. (spacecowboys) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-08-16 19:57:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman, door: dc comics |
Who: The Bat and the Cat
What: The Bat gets tricked into helping with a little JLA assignment (1/2)
Where: S.T.A.R. Labs
When: Just before Bat-mite
Warnings/Rating: None
It was just a game.
Selina told herself that as she prowled around the perimeter of Gotham's installation of S.T.A.R. Labs. The job, though, wasn't a game. Specializing in machinery, S.T.A.R. Labs was tucked away in the middle of everything, in Gotham's midtown. One of thirty such facilities in the world, Selina's work with the JLA had sent her to all kinds of places like this one in the past year. She'd seen more as a little government pawn than she ever had as a kitten in a jewelry store, and she'd found out that there were worse things than very, very rich socialites who didn't care about the starving lower-class citizens they were constantly stomping into the ground.
In her Gotham, the one the kitty cat had spent the past seven years in, she'd been in and out of S.T.A.R. Lab facilities all around the country. Her Bat, in one of the moments where he actually talked to her like something more than a catsuit, hadn't liked her newfound profession. It had been one of the few moments in seven years of nothing that she'd actually thought he cared. After all, she was nothing more than a suicide squad member without the protection of the squad. They sent her in blind, because she was expendable and, if she got lucky, she made it home.
Well, seeing as she'd issued a little challenge to this Bat, she figured she had a better chance of seeing the inside of her penthouse again than she did during her other missions. If, that was, he followed the signs to find her.
They'd been simple, really, because the kitty cat didn't want to stump him early on. A small jewelry hit there, a bank vault break-in there, a stop by Gotham PD to pull up a digital map of the midtown area. Little breadcrumbs for a Bat, and she really didn't know how he'd compare to the one she'd spent the last seven years being generally ignored by.
By the time she made it past the security that surrounded S.T.A.R. Labs, she was already running high on adrenaline, which was perfect for the kitty cat. Barbed wire, lasers, cameras everywhere, and just the kind of challenge that got her purring. It was a game, then, even though it wasn't, and she crouched on the roof of the large, private facility, moving every few minutes to avoid patrols and the surveillance cameras.
Dressed in familiar black, she was missing the trademark cowl, and her long hair was loose, save for the visor she wore, and which she pulled down over her eyes as she carefully bypassed the security on the air duct she intended to drop down into.
Braced against the tight fit of the duct, she screwed the duct's cover back up from the inside, and she only wasted a second to see if she heard the rustling of any Bat wings, before dropping down a story to the junction below.
A challenge of this nature was, admittedly, a welcome change of pace from what had consumed his time for the past few months. Calm in Gotham both preceded and proceeded the storm, but the threat of a man like Jonathan Crane paled in comparison to what loomed on the horizon now. Arkham City, he suspected, was only the beginning. Power corrupted, and those at the top always had farther to fall. To say Bruce distrusted authority would be an understatement, and that distrust stretched far beyond the politicians of Gotham into the sphere beyond, to those who had stood by while Bane threatened to destroy his city; he wouldn’t tolerate their interference now, not when they’d been content to sit back and do nothing while millions of lives were threatened. He might have been one man lacking in superpowers, but to underestimate him would be a grave mistake indeed.
Yet, for now, he could push all that aside. For Selina it had been seven years, for him only months, but the familiarity of the chase settled comfortably into his bones. This, he knew. She might be different now, older, but this didn’t change. She ran, he chased, and inevitably he would catch her. It was a dynamic Bruce had lacked in his Gotham, but that was a memory now, far away. This Gotham was his now. He’d missed it, missed her, and this was the only way he could think of to make things right.
Her trail was easy to follow. Years, months, and he still knew what to look for. The fact that he was one step behind didn’t bother him in the slightest, because the Bat wasn’t worried about not being able to catch up. The jewelry store, the bank, it was like connecting the dots until he paused on the roof of the Gotham PD to peruse a copy of the map she’d pulled. The area wasn’t impossibly large, but he needed to narrow down his scope, and from there it was simply a matter of elimination.
There were numerous aspects of this Gotham that had been unfamiliar to him, and S.T.A.R. Labs were one of them. He’d learned the ins and outs of the city early on, however, adding onto the knowledge he already possessed, and he knew exactly what the building was before he was within even twenty or so feet of it. This kind of security was a real challenge, nothing like that of banks or prisons or the now-destroyed Arkham Asylum. But he would be a poor excuse for a Bat if he allowed some high-security facility to thwart him; timing was key, and he slipped past cameras and patrols and triggers like a silent shadow, there one moment and gone the next. Selina was nowhere in sight by the time he’d reached the roof, but he was confident that she was here, somewhere. He wasn’t sure why she’d led him here, exactly, though he intended to find out.
The ventilation shaft he chose was barely large enough to accommodate him; bypassing security was the easy part. With some careful maneuvering, however, the Bat slid out of side and eased himself down, a slow descent, as he celebrated his cowl to transmit schematics of the facility and scan for any signs of activity.
She was around the corner by the time he landed, and it was a deliberate little game, throwing the micro-detonating bolas behind her as she rounded yet another corner. She was going in the wrong direction, but that was intentional. She pressed back against a wall, and she waited for the small explosion - harmless, really - to bring him and the guards in the adjacent corridor running. It was a risk, setting off the alarms, but she needed to get in and out, and as long as he was here, well, the least he could do was help. She was good, but this place required more than one little Cat to get out of in one piece. But, then, the JLA didn't care about that. She was testing the waters. If she got what she came for? Good kitty. If she died? Well, there was no one to answer to, was there?
And maybe the kitty cat felt a little guilty. In her Gotham, she wouldn't have cared. Her Bat could have fought off all the men in the facility without a scratch, and she wouldn't have felt an iota of guilt at using him to net her prize. But for this Bat, for him, she felt a little sorry. After all, he'd been nicer to her than her Bat had ever been. Oh, she'd hated him for it at first. When she'd gotten back to her Gotham and found herself unbearably alone, she'd hated every single moment of his kindness. It had made ending up in a place where he didn't really care so hard. She reminded herself of that, as she listened to footsteps, and she leaned her head back against the wall and reminded herself to think of priorities.
Priority one: If she didn't finish this job, she'd end up on the Suicide Squad. And it was called the Suicide Squad for a reason.
No. Scratch that. Priority one: Just get the job done.
Once she was sure the guards had been lured out of their hallway, in order to investigate the explosion (and, hopefully, the Bat), she moved. She was silent as she crossed the intersect in the hall, not even looking to see how the Bat was holding out against the five guards she'd sent his way. She made her way down one hall, to the room she'd been headed for in the first place, and she crouched in front of the door, working at the intricately coded door lock and listening of anyone approaching as she worked. Locks, now that was something the kitty cat could normally get behind. Breaking combinations made her purr, and it was almost enough to make the guilt of throwing him to the dogs to save her own hide melt away. Almost.
Once she heard the telltale snick of the lock, she waited. She'd need him in the next room.
Within ten seconds of his boots touching the ground, the Bat had already mapped out his next course of action. Fifteen seconds, and he had a contingency route. Twenty, twenty-five seconds, he was moving, and he knew as soon as the explosion sounded that it was going to draw unwanted attention. Or, perhaps, not so unwanted on Selina’s end. His steps slowed to a halt, and he listened to the approaching footsteps as he considered his options. He could backtrack, stay out of sight, and fall behind. Stealth over brute strength. Or, conversely, he could plow through whoever and whatever stood in his path.
Considering his mood, he was more inclined to opt for the latter.
Of the five, two rounded the corner first. One managed to shout before he took a fist to the windpipe and all he could do was wheeze helplessly, the snap of bone sending him down face-first a moment later. The other never made a sound. Those three that remained came at him with guns drawn, yelling about Batman and security breaches and ordering him to stand down as though that was something he might actually consider. Wise men would have shot immediately, but these men were not wise, and the Bat had already disarmed one before a single shot was fired. He aimed a high kick at the unarmed man’s chest before going low, another shot ringing out, before the man stumbled straight into his comrade with enough force to knock them both over. That left one, and a batarang prevented him from pulling the trigger in time to stop the mass of black and kevlar that propelled itself at him. Two moves, no more, and the man slid down along the wall into a crumpled heap. The other two were still struggling to untangle themselves and stand; he made quick work of them as well.
Barely winded, the Bat reoriented himself, turned, and continued down the hallway. So far the security here was disappointing, not that he would have chosen to become detected so easily, so soon. Regardless, he hadn’t lost Selina’s trail, and he didn’t bother trying to keep his footfalls silent as he approached.
She had her hand on the door when he rounded the corner, those footfalls letting her know precisely when he was going to step into her line of sight. She stood there a moment longer than was necessary, without even meaning to. There was something about seeing him in the suit that dragged her right back to her version of Gotham. Oh, it was wrong. His suit had always been wrong. Too heavy and bulkier than she was used to, harder and more unforgiving, but it was still the Bat. This wasn't the art gallery, and she wasn't in a dress, and he wasn't in a tux. And, too, her suit was off, and she knew it. If she'd never come here in the first place, she would have never seen that silly little movie, and she would have grown into a very different Cat. She knew that, but she'd shrugged it off years ago. There was nothing she could do about it, just like there was nothing she could do about the fact that she wasn't the kitten that he'd been interested in once upon a time.
Marginally interested in, she reminded herself. After all, he hadn't gone flapping his wings at her for months, either.
Her mossy green eyes slid over all that black, down and up, and then her lips turned up in a lush-red smile. "What took you so long?" she purred.
Beyond the door, the security would be no laughing matter, and there wasn't time to stand in a hall and talk, not until all this was done. But she wanted to linger. She didn't want to open the door and face the music, and the very fact that she was vacillating made her angry with herself. She was here to do a job. She wasn't here to wrap herself around him, no matter how much she wanted to. Not until this was done, at least. And then there was the teensy matter of pride.
Her hand twitched on the door's lock, one press away from opening it. "I'm glad the lone wolf managed to get out for a night."
She didn't hesitate before pushing open the door and ducking inside. For a second, the room was bright and illuminated. It showed a huge lab beyond, expansive and full of war equipment, ending in a large circle of metal that glowed under the bright laboratory lights and reached a good twelve feet into the air. But the kitty cat wasn't after the big, shiny toy. No, she was headed for the vault at the back of the room. The only problem was that there was only one way in, and she'd just walked through it. No ducts, no escape hatches, and a good dozen men between her and her prize.
And that's where the Bat came in.
"Hey, boys!" she called out, and then she used the electricity disruptor in the belt that rode low on her hips to douse the room in chaotic darkness. The men charged, she heard their heavy footfalls, and she swung her whip to the top of that delicate circle of metal and used it to vault across the space.
Before, at the gala, Bruce had been looking for the Selina he remembered. By the time he realized that she’d been right under his nose the entire time, he hadn’t had much opportunity to really study her as he would have liked. Oh, he’d sized her up during their little banter, but looking at her as a familiar stranger and looking at her as Selina Kyle were two very, very different perspectives. Now, his steps slowed as he neared, but his gaze gave nothing away, his appraisal near imperceptible. The suit was different. She was different. But if he looked hard enough, past what seven years had changed, he thought he still saw the woman he’d known, that unmistakable gleam in her eyes something that couldn’t be replicated. He gave her a look which clearly said he knew that she knew very well what had caused his delay; he wasn’t stupid enough to think the explosion and the guards were mere coincidence.
This was no art gallery. It wasn’t even a bank, and the Bat was admittedly curious as to why here. Half formed suspicions swirled in the back of his mind as he regarded her for a long, long moment, as though thinking of how to best break the silence. But then she spoke again, and his eyes narrowed. No one but Nigma knew about what he’d become at the party; he wouldn’t have told her, would he?
“I’m not,” he began, but then she was pushing the door open and words were forgotten in favor of pursuit. His strides were long and swift, and she was only a step or two ahead of him by the time he crossed the threshold, before the door swung closed, and stepped into the room. What he saw made him pause, however, and it was difficult to keep from becoming distracted by what was in the lab other than her. His gaze was drawn upward, and had he the time he would have liked to properly scan the equipment, but as it was, well, Selina’s sights were clearly set elsewhere and they weren’t alone either. He’d simply have to make do with what his cowl picked up.
By the time she called out, the Bat was beginning to feel unpleasantly like he was being led along to serve her purposes, an oversized mass of brute strength that could clear a path for her. He didn’t like the feeling, but he didn’t have much of a choice when it came to the guards; he’d have to deal with them, and then he’d find out what she wanted so badly. When the lights went out it was actually a point in his favor, really. He did well in the darkness. He became invisible, soundless and part of the blackness itself, the heavy footfalls of his opponents making it all too easy to pick them off one, two, even three at a time. The Bat didn’t waste time; his strikes were quick and merciless, and the room was filled with the sound of bodies hitting the floor, kevlar meeting flesh, and bones cracking and snapping. A couple of shots were fired, maybe a few at the most, but all missed, and the only voices in the air were the guards and their cries of pain and anger.
“I’m beginning to get the feeling,” he growled, using a similar tactic of grappling across the expanse of the lab for the sake of ease, “that you brought me here to do your dirty work.” His weight was loud when he hit the ground, a few feet away from the vault she seemed so interested in.
She would have liked the opportunity to tease him longer about his little wolfy evening, that narrowing of his eyes making it very, very tempting, and she stashed the desire away for later. After all, the kitty cat had always been good at multitasking, and there was still another vault to break into. As for him assessing her, she wondered what he saw that was different than the night at the gala. For all his protesting, she knew he'd had absolutely no idea who she was until she went for the painting. Maybe that shouldn't have stung as badly as it had, but the kitty cat could be as prideful as any other girl, and there were few constants in her ever-changing little life. The Bat being attracted to her? That was a constant, and he'd thrown her off that footing that night. And maybe she had lost the ability to differentiate Bat from Bruce, somewhere along the line. After all, the Bat had never come clean with her in her Gotham. Not in the five years before she'd ended up here, and not in the seven years she'd spent back there. For her, there was no Bruce Wayne, not really.
She was crouched in front of the vault by the time she heard his voice over her shoulder, and she'd only been half listening as he took down the men in the weapon room. She didn't worry about him, because she knew he could handle anything in this place, and it made it easier for her to concentrate on the triple lock on the large, large vault. Overhead, in the dark, whirring indicated some kind of inaccessible ventilation system in the ceiling, beyond the indestructible metal that lined the room, and heading into the vault. It was telling, that the vault need oxygen, and it let the kitty cat know she was in the right place.
"Me?" she purred innocently, sparing a glance at him over her shoulder in the darkness. Her visor was up, but she didn't need the night goggles to work on the lock. All the kitty cat needed was sound and her fingers, and she didn't need to see Mr. Tall, Dark and Looming to know where he was standing behind her. "I would never, ever use you that way, Bat," she promised, the entire statement a purred falsehood.
Overhead, the emergency lights clicked on, bright red shadowed in the dark, and she looked back up at him as the last click sounded beneath her ear. "By my count, you've got a dozen men coming from our entrance point, and I think we're looking at two, maybe three in the vault," she warned him, and there was something like worry in her mossy green eyes for just a second.
She stood, fingers going around the whip at her waist, black twitching and claws extended from the black. She glanced toward the door, intentionally waiting for the distraction of footfalls before opening the vault door, because chaos worked in everyone's favor sometimes. She moved close to him, grace and a sway of hips before crowding all that black kevlar and needing to tip her head back to look at him, even with the heels she wore. "Tell me, Bat, have you seen your little friend from the basement again?" Lush red lips, and dark green eyes beyond her eyemask, and then she moved back and pulled open the vault door as chaos slammed into the room behind them.
This was no simple jewel heist. The Bat was well aware of that, and despite the distraction that Selina herself posed he was very, very interested in what was in the vault, albeit for entirely different reasons than he suspected she held. The security, the weaponry, none of it sat well with him. He didn’t like it. Closer, a few steps, and the whirring had him cocking his head as he looked up for the source of the sound. A ventilation system, but why? And then, of course, came why she was after what was behind the secured door in the first place. What had happened to the banks, the museums, the galas? It occurred to him that she hadn’t exactly elaborated on what she’d spent the seven years in her Gotham doing, and maybe whatever it was had bumped her up from petty crime to breaking into secure facilities that housed a great deal of technology. “For some reason, Cat, I’m not all that inclined to believe you,” he remarked dryly. He wasn’t angry, he couldn’t be, but that didn’t mean he liked being used.
Her warning of the men approaching elicited no reaction from him. The lights bathed him in a red glow, darkened by the black, and she might as well have stated the obvious for all the concern he showed. The Bat knew what he was capable of. He’d been taught a long, long time ago to take on multiple opponents at once, and those numbers had exceeded a dozen. A dozen was laughable. Whether or not he liked being used, he was here now and he had no intention of allowing Selina to be harmed or detained. His gaze was steady and unmoving as she approached, masking the fact that he’d missed this, missed her, far more than he had even expected of himself. But then, then she asked about his friend in the basement, and his eyes widened just a touch, nearly enough to be unnoticeable. Nigma must have told her. Of course, he should have expected as much.
“He told you.” Three simple words, something like a frown beginning to pass over his features before she opened the vault and the footfalls at his back exploded into loud, immediate noise. He knew how many were there before he turned, and he gave her an exasperated look before the first fool was bold enough to get too close. Maybe they thought all that armor would slow him down; they were wrong. The Bat spun quickly, too quickly for the guard to react, but the rest drew their guns even as he slammed his fist into their comrade's face and swept his feet clear out from under him.
And then there was chaos, darkness and red light and bullets, sparks and a line of blue that he realized, angrily, was some sort of electrical weapon that his suit would likely deflect-- though he wasn’t in the mood to test it out. Wherever Selina was, she was on her own for a few minutes; he was eleven men in, eleven armed men, and after a few narrow misses he grappled out of the fray and used height to his advantage. He was up, they were down, and he kept moving, darting down for attacks before swinging back up again. His intention was to confuse them, to frustrate them because frustration and anger made men sloppy, and while they might have been highly trained they were still men. Their impatience got the better of them, and when they were scattered and shouting the Bat dropped back down and went at them hard, fast, and relentless. It was a challenge, to be sure, but if he was being honest with himself he could almost enjoy it.
No, this wasn't a simple jewelery heist. Ten points for the Bat.
And there was something thrilling in the way his gaze didn't falter as she neared him. It had been so very long since she'd played with the Bat that was standing in front of her, and there were enough dissimilarities between this version of the Dark Knight and her own that it was like playing with someone completely different. Standing there, the kitty cat wasn't about to admit to missing this, but she had missed it. He hadn't reached out and grabbed her yet, all bruising fingers and gauntlets. He hadn't growled, not even once. She'd forgotten how different he was. Close up, it was harder to pretend nothing had changed, and it was hard to remember that everything had. "You never did trust me, Bat," she purred, agreeing with his statement he shouldn't believe her. After all, she was supposed to betray him. And maybe she'd never been sure she would be able to, but she was very, very good at pretending.
She liked the way he didn't budge, and she liked the way he didn't even prepare for the men that would be coming at him in mere seconds. And while this dozen men would hardly be laughable, she wasn't going to worry about him. No, that was the good thing about working with any version of this man; he let her take care of herself, and she trusted him to do the same. The kitty cat hated working with a partner for one reason - it increased the chances of ending up dead. But not with the Bat. That was never a concern with the man in the cowl. "He didn't need to tell me anything," she assured him, a long claw tracing the bat symbol on his chest, knowing he wouldn't actually be able to feel it through the thick kevlar, just like he wouldn't be able to feel the hip she pressed against his outer thigh as she moved against him, feline grace and curves beneath slick black. "Oh, don't worry. I wasn't in the basement with you," she told him, her lips a smug curve that hid any jealousy she felt very, very well. "You'd know if I had been."
His exasperated look made her smile turn more genuine, but then there was chaos, and the time for rubbing herself against him had passed.
She was in the vault before he finished taking down the first man, and the sound of her whip hissed through the open vault from inside. She didn't stay in, oddly enough. She lured the men out, and she went to very, very significant pains to do it. It would have been easier to take them down in the confined space, and it was a waste of time and a tactical failure to lure them into a space with room to flee and with space to fight. But that was precisely what she did. They were trained assassins, these men, and she had to resort to agility, winding her whip around their legs and using their chests and shoulders as climbing blocks, tangling two of them together and then slamming their guns against their temples as they went down. She took the time to disarm - another waste of precious seconds - and the third man managed to get her in a bear grip as a result. He was a harder fight, this man, and a good jab to her jaw left the world spin-dark for a moment, before she slammed her lead back against him and followed it all up with a roundhouse kick that took him down.
She was breathing harder than she wanted to admit, blood on her lip and cheeks flush, once her men were down, and she looked up just in time to see a small face at the vault door. She waved the little girl back in, no surprise at all to see her there, the red-lit darkness making it hard for her to tell if all of the Bat's men were down. She didn't want the girl out until it was safe, but the little girl didn't listen. She stepped just past the vault door, black hair and wide and dark eyes, clutching a little pink rabbit.
Trust was a slippery thing. Easily lost but not so easily gained, when put in the right person it worked in his favor but could bring him to his knees if he wasn’t careful. The number of people he trusted was very, very small, but Selina was wrong when she said he’d never trusted her. He had. The Bat had yet to decide if he still did now, but before Ra’s and before she’d aged he had trusted Selina Kyle. “Didn’t I?” He turned the question on her, a tilt of his head and a gaze which gave absolutely nothing away. If nothing else, however, he still thought her capable, and while the desire to protect still lingered beneath the surface he respected her enough to not hover over her shoulder. He was there and would intervene if necessary, but he knew she wasn’t a child and didn’t intend to treat her as such.
His certainty that Nigma had divulged his secret wavered as she spoke, and he frowned as she traced the symbol on his chest, not because of the sensation or the action itself but rather what she said. If he hadn’t told her, and she wasn’t the woman in the basement (he imagined that faint pang of disappointment, surely) then that only left one other explanation, one he didn’t particularly want to consider. He looked--stared, more like--and it was only the ensuing chaos that saved him from responding.