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Batman had been right, of course. A rental van, parked not a block away from STAR Labs. Inside, two more goons, both known associates of the Penguin. Selina watched from a distance as Batman disabled the vehicle, and the occupants, in mere seconds, an explosion of violence that would have been a joy to watch if it hadn’t come from the man she loved. The danger inherent in the man had been attractive, seductive, the risk involved with flirting with him as she flirted with the law. He’d never held back when they hadn’t been “a thing”, respecting her abilities enough to go full out in his attempts to capture her. Now, knowing how capable of violence he was, and knowing how tender, and loving, and passionate he could be, seemed beyond belief. That this deeply caring, kind, incredible man could inflict such suffering on those he deemed deserving took a suspension of disbelief that Selina wasn’t sure she could sustain.
“Little help,” came Red Robin’s voice over the earpiece.
Batman paused his examination of the goons and their vehicle, still as a statue. “Report.”
“Backup!” Spoiler cut in. “We need backup!”
Batman didn’t pause, didn’t look back, just exploded into movement, heading for STAR Labs’ truck bays. Selina glanced at the unconscious goons, a heartbeat of indecision, then followed. He was already well ahead of her as his voice came over the earpiece, tight with barely controlled emotion: “Twenty seconds.”
Gunfire erupted over the earpiece. Then the blast of some kind of energy weapon. Ahead, as she closed the distance between them, as Batman a blur of black in the night, a beam of fiery red energy boomed out of a closed loading dock door.
“Backup!” Spoiler shrieked, shrill with fear.
“Ten seconds.”
Another explosion. An electronic whine, another blast. Batman ran straight toward the danger.
As Selina wondered about the wisdom of her fiancée’s decision, a familiar voice cut into the audio feed. “Hey Kitty!”
“Bad time, Harley,” Selina answered. Batman dove through the flaming wreckage of the dock door. She followed him, two seconds later.
“I’ll be quick I promise!”
Gunfire erupted again and Selina dove for cover. She’d only had a glance, three goons with assault rifles and another wearing a kind of… techno-thing… around both wrists and strapped to his chest and neck, cables streaming into a wooden crate behind him. No sign of Batman or the kids.
“Harley…”
“You want those Bat-ladies at your bachelorette or what?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Selina answered, glancing around for a better vantage point. She dashed across the truck bay, followed by gunfire, narrowly missed only by grace of her instinctive reflexes.
“It’s a yes or no, Kitty, it ain’t multiple choice.”
Not for the first time Selina regretted giving Harley the frequency of the earpiece she wore. She shot a look around a support column and was rewarded with more gunfire.
“Yes. PLEASE get off the line.” She knew somewhere in the room, Batman and the kids were co-ordinating their attack, and she needed to know where she was needed.
“Hang on, are Spoiler and Orphan even legal to drink?”
That her brilliant and occasionally deranged friend, with all the assaults, thefts, and other crimes she’d committed, was concerned about the legalities of alcohol consumption, amused Selina.
“Really? That’s what you focus on? Whether they’ll be carded?”
“Hey I mighta done lots of bad stuff but I ain’t never contributed to the delinquency of no minor!”
Selina heard the gunshots take on a … more desperate rate of fire, and knew Batman had begun his assault.
“Hold please,” she said, then pressed her ear to pause the audio feed.
She glanced around the column and spotted the goon taking potshots at her, distracted by something in the other direction. Perfect. Out snaked her whip, cracking across the distance between them, wrapping around his neck. She turned, yanked the whip over her shoulder, and was rewarded with a strangled grunt, the clatter of an assault rifle falling to the concrete floor, and a little less gunfire. She immediately dodged to one side in case he wasn’t quite subdued, then disentangled her whip with a practiced flip of her wrist.
Ducking low, she saw her attacker was thoroughly unconscious, so she moved into shadows and made her way along the wall to gain a better view of the fight.
The only ally she saw was Spoiler, who from the way she was dancing around one of the bigger goons, was just buying time, playing with him. One of the twins had several batarangs sticking out of him, soaking his stolen janitor’s jumpsuit dark red, but none of the punctures were fatal. And the other twin, the one in the high-tech harness, was glancing around for someone to shoot.
Just as Selina reached up to activate her earpiece and reconnect to the bat-transmission, the lights went out.
“Finally,” Red Robin’s voice sounded in her ear.
“Good firewall?” asked Spoiler.
“It’s STAR Labs, remember?”
“Quiet.” That single word, spoken so low and softly, a command, a request, a directive from On High. Selina suppressed the urge to grin, though from amusement or fear, she wasn't sure.
The teens immediately fell silent.
“C’mon you brats, come get killed!” the twin in the harness shouted into the dark, the glowing indicators from the weapons strapped to his wrists outlining him in the gloom.
“ENOUGH.”
His voice, her love’s voice, her nemesis for so long, her lover now, her fiancé. Distorted and amplified by the device he wore strapped to his throat, reverb throwing it into every corner of the room, lowered and roughened into an animal’s growl. She’d known the terror of it before, at first, when she was a mere burglar and he an urban legend told to crooks’ kids to keep them from ratting out their parents.
Panic shattered the twin’s already-nasal voice into high-pitched shrieking. “You want some, Batman? You want some?!”
With some hidden trigger and an ear-splitting whine, two beams of bright red light blasted from the wrist-mounts and out into the loading dock’s darkness. Selina’s goggles compensated for the sudden flash, but still she flinched away and dove for cover. In the dark, something on the other side of the dock crashed to the floor.
“That sounded expensive,” Spoiler murmured.
Batman interrupted Red Robin’s expected banter. “Spoiler. Go.”
Spoiler launched herself out of her hiding place, sprinting across the loading bay in seconds, her footfalls loud and obviously designed to attract attention. Selina had known Spoiler to sneak up on Orphan, the only one of the family quieter than Batman himself.
The twin turned to face Spoiler’s approach. Just as the wrist-blasters whined to full power, Spoiler tossed a tiny pellet at the twin’s feet and dove to the side. The blasts scored the concrete floor where Spoiler had been. The pellet began spewing smoke.
The twin began coughing. “Mike! *KAF KAF* C’mon bro, we’re *KAF* getting outta here!”
The twin with the batarangs sticking out of him stumbled towards his brother.
Mick, the twin in the harness, blasted in random directions where the shadows and smoke played on his imagination and terror. Mike crashed into him and draped an arm over Mick’s shoulder, blood loss making him weak.
Together, they began backing away towards the exit.
“Stay back, *KAF KAF* Batman! We’re *KAF KAF KAF* leaving here *KAF*, now!”
“What do we do?” Selina asked.
“Watch,” Red Robin answered. Selina could hear his grin.
The crooks made it to the exit without blasting anything else, but when Mick reached for the emergency release, the shadow came to life.
“Two grown men their size ought not to be able to hit notes that high,” Spoiler said, once Batman was done with the twins.
“You’d be surprised how inspirational B can be,” Red Robin quipped, tapping on a key on his arm-tablet. The docking bay lights came on, revealing the wreckage the criminals had caused.
Selina sauntered out from her hiding place, surveying the damage. “What a mess.”
“Nightwing, Batgirl, report,” Batman said.
“Go for Batgirl.”
“What’s up, big B?”
Even from across the room, Selina could feel Batman suppress the urge to sigh. “Two-Face and Penguin are working together. Find out why.”
“Fine thanks, how are you?” Nightwing laughed. “No, we’re not busy.”
“We’re on it, Batman,” Batgirl answered. She added “You’re incorrigible” but Selina suspected that was not directed towards Batman.
“Red Hood, Robin, Signal, Orphan,” Batman continued as though he hadn’t heard them.
“Go for Signal.”
“Yo, Bats!”
“Father.”
“Yes.”
“Be on the lookout for anything Penguin or Two-Face related. They’re working together.”
“Yes sir.”
“Signal, you don’t have to call him sir. This isn’t the military.”
“Will do. Robin out.”
Orphan didn’t respond, but she usually didn’t.
“What makes you think Harvey’s working with Penguin?” Selina asked her fiancé.
His response was to hold up one finger, asking for patience. “Batwoman,” he said.
“Batman.”
“Be advised, Two-Face and Penguin are-”
“Working together. I know.”
The momentary pause before he replied was the only display of how surprised he was at his cousin`s words. “How?”
“Just took down a drug lab. High-end crank the trust fund kids call ‘Double’ - as in, double your fun.”
A smile almost moved Batman’s lips. Almost. A flicker of his lower lip, nearly invisible to anyone not watching him closely. “You were a trust fund kid.”
Batwoman’s voice conveyed much more amusement than Batman’s. “As were you.”
“Evidence?”
“The room was split down the middle, mirror-image furniture placement.”
“Two-Face.”
“The lab was under a jeweler’s. Well. More of a fence than a legitimate jeweler. Specializes in-”
“Stolen ice. Penguin.”
“There you have it. You?”
“Theft at STAR Labs. Penguin’s men in the getaway truck. Two-Face’s in the loading dock.”
A woman’s voice broke into the conversation. “Batgirl for Batman.”
“Go.”
“I just received a report of a silent alarm triggered over at Kord Industries.”
“Yes.”
“You knew?”
“Yes.”
“Of course he knew,” Nightwing said.
“I got a report just as we entered STAR Labs,” Batman explained. “Two thefts at the same time.”
“Two-Face again?” Red Hood interrupted.
“Why tonight?” asked Red Robin.
“Mondays are usually pretty quiet,” Batgirl answered. “Maybe he was counting on that.”
“Technically it’s past midnight, so it's Tuesday,” Spoiler said. “Get it? Twos-day?”
“Ugh,” Nightwing mock-complained. “Lo, I am slain.”
“That’s… that’s awful,” said Signal.
“Father, if you knew about the other robbery, why not alert any of us to deal with it?”
“Who says he didn’t?” another woman’s voice came over the transmission.
“Bluebird?”
“Hey!”
“Since when are you in town?”
“Since about five hours,” Bluebird replied. “Reported to Batman right away. University is fun and all but sometimes a girl’s gotta get out and spread her wings, you know?”
“So you stopped the robbery?” Red Hood asked.
“What? No. Observe, follow, report, just like Batman asked.”
“Tch. Father, you allowed a crime to be committed?”
Selina saw Spoiler’s head turn suddenly. “GCPD,” the young blonde announced. A second later, Selina heard the sirens as well.
“Go.”
Another single word, and the four of them launched themselves into action. Out the blasted loading bays, the teens launching their batlines into the night, Batman and Catwoman heading for the distantly-parked Batmobile.
Gotham City Police found four well-handcuffed criminals, unconscious and ready for arrest.
In the Batmobile, Selina asked, “Why did you get Bluebird to follow and report, instead of stopping the crime?”
“Small game can flush out larger prey,” Batman answered.
Selina stared at him for a moment, stunned. “We were going into an unknown combat situation.”
“Yes.”
“In which your children were in danger.”
“Spoiler has parents.”
“That’s not the point. The kids were in danger.”
“Yes.”
“Unknown assailants. Unknown abilities, or technology.”
“Yes.”
“And still you were able to order Bluebird to observe, follow, report.”
“... yes?”
Selina shook her head. “How?”
There was a long pause as Batman negotiated the Batmobile through a series of narrow turns, and Selina almost began to think he wouldn’t answer.
“Some people call me the World’s Greatest Detective,” he answered, softly. “I’m not. Tim’s a better detective. Better at spotting anomalies, understanding patterns. Stephanie understands what makes a clue a clue, as opposed to coincidental distractions, dead ends, and red herrings. Dick can interview a witness or a suspect and get them to remember and admit to things they don’t want to talk about or are even surprised they remember. Jason is dogged, determined. He'll track a criminal down if it takes him an eternity. And a surprising font of trivia. He also understands the darker side of humanity, the motivations behind the crimes. Barbara will research until she has a complete, nearly innate understanding of a matter, no matter how obscure. Cassandra sees the tiniest details and the bigger picture simultaneously, an impressive skill.”
Selina smiled, surprised. He was rarely so complementary of his family, not while wearing the suit. “What about Damien?” she asked.
“Damien is still learning,” he replied. “But… he shows promise.”
“And how does this relate to the break-in at Kord?”
“Where I still surpass them all is… I suspect. I anticipate. Two break-ins at two tech companies on a Tuesday? I immediately assumed Harvey’s connected somehow. But why are Penguin’s goons in the van? Are they working together? I don’t know… and when I don’t know something, I need more information. No time to find out on our way into a fight, so, the order for Bluebird to observe, follow, and report. And I wanted to see if she’d follow directions.”
Selina remembered the purple-haired young vigilante as headstrong and opinionated, but willing to work hard. Bluebird had been away for months. University might have changed her in unexpected ways.
“All that in the split-second before we jumped into combat.”
“Well… it was more like three seconds.”
Selina laughed. “The truth at last. The spell is broken. Criminals will rejoice to hear the Batman is slowing down.”
“I was also distracted with wedding plans at the time. The caterer says the fish you wanted has been marked as endangered.”
“Oh. Damn. That was an amazing appetizer, the one we had in Naples last summer? Oh well. I’ll call him in the morning. We can switch it for something else, like that sushi we had in Okinawa.”
“That was good sushi.”
Selina’s eyes glanced to where a sun visor would be in any other car, then pulled her compact out of the bag she kept in the Batmobile for just such an occasion. She checked her face and wiped away a smear of dirt or dust or whatever it was that she’d somehow picked up back at STAR Labs. “Where to now? The night is young.”
“Bluebird’s signal is tracking the criminals to Cobble Hill.”
Selina snapped her compact shut and placed it back in her bag. “Penguin’s old territory.”
His eyes narrowed with determination. “Batman to all agents. Converge on Bluebird.”