Chương 1116: 14
Chapter 14: The People You Know
Cassandra Sandsmark felt a combination of soreness and relief, from the training session she had put herself through that Saturday morning, and the long, refreshing shower she had taken afterwards. Titans Tower had good facilities, and part of being on the team was putting them to good use.
Cassandra was the name her mother had given her, but the title she had taken later on in life, the one that was relevant now, was Wonder Girl. The second incarnation of that heroic designation. She wore a red top with a golden 'W' that wrapped around the chest and lower shoulders of the garment, blue jeans, a pair of black, heeled boots, and a pair of indestructible steel bracelets on her wrists.
Her early workout complete, she wandered the tower looking for someone else to talk to. Due to the hour, she still likely had to wait for most of them to rise and greet the day. Most of them at least. One of the team members kept hours that left him functionally nocturnal, and he was easy enough to find. The clicking and the sounds of pen on paper were easy enough to make out when she got close enough to the criminal research room.
Any attempt to be quiet and keep from disturbing Robin once she got sight of him was futile, "Hey Cassie," He hadn't even needed to take his eyes off of what he had been doing, or focus up to hear her coming.
Instead of trying to be nonintrusive, now that she had been discovered she came up and sat on the edge of the desk Robin was using, "Morning, Robin. It's way too early to be burning out Cyborg's computers, isn't it?" He looked like he had been there for hours, "What are you even doing?"
Robin looked up and spared her a smile. Now that she was closer she noticed that he had likely been there for hours. She knew that as a student and partner of Batman he took to the midnight hours very well, but still… Tim usually kept a pretty normal sleeping schedule when he spent the weekends at Titans Tower, "Just checking out some unfinished cases. No big deal."
From the tabs on the screen being used, there wasn't much meat to the particular file that Robin was looking into, meaning that it was fairly new… and possibly small-time. Null, "…Who is this?"
"He's nobody," Robin said a little too quickly. As smart as he was, he should have known better than to protest so quickly. It only made Cassie take a closer look.
She read more into the file and saw some things that seemed familiar in passing. She also saw the side notes put in by some of the Titans that had come across him already, "No. Is this the guy Bart and Gar say you're obsessed with?"
"It's not an obsession," Robin said in vain, only for the grin on Cassie's face to widen, "Seriously, it's not."
She had been told that this was possibly one of the people out there that could cause levelheaded Tim Drake to lose his cool, "What in the world could it possibly be? Does he really piss you off that much?" Cassie asked, "Is it just that he's one of the only costumed criminals from Gotham that you guys have never caught?"
It wasn't as though Robin hadn't had this conversation before. By now, he'd thought about it enough that he had his reason worked down to an entirely plausible explanation, "…The fact that he wound up getting away with the things he did isn't the problem. Not the only one, at least," He said, "I don't have a good feeling about him. I couldn't tell you why. Not right now. That's why I keep looking over what the criminal databases have on him. It's not much, but we might be missing something."
Batman thought very little of Null, and the little that he figured about the boy was just that he was annoying. He didn't necessarily see him as a danger to himself, because if he had been, Catwoman would have never let him out at night to begin with.
Nightwing had all of Robin's respect, and yet he didn't see much of a problem with Null. In all fairness, with the breed of sickos he had to deal with in all on his own in Blüdhaven, a petty thief with no real major offenses wouldn't do much to ruffle him.
"According to Atom, he's going to keep getting stronger."
"And?" Cassie continued pushing. She wasn't any sort of therapist, but if he was willing to talk, she could listen and maybe try to make more sense of it, "What do you really think's going to happen if you don't find a reason to bust this guy? I really want to know."
"Do you?" Robin responded immediately, "You've seen what happens when things go wrong for us."
The two Titans lapsed into a very uncomfortable silence afterwards. It had been a low blow for him to say such a thing. Robin knew it, and he was well-aware he'd be getting an earful later from some other member of the team. Still, he had meant it. The fact that Null didn't seem to have any overarching evil plans was what was really scary. Without even thinking about it, he had already put villains in position to achieve terrible things at least twice already.
That guy was always going to do what was best for him. And what was best for him could wind up putting a lot of people in danger.
XxX
(Metropolis – Hob's Bay)
Upon the advice of the 'friend' Rose had made during her sojourn to locate the source of quality weaponry, the attention of she and Max had turned to Hob's Bay and the various shipyards it housed.
Max quickly put his sticky fingers to good use and got his hands on the shipping manifests from several yards for the next two days, fortunately finding something that could strike pay dirt the very next day. Going off of what Rose had pulled out of her info source, they had tracked down a handful of ships. The ones that had been in-port they had already searched.
That left one that was to arrive the next day some time. They just didn't know when.
High-tech binoculars in her hand, Rose let out a yawn. Looking through the window of the low-rent motel she and Max had paid for in order to stake out the location where the vessel was to arrive was starting to get tiresome.
They had been there for nearly twelve hours and were paying for every single one of them. Max had been the one to find the seedy place, and had still been surprised when the person working the desk had insinuated that they were renting a room for a hook-up.
His poker face had been admirable when set against Rose's knowing smirk when she looked back at him, but the fact that he had been the one to turn to her first to gauge her reaction meant that he'd been caught more off-guard by it than she had been.
Either way, they had spent the entire morning there, since before the sun had come up even. They didn't know when criminals were active in Metropolis, so they had to hedge their bets and keep watch around the clock. Rose's stomach let out a growl that reminded her that she hadn't eaten since the previous day, before she had taken it upon herself to hunt for a line on some shiny new weaponry.
Fortunately, Max had good timing… or bad timing depending on the situations he walked into. In this particular case it was good, as reentered the motel room with food in-hand.
Rose threw her hands into the air in relief, "And the hero returns with the spoils," She said as Max closed and relocked the door behind him, "I'm starving over here. I thought you'd gotten lost or something."
Max smoothed part of his dirty-blonde mop of hair away from his eyes and set his bag down on the nearest surface, "I may, or may not, have gotten sidetracked. Anyway, here you go. A hot and fresh double cheeseburger for me, and a… veggie wrap for you," He said, feeling disappointed just at saying the name of Rose's choice of lunch. There wasn't even any meat in it, "That's not how you eat when you travel, Rose. I just can't take you anywhere, can I?"
Rose blew off Max's comment. She never ate fast-food of any sort. Only out of necessity of convenience was she doing it this time, "By all means, enjoy your double-chin in a wrapper. If this is the healthiest thing I'm getting until we can scrounge up some real food again, so be it."
Max scoffed at the health-conscious attitude, "I'm a subscriber to the idea that I can eat whatever I want as long as I work it off. And I do, so-," He then made a big show of opening the wrapper and taking an exaggerated bite out of the sandwich, "Mmm… taste the cholesterol. That's quality."
"Well, you're back in time for all of the action. Pull up a seat," Max did just that, and sat next to Rose, just out of sight of the window aimed in the direction that they were scoping out, "Riveting stuff we've got here."
Metropolis wasn't like Gotham. With Gotham, the unpredictability of the city was at least predictable in the case that the vast majority of the mayhem would take place when the sun went down. In Metropolis, the really dangerous criminals were perfectly willing to perform their acts in broad daylight, which meant that keeping watch around the clock to pick up something worthwhile was more necessary.
Boring, but necessary.
Eventually, all of the inaction wore away at Rose, and she turned to the only bastion of amusement she had at that point: general conversation, "Hey, Sparks."
"Yeah?" Max said, barely paying attention as he screwed around with the attract and repel aspect of his powers, trying to keep his keys in place up in the air while moving them off of the ring. It was more fun than it would have appeared to an outside observer.
Knowing that she didn't have his full attention, Rose temporarily confiscated his keys. As if she would let Max's attention be split between her and a pair of jingly keys as though he were a baby, "This is a weird question and all, but since we've just been sitting here waiting for six hours, I figured, why not?"
Max frowned at the interruption of his game and being asked something out of the blue, but was willing to acquiesce that Ravager had a point. Stakeouts had a powerful boredom to them. Hours and hours of waiting for what would likely only amount to five minutes of action, at most. He needed something to occupy him so that he didn't fall asleep and miss something. He figured that she did as well, "Alright, shoot. I'm an open book."
"Written in Sanskrit, maybe," Rose said under her breath before getting to the point, "Okay, I'm normally not one to get all existential and whatnot, but my questions for you is this. Say there were no laws. Say right now, everything just became total anarchy. It's might makes right, and it's every man, woman, and child for themselves. What do you think you would do? How would you live?"
"I dunno. Probably be a bigger dick than I am right now?" Max automatically replied, half-jokingly.
It was enough to get a small laugh out of his partner before she elbowed him in the side, "Come on. I was being serious. If you woke up tomorrow, and all bets were off, what would change?"
It was a question that really required some thought. In an environment with no law, one would think that you could do whatever you wanted, but without laws and rules, a lot of things wouldn't be possible to even do. Max doubted that Rose had been looking for a deep answer, but to give a real one, it required some thought.
"Well I wouldn't just go ape-shit. Even if I could get away with just being an asshole and hurting people, I would still feel bad about it in my gut." He said to begin his thoughts on the matter, "All I ever wanted… was the chance to do whatever I wanted, if that makes sense. What I want doesn't have much of anything to do with stuff that anyone would say is illegal. If I could make all my dreams come true without robbing and pillaging my weasely, black guts out I'd have been all over that. But that's not what happened. Therefore, here we are now."
Rose had a way of generalizing the things that Null said when he got particularly long-winded at times, "So you're telling me that you're only a bad guy because you're a cynic with no hope or faith in your fellow man," It was a good conversational dynamic to have.
Max would admit that she was right, but still, the two-bit thief rolled his eyes at his roommate's stark summarization, "Hope is for people too lazy to get up and make things happen for themselves. And no, I don't have faith in my fellow man. I live in Gotham City, woman," He let out a sigh that he barely knew that he had been holding in, "Why did you ask me that? This is depressing."
The girl known as Ravager took a moment to finish chewing her food. She tossed her useless wrapper aside and dusted off her hands as she regarded Max, "I've been hanging around you for a month, and I can't figure out what makes you tick," She said, "You're selfish, but you're not greedy. You don't want any part of trouble, but you stick your neck out if you think it'll help someone you like, even if you don't get anything out of it."
"You know what would help ease your mind trying to figure all of that out? Stop asking questions," Max asked seriously, before the gravity of his intended statement quickly faded, "Who cares? I barely do, and this is about me. Let's talk about you."
Absolutely not. If anyone had skeletons in their closet that they didn't feel like spilling out on a random Saturday afternoon, it was Rose Wilson.
"Nothing much to say," She said smoothly, giving her best efforts to dodge the conversation.
"Liar," Max said, leaning back in his chair. Despite calling her out, he was willing to let it drop right then and there, "It's fine though. Unlike some people around here, I won't poke and prod to make you talk. In time, you'll be more comfortable with me, and if you're not, I'll still probably only barely care."
"You'll barely care?" It was faint, but there was a small, dangerous lift to Rose's voice. The unsaid implication was that he had best explain himself, and quickly.
Max made sure there was nothing she could improvise as a deadly weapon within arm's reach before continuing. There wasn't, "People's pasts usually don't have anything to do with me, which is the only thing I care about. The only thing that matters is what you are to me now, and what you may or may not wind up being later," He lazily spared a glance Rose's way to get a feel of her temperament… and to magnetically pull his keys out of her hand, "Please note, my opinions on dwelling in the past are a lot like my opinions on hope."
"Noted," Rose said, turning her attention back to looking out of the window with her high-tech binoculars, "Ooh. Check it out. Vessel pulling in," Finally, something interesting. All she had to do was make sure that it was one of the ships they still had to check, "The Capybara. Come on, Sparks. Give me the name on the manifest."
Max read from the shots of the manifests he'd taken on his tablet the night before, "The Capybara, scheduled to be docking with various and sundry goods and items… none of which are actually identified on the manifest. Same for the place of origin," Certainly suspicious, "Alright, I'm gonna suit up and head out first to scout. You check us out of here."
"Why me?"
"Because if the same guy as last night is working the desk, I might punch him in his smug face."
XxX
(Fifteen Minutes Later)
Even in the daytime, sneaking around wasn't really something Null had a problem with. Despite the fact that the sun was high in the sky, there were still plenty of shadows to conceal himself inside of, and if push came to shove he could always take a dip inside of the water… though he really didn't want to. Harbor water was notoriously gross.
Either way, making his approach across the shipyard to The Capybara wasn't a problem. Most of the dock workers really were just regular guys doing their day job. They weren't looking out for some kid skulking about in an odd suit.
Taking up a position high up on an unused freight crane, Null used the high-tech binoculars borrowed from Rose to identify what he could of what they were looking at. Allowing his suit's advanced camouflage feature to change colors and textures to better blend in with the crane gave him no concerns of being seen as he scrutinized the area.
"Definitely got some armed guards here," He said to himself, eyeing several men on the top deck, walking around. They had handguns concealed underneath their shirts. This was probably what Intergang was using gangs like the one Ravager attacked last night for, "Not exactly legit private security."
"Can I go in yet, or not?"
"How about not?" Null said to the impatient girl speaking to him over their short-range communications link, "I don't even know which one of the containers onboard are carrying weapons," For his attempt to keep things civil and calm, he got a laugh in return, "What's funny about that? You can tell which ones have what you want?"
"What I want aren't these weapons. I want weapons for myself. Personal arms tailored to my specifications, complete with attachments I can use to customize them. Not some mass produced side arms," Ravager explained, "They probably paid the schmucks running security with those shiny advanced handguns they're failing to hide right now."
So she could see those too from wherever she was.
Come to think of it…
"Ravager, where are you?"
"You might want to start looking higher up on the ship."
And there was where he saw Ravager crouched on the top of the countless stacked containers. She didn't know where he was from how she herself seemed to be looking around for him, and Null had to keep from yelling into the open air and blowing his cover immediately thereafter.
"If you're onboard already, why the fuck am I doing recon?" He hissed angrily. The reason he'd gone out first was to case the ship, hopefully find weapons, and come up with a good enough distraction to magnetically yank the appropriate container off of the ship.
"Because I want the person in charge here. If you see him before I do, I want you to let me know. Otherwise, just let me know where the goons are on deck."
Null let out a perturbed sigh that he made sure Ravager heard, "Okay, someone in charge would probably be somewhere on the bridge, or below deck with the rest of the cargo. Give me a sec. I'll be right there," Max reached out with his hands and felt a magnetic connection to the containers that he used to pull himself from the crane to the ship.
He landed silently behind Ravager just as she tried to communicate with him again, "And why do I need to wait on you to go and do this?"
"Because if you start something here in the daytime, it'll escalate quickly," He said, getting a surprised shiver out of her, "Hi."
'Ass,' Ravager thought to herself before continuing on with her previous point, "And that should bother me, why exactly? These guys don't call for help. By the time one of the big, blue butt-ins get here, we should be gone."
"I'd like to keep from tempting fate on that, if you don't mind. Do you even know who's in charge here?"
Ravager brightened up considerably at being given the chance to show Null that she most certainly had more awareness of the situation than he did, "Yes I do," She said, "And he would definitely be overseeing this today. Intergang is a bit in flux at the moment, so this shipment kind of really matters. Every detail of their operation does right now."
"Intergang is in trouble?"
"Not really. They're never really in trouble," The saying 'too big to fail' was in effect for this conversation, "It's just that things are changing behind the scenes. Parts in leadership are being moved around and whatnot."
Null allowed his suit to change to match the surface of the containers as he crawled in the direction of the ship's bridge to get a better look, "I have no idea why you know this stuff."
Ravager shrugged, having dropped down to follow Null's crawling lead, "You studied algebra, or whatever it is you studied in school. I studied daddy's files on every crook and cape he had on record. My tests were higher-pressure than yours. I promise."
XxX
(Meanwhile – LexCorp Headquarters)
Lex Luthor was perturbed. At an important time in his plan, an x factor existed that could cause problems if it got any closer to him. While he was busy with his businesses and scientific endeavors, his assistant/bodyguard had discovered an attack that had been carried out on one of the fringe gangs that comprised the 1000.
It had been carried out by none other than Deathstroke's daughter. There had been an arrangement that Luthor and Deathstroke were not to interact under any circumstances for quite some time. A month was not quite some time.
It was with that in mind that he reached out through the several safekeeping proxies enacted to keep just anyone from reaching out to Deathstroke. Of course, as a source of repeat business, he was constantly kept up to date on Deathstroke's ever-changing security measures.
Unfortunately, he would not be using it to ask for a job. This was simply for an airing of grievances.
It took a few moments, but eventually, Deathstroke's face popped up on the screen of Luthor's laptop without his mask, looking none too pleased at being contacted, "What?" The man said impatiently.
Luthor swallowed down his instinct to lash out in rage. This was a dangerous man, and getting outwardly angry would serve him no later advantages in case he was to become an enemy, "Nothing happens in my city without my knowledge, so I'm telling you now, if there's anything else you have planned within Metropolis, you my friend are playing with fire."
The white-haired man leaned back casually in his seat, taking Luthor's threat and simply letting it pass over his head. He had nothing to be worried about. Even if it was serious, he had done nothing to warrant such a reaction, "I'm nowhere near Metropolis. Whatever you're talking about, you might want to check your sources before you go about trying to threaten me."
Luthor sneered in return, "I can assure you, Miss Graves has found out all I need to know," Standing in the background, Luthor's tall, imposing female bodyguard nodded for emphasis, "The Ravager is active here in my town. You remember our arrangement. Your affairs and my own aren't supposed to come anywhere near intertwining, for the purpose of keeping the slightest bit of suspicion away from our previous deal. You would be advised to call her back, otherwise I will deal with her myself."
Deathstroke didn't so much as blink, "By all means, go ahead if you're able," He said, completely dismissive of the fate of his daughter, "For the time being, she's not with me. As far as I'm concerned, if she does something that gets her killed, it just means she was too weak to begin with. Consider it an olive branch extended. Even if it wasn't with my consent, she did still encroach on our agreed upon terms."
Luthor raised an eyebrow, but otherwise wasn't taken aback at the mercenary's attitude. It was one that he could at the very least appreciate, "You're a cold man, Slade."
"That's rich. But coming from you, I'll take that as a compliment," Deathstroke remarked after throwing Luthor a bone as a means to keep a business relationship active, "Is that all you wanted? I have business to attend to."
"I believe I've received answers for everything I needed to know," Turning to Mercy Graves, standing vigilant behind him, he gave her a wordless nod, receiving one in return as she went off to attend to what her employer wanted.
She would go and deal with the Ravager. That little girl might have been nearly as strong as her father, but if Mercy wasn't perfectly capable of getting rid of any obstacle she wouldn't have been on his payroll in the position that she was in.
She was more than just a bodyguard. She also served as an extremely effective 'cleaner' when the need arose.
XxX
(Elsewhere in Metropolis – Hob's Bay)
Ravager had to admit, despite his fallacies and some of the things she was still unsure about when it came to Null, the guy took to stealth activities extremely well. While it would have been more fun to storm the container ship and beat down everyone in front of her until she got an audience with the person she wanted, she was also not armed… which was the point of the entire trip.
Instead, staying hidden with Null allowed her to eventually find and identify the most important person available.
Null noticed the wide, predatory grin spread across Ravager's face once they identified a bulky, imposing individual with short, slicked black hair, a thick mustache, a black suit with a red dress shirt and tie, stalking about, chomping a cigar.
The workers on the ship and the gangster guards referred to him fearfully as Mister Mannheim.
Ravager set a hand on Null's shoulder to get his attention before deciding to make a move and head in on her own, "Let me handle this part, Sparks. You can get yourself out of here," She knew he wanted no part of Intergang, and her miniscule conscience felt a twinge at the thought of putting him on their radar for her own needs and purposes.
Null frowned at the idea of leaving her behind by herself, entirely unarmed, "Are you sure?"
"Absolutely," Rose said seriously, "I don't need you standing in the background trying to look scary. You'd just make these guys laugh. Also, you have sticky fingers. I don't need you starting a shootout because you thought something was shiny enough to risk taking."
"I would not get caught stealing from these guys," Null said, sounding offended. They had been there for a half-hour looking for the person Rose wished to find, talking to each other. None of the guards or crew had so much as heard anything.
"Does that mean you wouldn't try, or you just wouldn't get caught when you did?" Null chose not to answer and left the answer open-ended, "Yeah. You'd be doing me more of a favor if you didn't come with me."
Null turned his nose up at the dismissal, though he had no problems with it in reality. The less time spent speaking with dangerous people, the longer his life expectancy, "I can tell when I'm not wanted. Fine. I'll take my talents elsewhere," He said while standing up.
Ravager gave him the signal to buzz off, and Null reciprocated with the Italian salute, quickly leaving before he could possibly have suffered for the obscene arm gesture. With that done, she figured that the time for introductions were in order.
She wasn't much for subtlety and stealth, but after having most of her progress through the ship basically gift-wrapped to her by Null leading her most of the way, reaching Mannheim's location was a piece of cake as she followed him down into the hold. It was there that she located him, overseeing the inspection of a sensitive shipment. It was there that she let her presence be known.
"Mister Mannheim," Ravager said, bringing the nearest bodyguard into action. He quickly tried to pull his gun from less than five feet away, but Ravager was lightning-quick and disarmed him, breaking his wrist for good measure and stepping on his neck when he dropped to the floor. She investigated the weapon and let out an interested hum at the quality, "Not bad."
Clearly, she hadn't come for a fight, which kept Mannheim from angrily ordering the entire ship down to the hold to shoot her on-sight. From the style of her outfit and the color scheme that looked very much like that of Deathstroke's, she was easily identifiable as the crazy little girl sired by Slade Wilson.
"And to what do I owe the pleasure of having the Ravager coming all this way to see me?" The burly crime boss said, "You know there's a price on your head, right?"
Ravager let out a bark of laughter at the reminder, even as a few of the nearby thugs perked up at the sound of so much potential money to be made, "Please. The second someone like you flips their lid at $4 million, I'll know Intergang is in some real trouble," She said, before sparing a dangerous glance at everyone else eyeing her as a potential target.
They backed down as though they were lesser predators facing down something much higher up on the food chain. They weren't wrong to do so.
Mannheim glowered at the girl, despite how she seemed to be cowing his men with a look, he wasn't going to show a similar kind of fear. All she had on her was a gun that she didn't know how to use, "After my offer to Deathstroke was turned down, I think I should do something to make up for the loss," He threatened.
Once again, Ravager waged the whole thing off, "Don't be angry because you weren't able to buy the Kryptonite and the weapons specs," She said, referring to Deathstroke's reaching out to several criminals with deep pockets for his past sale, "It was a fair auction, and besides, I wasn't even in control of it. I barely saw any of that money myself."
"Then what are you paying for weapons with?"
"I said I barely saw any of that money. That doesn't mean I can't make my own," She clarified, "Name your price."
Mannheim scoffed, "I don't need your money."
Of course, he wouldn't make this a simple exchange, but Ravager wasn't exactly coming from a position where she could turn down the offer. There wasn't a person or an organization that could outfit her with what she needed who wouldn't try to kill her first. She'd picked someone that was more likely to ask for a task to be done than, "Fine. In that case, name a favor, and I'll pull it off or die trying."
The change of expression on the man's face showed that this was clearly what he had wanted to hear from her. People like this were more about finding a way to get things done and control over people than stacking back resources.
"That seems doable enough," Mannheim said with a sly undertone, "What exactly would you be looking for?"
Now they were getting down to what she was after. Ravager analyzed the weapon in her hand before tossing it aside. It wasn't the kind of weapon she was after, "Small arms, mostly. What do you have in the standard handgun variety?" She took a look into the shipment of advanced energy rifles. They definitely weren't her speed, "I'm hoping you have weapons that aren't alien tech. I like being able to actually customize my stuff."
If she needed something special, she'd find it later. She didn't want or need the gimmicks to be her go-to. She was better than that.
He made to guide her away from his more sensitive inventory. Those would be going to his loyal Intergang members who would be able to make good use of them in causing havoc, "Young lady, there is nothing standard about these handguns. But we do have more contemporary firearms. We can outfit you here. The quicker this is done, the better."
That was one thing that they could both agree on, but she still wanted to see if she could get her hands on something a little extra, 'My father has weaponry made from Promethium. I think it's time I got an upgrade myself,' "About that favor, what exactly do you want done?"
Taking her to where the more commonplace weapons were that they sold to earn loyalty from gangs comprising lower part of the 1000's food chain, Manheim explained what he would need from her to part with a good portion of his weapons, "It's to my understanding that your current base of operations is Gotham City," Ravager let out a grunt, irritated that this was apparently common enough knowledge at this point that he would know it, "I have a pressing need to establish Intergang there as well. Over the years, interference from certain… positive elements and the nature of the city's own criminal underworld have made this more trouble than it's worth."
By this time, they had made it to where crates containing the kinds of firearms that Ravager wanted to get her hands on were being opened. She caught herself staring in the middle of the explanation of her to-be duties, "Your point. I need you to make it, quick."
She wanted to get her hands on those sleek Taurus PT92 handguns. Enough like a Beretta that they could be easily sold to any aspiring gunman, without the difficulty it would take to actually get them. Ah, Brazil. Such a convenient country for smuggling things in and out.
"I have a list of people I would prefer vanish from the scene," Mannheim said, cutting right to the chase, "Putting a dent in that list would be worth more to me than whatever money you may have to your name. Worth more than the price on your head. How did that happen by the way? Did you anger your daddy, dear?"
"That's not important," Ravager said, gritting her teeth to keep from snapping at the person who was going to get her what she needed, or heavens forbid, assaulting him. It took a considerable effort on her part, "I'll get started as soon as I get back. But I can't take on some of Gotham City's biggest and baddest without the proper tools for the job, now can I?"
"Let's see if we can't get you what you need."
XxX
(With Null – Outside of the Cargo Ship)
'Where am I going?' Null thought to himself, sitting out on a dock and staring out at the sea. However long it would take Ravager to finish with her business, that left him doing nothing but waiting around. Doing such a thing gave him plenty of time to think about the decisions he'd made and contemplate his life.
He was not a fan of introspective reflection.
When this was all over, he got paid, and Rose more or less got out of his life, then what? It wouldn't be as though he would need money any longer, however he honestly enjoyed being Null. But Null had been borne of necessity. He'd found a way to get power and make things happen for himself at a time when anyone else would have been vulnerable. Without a need to procure funds to live off of and improve his life, what exactly was he going to do?
He looked down at his hands and the suit that covered his body, 'What should I do with this thing? Steal for funsies? I don't have that much of a death wish,' Maybe he could hit the streets at night? Turn over a new leaf and become a vigilante, "…No way. I'd be the worst hero. What the fuck did my parents plan on doing with this thing after they were done, anyway?"
What would they have told him? Probably something along the lines of not doing anything similar to what he was doing now, or something. He didn't know. Instances of advice had been few and far between back when they had been alive.
How pathetic was that? He couldn't even try to wonder what they would say to him about his current activities, or how they would advise him about it. It was enough to get a laugh out of him, though there was no mirth or humor in it.
"I'll figure something out, one way or another," He said, before sitting and staring at the water for longer, "Goddamn. This whole thing is harder than I thought it would be."
Time passed with the sounds of heavy equipment and moving water filling his ears, until the sound of something like jets came to him. That by itself wasn't a big deal; after all, airplanes were things that existed. What was odd was that it sounded like multiple jets. Wimpy jets, if he had to come up with some way to describe the sound.
From the direction he heard the noise, Null turned and saw five missiles flying through the air, coming in his general direction. The yell he let out was more of a colorful amalgam of curses than a particular cry of alarm.
As he rushed to intercept the missiles, he noticed that they were aimed at the cargo ship in particular. Stopping somewhere in front of it, Null held up his hands and concentrated on the projectiles, using his fingers as points with which to focus.
He couldn't stop bullets because he would have to focus on them in order to get a magnetic link. He had been practicing on grabbing moving targets, and fortunately the missiles were slower and easier to see coming than a bullet.
After getting control of the missiles, instead of stopping them cold in the air, Null spun his entire body, causing the missiles to turn and fly off into the distance back over the water where they exploded safely.
Smoke trails in the air led him to the perpetrator, a tall, blonde woman with her hair in a single long braid, wearing a black and white bodysuit. Over her right shoulder, she had a portable rocket launcher that boasted multiple warheads.
"Who the fuck are you?" Null asked, confronting her as she discarded the weapon and regarded him lightly.
"That should be my question, kid," The woman said before seemingly dismissing her own question, "You know what? On second thought, doesn't matter," She pulled a handgun from her thigh and began firing it at the boy.
Startled by the sudden attack, Null began to run, trying to outpace the woman's efforts to take aim at him. She was a better shot than he'd anticipated. Better than most he'd been shot at by, actually. She quickly ran out of rounds in the magazine, and in her attempt to quickly reload, Null flicked his hand out and pulled it back to yank the gun out of her hand.
"Damn meta…" Angered at the loss of her gun, she pulled out another semi-automatic and began firing anew. Null once again took to retreating, running and ducking behind the lower portion of a massive freight crane, "What's the matter? Can't stop a gunshot?"
'No, I can't stop a gunshot!' He thought to himself. Leaning out from behind cover to get a look at the woman attacking him, he made to try and relieve her of her gun once again, but had to dodge a round aimed at his head, 'Okay, no more openings to take.'
At the very least, he had led her away from the ship… and the rocket launcher.
"Mannheim's restocked his freak brigade, it seems," The woman said, trying to creep into a better position to fire at Null from, "You're a little young to be Intergang, though."
"I'm not Intergang," Null said, moving suddenly when the woman ricocheted a shot off of a strut overhead, forcing him back into the open again, "Bitch!" Null surprised her by rushing her directly, dodging her shots by zigzagging, ducking and leaping over her line of fire until he got close enough to grab her by the wrist and once again magnetically send the gun flying out of her reach.
Now he could get down to overpowering her and being done with it. Lifting her arm into the air to keep the weapon from being aimed at him, the victorious grin on his face quickly slipped away when he realized that she was actually holding her own despite his enhanced strength.
His eyes widened as his arms shook at trying to hold her back. Looking up into the eyes of the slightly taller woman, he could see nothing but confidence in them, "Ah crap. You have super-strength, don't you?" His answer came in the form of a hand wrapping around his throat, "AAAAK!"
"Yep," The woman said with a chuckle, "Didn't expect to run into an Amazon today, did you kid?" She began to squeeze when she felt thousands of volts of electricity run through her body. A pained scream ripped from her throat and her grip loosened enough for Null to slip free. Holding onto her arm, he turned his back and threw her over his shoulder, sending her flying twenty feet before she crashed into the ground.
He dropped to his knees, hacking and coughing now that he had a moment to recover. He watched the woman try to stand up, her muscles still reacting to the raw energy that had been coursing through her just moments ago. A quick look up gave him a view of a bundle of girders held up by the nearest crane. A hard wave of his hand brought them crashing down.
The woman noticed the girders as the fell and in an impressive display of agility avoided all of them as they hit the ground and cracked the concrete.
Null's eyes widened at the sight of her charging him down and grabbing a pole from the ground that she hurled at him like a javelin. He got his hands up to stop the metal object before it could impale him, but stopping it left him open to a punch that hit him square in the face.
Knocked down to his back, his vision swam as the woman stood over him, her foot raised to stomp down on his head. He had never relinquished magnetic control over the pole, however, and a flick of his fingers sent it careening backwards where it collided with the back of the unaware woman's head.
*CLINK!*
The blow caused her to stumble off of him over his head, freeing Null to jump back up to his feet and grab hold of the long braid swishing behind her, near by the root. With a strong yank, he pulled her and slammed his knee directly into the small of her back, bending her backward and exposing her head and face. He used the quick chance for a follow-up to strike with a downward elbow smash that dropped her to the ground.
He turned and started to walk away. Between likely getting her back broken and then the skull-cracking force with which he'd hit her afterwards, there was no way that anyone could stand and continue, "There. Get up from that," He said, sparing a moment to turn his head where he saw her do exactly that, "Come on! I didn't mean actually get up!"
"You hit harder than regular people, but don't hit as hard as you actually need to if you want to keep me down," "You're no Superman. You're just a poor, unfortunate little meta who shouldn't have gotten in the way."
"Oh yeah?" Null said, preparing for the fight to continue, "Well, I didn't grab you just to hit you and knock you out. I just hoped that was all it would have taken."
Null pushed his hand out at the woman and did nothing. She simply stood with a hand on her hip, smirking at him. None of his tricks had done anything more than set her back for the duration of the fight, "What's the matter?" She asked, as he kept trying whatever it was he was doing, only to continue failing, "Your little trump card didn't work?"
"No! Just give it a second!" Null argued in return, "I know I did it ri-, aha! There we go!" It took a few seconds for the effects of his strategy to kick in, but when it did, the deadly woman found herself suddenly sucked backwards into the air until she slammed hard against the side of the massive freight crane they had been fighting near earlier, "That was cool, wasn't it!?" Null shouted from a quarter of a mile away.
"What did you do!?" She shouted back across the distance, her face turned to press her cheek forcefully against the surface. No matter how much she tried to pry any part of her body away from the metal crane, it wasn't going to happen. Struggle as she might, nothing would budge, "Tell me what you did!?"
"Don't worry about it! It happened, it's over, and we're both better people now because of it!" He hadn't just been electrocuting her earlier in the fight. He'd been preparing to alter her body's natural charge to make it attract metal. It was why he had been easily able to aim that pole at the back of her head so easily with such force and little effort. It wouldn't last long, but in this case it didn't have to.
"Get me off of this thing!"
"You're not going anywhere until I'm long-gone!" Null said, "You'd have to be like one of the strongest things around to break out of that," Turning things with electric charges into temporary super magnets was more fun than he'd thought it was. The fun of physics. A lot of that was actually useful to him with his powers. Now he actually had another reason to pay attention in that class other than the passing grade.
"I will kill you!"
From where she couldn't move, a safe distance away from him, Null felt vindictive enough to rub salt in the wound, "Hey, are you too far away or can you see this?" He asked, flipping the double bird before he turned and ran off, "Amazon that, lady!"
He didn't even get her name, not that it mattered. She didn't know who he was, and he didn't plan on coming back to Metropolis anytime soon anyway.
XxX
(Hours Later – En Route to Gotham City)
Sitting on the train heading back to Gotham, Rose couldn't stop laughing after being told of Max's little tiff with who she had deduced to be Lex Luthor's bodyguard and assistant, "I can't believe you stuck her to a crane. I bet she's good and pissed."
Her last run-in with Mercy Graves when she'd handed over the Kryptonite and the specifications to a piece of technology had not left her as a fan of the dangerous warrior woman. The thought of her stuck to the side of a crane for fifteen minutes just brought her joy inside.
She eventually stopped long enough to give him a bit of a briefing on his last opponent, "Yeah, Amazons are tougher than you could believe. They still bleed like everybody else though. If I were you I'd have just run her through with something."
"Gee, I'll keep that in mind. It wasn't really an option at the time," Max said snarkily, "What the hell was she doing shooting missiles at the ship?"
Rose opened her mouth to speak, but then paused. Max had a track record of overreacting to certain things. He'd handled the revelation that the woman he'd fought had been Lex Luthor's bodyguard well enough, "Well… she was probably there because Lex Luthor found out that I was in Metropolis."
She knew she wasn't supposed to be there, but she also figured she would keep things low-key enough that it wouldn't matter. Of course, going gung-ho on an entire street crew in one night wasn't exactly keeping things low-key. That was her fault, but when one jackass started shooting, the rest followed suit and then the bloodlust took over.
The mention of one of the richest men in the world was enough to garner interest from the son of scientists, "Why would he care? Did you try to kill him or something?"
"No. But I don't want to tell you, because you're kind of a spaz when I tell you certain things. We're in public, so if you freak out here people will notice," Rose said, before trying to word things differently, "Look, we're leaving. I'm well-armed and dangerous again-."
"-You were still dangerous even when you weren't armed."
Rose ignored Max and continued with her point, "-And you only got a few bruises this time, without that Mercy bitch even finding out who you were. I call that a win."
Max started getting excited when he realized that she was right. No broken bones or any other horrible injuries of note. Just a split lip and a raw red mark around his neck where he'd been strangled. Comparatively, that was nothing, "Wait. You're right. Holy shit. That's two in a row," And this time he didn't even need a hospital or magical healing abilities, "…Something terrible's going to happen soon. I know it."
"What?" Rose exclaimed at his sudden down-in-the-dumps demeanor, "Look, you can take this however you want, but maybe getting laid would make your outlook on life a little more positive? Just a thought."
Max didn't rise to the bait and start an argument. Instead, he leaned his head back and looked at the window as the Gotham County scenery passed them by, "No. You remember the conversation we had before. I don't win at things and I definitely don't get streaks going."
He'd clearly learned how to find ways to succeed. Now it was a matter of getting him used to succeeding, because clearly he wasn't, "Don't blow a fuse, Sparks," Rose said, "If it makes your karmic paranoia settle, this counts as my win, not yours. You didn't get a damn thing out of this."
Max actually brightened up at the suggestion that this didn't count as his success, "You're right. That does make me feel better. Thanks."
Next order of personal business; someone here had to become accustomed to things actually going their way. And it wasn't Rose. Seriously, sometimes it seemed as though Max had an ego and a mouth that wouldn't quit. Other times he had the demeanor of a superstitious man marching his way through a haunted graveyard. The spectrum of Max's confidence ran wide and fluctuated a little too wildly for Rose's tastes.
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