, she didn't quite want to stab him in the face... per se. In a limb, or somewhere non-fatal that would definitely hurt, sometimes perhaps, but not in the face.
It was a start.
XxX
(Metropolis – LexCorp Headquarters)
Business mogul Lex Luthor could see exactly why S.T.A.R. Labs had never gone ahead with plans to build so much as a prototype of what he had bought the plans of from Deathstroke. It was very dangerous. But then again, he didn't care about that.
Anyone that died over the course of his vendetta against Superman was simply too slow, too weak, or too stupid to get out of the way. None of those peons happened to be his target.
No, his target was merely the God amongst humans who wished to live as though he were one of them. Such a waste. It was a joke, to have all that power and squander it trying to lower himself to being their equal.
However, that was all about to change, sooner rather than later.
"Even I can respect when the competition comes up with an ingenious idea," Luthor said, smiling as he looked over the plans downloaded from his assistant. He knew he had seen them correctly in the quick flashes Deathstroke had given the buyers to wet their whistles, "Superman… there won't be anywhere on Earth you can run, or anywhere you can hide after these weapons come online."
"Weapons, sir?" The young woman asked, having expected him to go with one before outright producing more, "How many do you want our engineers to begin constructing?"
"There's no such thing as overkill," And he left it at that. His assistant was a smart woman, as he would never have hired anyone dumb to see to his affairs. She would know exactly what he meant. She had certainly been working for him long enough to get it by now.
When Lex Luthor of all people said that there was nowhere on Earth someone could run or hide, he meant the entire Earth.
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