Who: Kara, Ollie and a bunch of GCPD bystanders What: Heroism gone wrong Where: Gotham When: Just after this. Warnings/Rating: Green arrows?
Kara was not in the habit of saving Gotham. She'd gotten Jason, Damian and Stephanie to agree about forming a team to work together, but that hadn't actually started yet, and after the encounter with Damian and Jason in Sanctuary, she wasn't sure the team would actually happen. She was in Gotham for completely selfish reasons; she was tired of smooth walls and silence. Sanctuary could approximate noise and bustle, but she knew it was fake, and therefore it felt fake. Normally, she chose Metropolis or Smallville for these outings, considering Gotham too dangerous given her WANTED status there, but Gotham was- There were things in Gotham she cared about, and she felt sure no one would notice her if she didn't wear her suit.
After Jason's and Damian's failed visit, the holographic Argo City had felt even more fake, and she'd wanted air and something that had almost felt like it could be home.
And so, Kara found herself on a street corner, one near the upcoming prison, looking up at the wall that was being erected to keep the violent from the streets. It reminded her of the Phantom Zone, the wall. It reminded her, strangely enough, of home. She frowned, the teenage alien, and she tugged the pink hood of her jacket over her blonde hair. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the pink hoodie over the shirt, and a backpack slung over one shoulder that was stuffed with red and blue fabric that wasn't fabric at all. She held Krypto's leash in one hand, and the dog was happily wagging its golden tail.
When the man ran by with a woman's purse clutched in his fingers, Kara didn't think before following. She was in front of him, super speed and no real thought to hiding it, before he even noticed. He stared, and she grabbed the purse from him, intending to find whoever he'd taken it from. She'd dropped Krypto's leash, but the dog followed her, baring his teeth at the thief.
It should have ended there, but the tap to her shoulder was unexpected, and she spun as the bullets hit her chest. Had she been anyone else, she would have fallen to the floor, dead from the round at such close proximity. But the bullets only tickled, and they made her angry. Krypto growled, and the man (a friend of the thief's) fired again. She stepped forward, and she gripped him beneath the throat, and she lifted him high in the air. The screams around her began then, sirens and she hated that about this city. They didn't do anything to help people, but they were so quick to aid the wrongdoers.
The thief (standing behind her now) tried to pull the purse from her hand, and the contents spilled onto the floor. She had no idea what the baggies of white were, but they went everywhere, and powder made the air thick and cloudy. She sent her elbow back without thought, and the thief went flying into the police car that had just blocked the alley behind her.
"Drop the man, and put your hands where we can see them."
The order, called out through a megaphone, made Kara turn and look at the police officer through the thick haze of white. She dropped the man, just as ordered, and he landed on the ground with a forceful crack.
She would've left then, but another cop car blocked her exit, and a cop approached her and attempted to shackle her. He was talking, but she was upset, and the English words didn't make sense anymore. She spun, sending him flying, and then the bullets started in earnest. And it made her angry. It made her so very angry. She couldn't understand what they were yelling at her through their megaphones. Krypto had run off, her bag in his mouth, after she'd commanded him to.
And then, angrily, she began super-speeding around the two police cars. The hoods were smashed in, the roofs demolished, the lights destroyed. The officers were handcuffed to the car doors, and she held the guns by the time she stopped in the center of the commotion. "Do you like it when people shoot at you? Do you? I wasn't doing anything!" she screamed, Kryptonian and anger, the guns dangerously wavering.
People often thought that the kind of stuff you heard on the police scanner was interesting, full of action, but even in a city like Gotham, the majority of it was quite minor, even boring. People locked out of their vehicles. People fearing that there was an intruder when it was just branches knocking at a window. There was, of course, a number of medical emergencies, minor fender benders, the occasional burglary with no suspects or leads. But then, every so often, something more interesting came across, and when Oliver heard the police scanner spark up with mention of a violent woman who had attacked someone on the streets, that police intervention was proving fruitless, he knew there was something up.
It took only a matter of seconds for him to don the green jacket with the deep hood that hid most of his face, a quiver of arrows, normal and trick, lashed to his back, his bow in hand, and then he was out the door. He might not have been gifted with supernatural abilities, but Oliver Queen prided himself on the abilities he had honed over the years through hard work and intense training. He was quick on his feet, silent as he ran, the earpiece he wore continuing to transmit the talk over the police scanner as things came to a dangerous head only a block away.
Oliver rounded the corner and came to an immediate halt as the scene came in front of him, his bow at the ready, an arrow already notched and drawn back, the line quivering with tension. He recognized her, recognized the power she held, but he did not retreat from the scene. No, he wasn't wholly equipped to handle the girl from Krypton, but that did not mean he would hide and let someone else do it. "Put the guns down, please," Oliver called out, a steady figure cast in shadows fifty feet away, his voice steady and even, full of authority.
The voice belonging to the man in green was just another buzz of noise to Kara. Her ears rang with sounds from blocks and miles away, her emotions making it impossible to control her superhearing. English was nothing, garble and gibberish, and she wanted to put her hands over her ears and scream for everyone to just be quiet. She'd been spending too much time in Sanctuary lately. Sanctuary, where she was a normal girl who had no powers, and therefore her ability to deal with what she was under the yellow sun diminished. Like any skill, hers needed to be honed, and she'd been busy hiding instead.
The guns continued to waver, and her finger pulled a trigger unintentionally. She moved quickly enough to intercept it before it hit one of the shackled officers, but it put her close enough for the man to grab. Amid the screams of onlookers, she fought him off with an elbow that shattered his nose and cheekbone and left him howling in bloody pain.
"Be quiet!" she screamed in Kryptonian, and a SWAT team came, shields and more bullets aimed at her face and chest. She wanted to cry. And, just like before, she hated this place. She wanted to fire the guns. She did. She wanted to just shoot these men of the law who didn't understand that she'd been trying to help.
"You are under arrest," the megaphones informed.
She stepped away from the man whose face she had shattered, and she looked up. There were two helicopters overhead, but she could bring them down and fly out of here.
Oliver watched it happen with a steady eye, the man that grabbed at her, the blood that suddenly poured from his nose after she broke the bones with an elbow to the face. He hadn't had the opportunity, or privilege, as it were, to tangle often with any of the Kryptonians, but he had learned enough about them over the years to know that they were not to be trifled with. Moving slowly, Oliver swapped out arrows, another one produced with a tip that glowed with an intense green light, even in the darkness of the night. "Stand down!" he yelled out sharply to the officers that had appeared, "Stand down and hold your fire. I'm reporting from the JLA."
His eyes narrowed for a moment, the sound of the helicopters overhead, the spotlights that shone down, the sound of the officers, the SWAT team that had gathered, a considerable amount of attention brought to him for just a brief moment. He ignored it all and, with a slight adjustment of his aim, he settled his gaze upon Kara as she looked up towards the helicopters, and then the arrow was released, true to its target, a swift shot in the dark that came without sound, without warning, and moments after the first was released, another was notched at the ready as he waited.
The noise in her head was too loud to decipher who was close and who was far, and her translator wouldn't have been able to make sense of the words JLA, even if she'd heard them. She didn't know anything about any of the Justice Leagues. But she knew very, very well how much the leaders of this country wanted to lock her up and experiment on her. She knew they wanted to use her to find a way to permanently stop Kryptonians. Or, worse, to find a way to make others like them.
In Sanctuary, there was a cloning chamber. She'd found it weeks after landing on this planet, and it had made it very clear what her father had been working on when he'd been removed from Krypton's council. The fact that there were empty pods in the chamber terrified her. The fact that here were slumbering clones terrified her even more. She hadn't opened the closed, occupied pods. She hadn't wanted to know, and she'd never entered the room again.
But she knew what the government wanted. This place wasn't like Krypton. They wouldn't frown on a super-army, however much they hated her and Kal.
She was trying to decide whether to drop the guns, or whether to risk the explosion if she went too high with them, when the arrow landed firmly in the soft spot between chest and shoulder. She looked down, young and confused, and she wondered why it hurt. She hadn't seen the flash of green at the arrow's tip.
It wasn't as bad as the pain from Deadshot's bullet, but she fell to her knees, sick and already turning greenish. But she kept her grip on the guns, and she fired at the first officer that stepped forward, getting him soundly in the shin. She tried to crawl back, away, guns still held in both hands and pointed at anything that approached.
Oliver watched as the events unfolded, a quick flurry of action that might have been difficult to follow had his attention not been so focused. But he was paying attention, he saw that his arrow had hit true, and the moment it had, he was stepping forward, through the line of officers and SWAT that were lined up, ready to act upon something they didn't understand. "I need to everyone to back away," Oliver instructed the officers as he stepped past him, his attention still wholly focused on the downed girl even as she started to crawl away, those guns steadied at everything going on around her. His concern wasn't so much for the officers as medical treatment would soon be on them, but for the still very dangerous Kryptonian that was on a killing edge.
He moved towards her then, steady steps even with the guns that continued to threaten, and when he spoke, his voice was low and even, meant to be calming even if he could not truly be considered a friend. "I need you to put the guns down," Oliver said slowly, approaching even as she retreated, his eyes shadowed by the hood he wore. "If you do not, I will be forced to take more drastic measures." Not that he intended on letting her get away, not by any means, but he didn't want to use more force than was necessary.
Through the haze of green and pain, Kara saw the hooded man approaching. She had no idea who he was. She'd never encountered him in the past. But she knew the weapon he held had injured her, and that made her hate him. It showed in the bright blue, tear-filled eyes that stared at him when she lifted her head, the blonde superchild. She had never, until coming to this world, experienced violence, with the exception of that final moment when her father killed her mother. She had never, until coming to this world, wanted to hurt anyone. But she wanted to hurt him, She wanted to cry, and she wanted to hurt him. She wanted her mother, and she wanted home. "Why are you doing this to me?!" she called out in Kryptonian. She didn't understand that the man in green had an agenda, but she understood that the people here feared her, and she assumed he was like them.
The gun shook in her fingers, and she almost pulled the trigger. In the end, she didn't manage it, but she did manage to fire a line of laser-red heat from her eyes. A do not cross line, as she tried to lurch to her feet. If she could just get up. The ground flamed, and she dropped the guns as she stood and swayed, looking every bit the drunk teenager for just a moment. "Leave me alone!"
Oliver didn't know Kryptonian, didn't know if the words she shouted were threats or something else, but he was wise enough not to act rashly on them. Instead, Oliver held his ground, the arrow still notched, the bow still thrumming with tension, and as the gun in her hand shook, as she fired out that line of laser red heat, Oliver moved to the side sharply, releasing a second arrow a heartbeat later, his heart beating quickly as adrenaline soared through him. When she finally rose, swaying precariously, Oliver drew and released another arrow, its tip glowing the same green, though he was fast running out of the small number of arrows with the Kryptonite heads. It wasn't the preferred way of dealing with someone, but she wasn't normal, she wasn't like most of those that he had faced over the years; she represented a danger that he had been tasked with controlling, and control it he would.
The second arrow made her scream, impotent and afraid, and she couldn't even replicate the lasers then. She had a second where she was grateful of the silence. With the kryptonite in her body, the sounds that tormented her were gone, her super-hearing disappeared along with the noise. It was the third arrow that finally brought her to her knees. She crumbled like a doll, and she looked completely harmless on the ground, blonde and pale, the kryptonite making her sickly green. Her breathing was shallow and labored, and her eyelids fluttered once before closing entirely. Her last thought was blissful, thankful. It wouldn't hurt anymore, and maybe her mother would be waiting once she woke up. And then there was nothing at all.
A hand shot out to prevent any of the other officers or SWAT team from approaching, his gaze on the girl as she crumpled to the ground, her skin already tinged green with the Kryptonite. Oliver didn't say anything for a long while, waiting, judging, and only when he was sure that she had been properly subdued did he lower his arm. "We'll take care of the reports for this," he called out to the officers that had gathered, a hand coming up to trigger his comm. "If you have any questions, refer them to the JLA. I'll have people here shortly for clean up." A button was pressed and he spoke quietly, swiftly, to the person on the other end, instructing them to ready the containment unit. He was coming in with one of the Kryptonians.
His bow was slung over his shoulder before he stooped to gather the girl in his arms, and then Oliver was gone, his heart a little heavy at how things had gone, but his conscience light; this was the right thing. This was the reason he was doing what he was. To keep more incidences like this from affecting a public that wasn't prepared.