Truth & Justice I #1

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Truth & Justice #1

Written by JC Roberts (Calamityjamie)
Edited by Daniel Dyer (Spider-Man Beyond)

“Hey now, all you killers. Leave your lights on.
You’d better leave your lights on.”
~ “Put Your Lights On,” Carlos Santana

He didn’t belong here, in the light, and he would have been uncomfortable without having to fight the natural urge to protect his eyes from the brightness by squinting. The forbidding glower fixed upon his face was as much a part of his costume as the Kevlar-laced midnight blue spandex. A squint would have marred the effect, though in his own mind, it was compromised already. His outfit was tailored for the night and he always felt slightly foolish appearing in it during the daytime. The light revealed too much: the ultimate silliness of a grown man wearing a stylized bat costume and the lines in what showed of his face under the mask. The dark masked those things, the foolishness and the imminent sense of approaching age and weakness. Unfortunately, Harvey had no awareness of his discomfort and in all probability would have been childishly pleased to have evoked even the most subtle version of these thoughts. This was why they were all here now, after all: because Harvey Dent wanted attention.

He was here more out of obligation than need; Harvey’s psychosis had been under enough medically-induced control over the past decade so that he hadn’t actually caused harm to anyone. However, he was still classified by the Arkham docs as a “maximum risk” (and by the newspapers as a “supervillian”), which meant not to take him seriously was, at best, bad PR, and, at worst, an insult to Harvey that might lead to an escalation of his disruptive behavior.

Extracting Harvey from the campus watchtower where he was currently holed up would not be particularly difficult, but it would be depressing, as contact with Harvey was bound to be. Delaying the process served to extend his sense of discomfort, but Harvey was no longer a young man and it seemed prudent, at this point, to wait for the ambulance that had been summoned moments earlier at his request.

“Batman.” A uniformed cop with black, shaggy hair moved cautiously toward him. The cop looked about 30. His name tag read “Ieiri.” He sported a faux casual expression that didn’t remotely mask his excitement at having the chance to talk to a man he clearly considered Gotham’s Great Legend. Many cops looked at Batman like that; those who didn’t tended to wear a less guarded mask, one expressing various degrees of contempt that a “fuckin’ vigilante” should get so much respect after decades of desecrating the law. Batman was used to both looks; the former was considerably more common, but neither moved him. “Arkham’s got a shrink comin’. Told us to wait.”

Great. “How long?”

“Don’t know. Should be here. He’s late.”

He had very little use for Arkham Asylum’s psychiatric staff. Clearly, none of them had done Harvey much good. Twenty years of institutionalizing had done nothing to put a stop to these escapes. That this doctor couldn’t muster the professionalism to show up in good time did nothing to motivate Batman to cooperate.

The Bat said, “The ambulance gets here and I go.”

Officer Ieiri nodded solemnly and went to inform his supervisor. Batman was not alone in his contempt for Arkham’s criminal psychiatrists and no one was going to side with one against the Caped Crusader.

Batman’s annoyance increased as a red dented VW Beetle – the older version – peeled into the parking lot. Probably the shrink, which would delay and doubtlessly complicate what would have been a simple snatch-and-catch. The car had Metropolis plates. He frowned.

The driver’s door flung open with an ugly squeak and a pair of blue-jeaned legs stretched out, extending, giving the driver balance while she reached into the passenger seat to pick something up that was too big to be a clipboard or a file folder. As she pulled herself out of the car, she was met by Officer Ieiri, whose expression was now one of alarm and a little anger.

“No one’s ordered a pizza here; this is a crime scene.”

The driver was a small, striking young woman with shoulder-length dark brown hair, which she now pushed out of her eyes. “Oh. Hang on.” She reached into the car and pulled out a lab coat. Without bothering to put it on, she indicated the name embroidered in green cursive over the left breast pocket. “Dr. Martha Kent. New guy at Arkham, so of course, they send me here to look like a fool. Sorry I’m late.”

Clearly, the “new guy” was nothing like the officer expected. He took a step back and asked, “You stopped to get a pizza?”

She shrugged. “Everyone’s gotta eat. Got a phone line established? Or at least megaphone?”

The cop hesitated, then nodded toward Batman. “I dunno. Crusader said he’d grab the guy as soon as the ambulance shows.”

Dr. Kent’s eyes wandered towards Batman’s as if she’d just noticed his presence, which he knew damn well she had not. He could feel his jaw clench as his discomfort at the scene in general became profound annoyance at her in particular. Her jaw was clenched, too, in a not-completely successful attempt to conceal an amused smile.

“Well, grabbing him doesn’t seem very respectful,” she said. “How about giving me a chance to talk to him? It’s better if he decides to come down on his own.”

Ieiri looked at Batman, who nodded darkly. He didn’t like being taken by surprise, but this was his own fault. He’d blown off two phone messages from Clark Kent. They had clearly involved the presence of his daughter in Gotham City. He remembered vaguely Clark’s mentioning, months before, that Martha had hoped for a residency at Arkham, but he hadn’t really been paying attention; there was a point early on in Bruce Wayne’s reluctant conversations with Clark that he just tuned the farm boy out.

She practically sauntered over to the megaphone – which sat on the hood of one of the police cars – pizza box under arm. Harvey was paranoid about electronic objects and was certainly not in possession of a cell phone. Martha Kent’s exuberance, Batman thought, was inappropriate under these circumstances; it was irritating, but not out of character. It was just how you were when you were raised in a poster family for terminal wholesomeness.

“Mr. Dent,” she shouted into the megaphone. “I’m Martha Kent from Arkham. I’ve got a pizza. You hungry?”

There was a moment of dead silence. There was some eye-rolling among the cops, a few of whom jumped a moment later when a gravelly voice shouted back, “Open the box!”

She set down the megaphone, opened the white pizza box and held it over her head. A moment later, Dent shouted again, “Put down the box and spin around.”

Still smiling, she turned in a slow circle, then pushed one of the spaghetti straps from her thin black blouse a little farther up her shoulder and retrieved the pizza and the megaphone. Before she could speak into it, however, Dent shouted, “I’d rather have a blow job.”

Batman, who had observed Harvey’s interactions with female staff over the years, was not surprised by the comment. Harvey liked to shock. Martha Kent’s response, however, did surprise him.

She examined a piece of paper on the top of the pizza box and spoke into the megaphone. “Nope, sorry, this coupon’s for a free pizza. Nothing here about a blow job. Pretty good pizza, though. Sartelli’s. How about it?”

There was more silence, but now several of the cops were grinning at her in reluctant admiration. Finally, Harvey spoke, and it was another surprise: “Come up alone.”

During the hour Martha Kent was up alone in the Gotham U. watchtower with Harvey Dent, the sun started to fade. Several times, Ieiri, and, finally, his sergeant, asked Batman whether he might want to at least check on her safety, but he refused. Safety wasn’t an issue here – not that he could tell them that – and now he just wanted to see the look on her face when she returned to the ground empty-handed. Except that she didn’t. She and Harvey came down together, the empty pizza box between them, and Harvey climbed docilely into the ambulance that finally arrived. Martha Kent slid into the vehicle next to him; her attention focused solely on her patient. The cluster of cops and Batman himself had seemingly disappeared from her world, and when the ambulance took off and the squad cars peeled away, he actually wondered for a few moments how she’d get back to her car before deciding it wasn’t his problem and that it would serve her right if she returned to find it stripped.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Harvey Dent’s re-appearance at Arkham Asylum half an hour later under the supervision of the institution’s newest fellow was a happy surprise for Devon Persky, whose two-year directorship had been a succession of disasters. He had hired Martha Kent against the advice of most of the board of governors, three-quarters of whom thought her secondary occupation was a gigantic red flag. Persky was a decent administrator plagued with a high-turnover staff, several of whom had made bad decisions triggered by nerves or even pure panic. Arkham was a scary place to work and the mortality rate for shrinks was significantly higher than… well, than anywhere else. It was hard to do good things under those conditions and the PR opportunity attached to hiring a reputedly brilliant young woman who had just been recruited as the Justice League’s reserve physician seemed too promising an opportunity to pass up.

In fact, Martha Kent’s CV had seemed almost suspiciously impressive. Persky had taken extra care in confirming the claims within it: Graduation from the Central City University’s six-year pre-med/med program at 24, a master’s degree in sociopathology from Metropolis U, and, most recently, a PhD from the Sorbonne specializing in the neuro-physiological aspects of criminal behavior. It had all checked out. How the girl had accomplished all of this by the age of 27, Persky wasn’t sure, but she had done it, and everyone connected with her praised her work ethic, along with the quality of her work. Maybe she didn’t sleep. Persky truly didn’t care if she wired herself up on coke and No-Doze as long as she stuck around, stayed alive and managed to push the boulder a millimeter or two uphill.

From Persky’s perspective, Kent’s success in coaxing Dent back to Arkham – something none of her predecessors have been able to do – was as much a coup for him as it was for the new fellow. It was something he could use to justify his hiring of her at the next board meeting. Whether the Justice League gig became problematic in its potential for consuming her time was hard to say, but she had wanted the position at Arkham enough to agree to some pretty harsh terms: She was expected to work the same hours as every other fellow. Her salary would be docked for any time she missed. The state offered decent wages for an Arkham residency, but not enough for someone to think they could do without a portion of it. Persky hoped financial need would be enough to incentive her to keep Arkham her priority. As she tapped diffidently at the frame of his open office door, he thought that pure passion for the work was probably her greatest motivation. She knew she’d done well and she was grinning unashamedly.

“Hey, Dr. Persky.”

“Dr. Kent. Interesting second day, I see.” Persky nodded toward the chair in front of his desk.

She sank into it. “Yeah, that was cool.” She laughed. “Sorry. It was a ‘unique opportunity to study the criminal mind in crisis’. At least that’s what they told me when they sent me over there.”

He smiled. “No one expected you to actually bring Harvey back.”

“Uh, yeah, I got that. Newbie initiation, right? But I like that stuff – hands on, with the patients.”

Persky recalled a pertinent paragraph in the cover letter that accompanied her CV and said, “I thought your ultimate goal was research?”

“Research with the aim of actually changing things,” said Martha. “Theory into practice, not the usual masturba – well, you know, the rhetorical stuff that never gets anyone anywhere.”

She was idealistic. “I understand. So how did you get Harvey to agree to return with you.”

Martha shook her head. “Nothing special. I listened to him. He considers himself the wise elder of this institution and he’s really treated like crap. He doesn’t want to get out anymore, not really. He knows he couldn’t function outside, but he would like to be treated with more dignity and I don’t blame him. I promised him we’d try to fix that.”

He considered himself a wise elder? “Dr. Kent, you do realize that this man was a psychopath who has murdered – I’m not sure they were even able to count how many people? And he wants to be treated with dignity?”

“Yeah, but you know who he was before, right?” she asked.

“Before…”

“Before he became Two Face. He was the best District Attorney ever in this city. He put a lot of bad guys in jail. That was the guy I tried to talk to in the tower. Look, it doesn’t matter whether you or I think Mr. Dent deserves to be treated respectfully,” said Martha. “He thinks he does, and if his cooperation is what we get in exchange for giving him something that easy, we should do it.”

Only idealists could work at Arkham, mused Persky. Unfortunately, the asylum beat every ounce of optimism out of every single person who worked there, at which point it became almost unbearable to walk through the door each morning. And, honestly, he found such idealism almost offensive in the face of the ugliness that swallowed up every second he spent at this wretched place. He wondered how long it would take for exhaustion and resentment to replace the enthused gleam in young Dr. Kent’s eyes. “Go write up your report.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The dinner Alfred had prepared for him was cold, but it was still good. Alfred generally cooked meals that were edible at any temperature as he could never be sure when Batman would pull into the Batcave and Bruce Wayne would wander into the kitchen.

“This is good,” Bruce said, fixing the frail butler with a frown. In past years, it had not occurred to him to compliment Alfred’s cooking. It was unnecessary; Alfred knew how he felt and was not in the game for praise. Lately, though, Bruce had felt the desire to say something, occasionally, to let the old man know he was appreciated.

“As it was said with your usual boundless exuberance, I will wallow in the glow of your praise,” said the butler. Bruce allowed himself what would probably be his single smile of the week.

“Interesting news broadcast,” Alfred said. “Mr. Dent returned to the asylum of his own accord? Oh,” he added as his employer’s face darkened, “and this was not a good thing?”

Bruce blew out air. “I don’t know. Looks like my life might become more annoying. Although maybe I can avoid it. You remember Clark Kent, the reporter from Metropolis?”

“I don’t know how I could, Sir, as you’ve only known him for 30 years.”

“Yeah, OK. He has a daughter. She’s a doctor, a psychiatrist, and now she’s working at Arkham. That’s what those messages he left me were probably about, to let me know she’s in town.”

His butler said, “I thought everybody in that family was a journalist.”

Bruce snorted. “Everybody else. Clark and his wife –”

“Lois Lane. Beautiful woman.”

“– and their son. Martha’s the black sheep, getting the medical degree.”

Alfred’s eyes misted. “Lovely name, Martha.” It had been Bruce’s mother’s name.

“Clark’s mother’s name was Martha, too,” Bruce said quietly. “This girl is named after her. She was on call tonight and she managed to get Harvey back to Arkham by bribing him with a pizza.”

“I sense, somehow, that you don’t like her?”

Bruce blew out another irritated puff of air. “She’s just like her father. Everything’s wonderful and happy and exciting and deep down inside, people are truly good. She’s like ‘Gidget Goes to Gotham’.”

Alfred frowned. “Maybe I’m thinking of someone else?”

“Hmm?”

“Isn’t she the young lady whose fiancé was murdered?”

He had forgotten about that. Martha Kent had been very young when she’d become engaged to a Metropolis cop. Dave something. He’d been gunned down during a routine traffic stop a few months before the wedding. Bruce recalled his encounter in Metropolis with a numb and probably tranquilized Martha when he’d come to pay his respects. He pushed his dinner plate away. He did not like that memory; it was disturbing, and he forced it out of his mind.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

“I’ve seen your daughter.”

Even when you’re indestructible, being forced out of a deep sleep can be painful. Clark Kent grimaced, squinted at the glaring red numbers on his bedside clock radio and rolled away from his wife’s side of the bed.

“Yeah,” he rasped wearily. “She told me. Six hours ago.” Clark heard his wife mutter, “Son of a bitch.” Apparently, she’d read the caller ID over his shoulder.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Clark hated these passive-aggressive little power plays and he had no patience for them at three in the morning on the only day this week he’d actually had the chance to get some sleep. He decided the quickest way to end the phone call was to relay the information as he’d originally intended when he had called Wayne Manor days ago. “She got the Arkham fellowship. Three years. She’s really excited.”

No response.

“Anyway, thought you should know she was there. You might see her sometimes. I don’t know, I thought, maybe if she ran into any trouble, you wouldn’t mind…” His voice trailed off, wondering what had made him think Bruce wouldn’t mind an intrusion into his obsessively regimented life.

“You want me to look out for an invulnerable girl.”

He’d hit a sore spot. Probably unintentionally. Or maybe not. “She’s not invulnerable,” Clark said quietly.

“She have my phone number?”

“Yeah,” said Clark.

“OK.” Click.

Clark glared at the dead receiver. Lois took it from his hand and returned it to the cradle. She wrapped her arms around him. “Why would you want that man to have anything to do with our daughter?”

“Gotham’s a dangerous place,” said Clark.

His wife replied, “Martha’s a dangerous woman.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Grendel Gardner crossed his black boots over the face of the gleaming conference table and silently reviewed the argument he planned to offer at the meeting slated to start in half an hour. Although he was one of the younger members of the Justice League at 27, he was currently one of the senior members as well, having served on the team since he was 16. He’d worked under the big boys and girls, including most of the founders, and as the first second-generation Green Lantern in recent history, he had a legacy on his side as well. Well, maybe he wouldn’t use that. Everyone had hated his father, Guy – no one more so than Gren himself.

He’d taken leadership courses at college and was the only member of the League ever to have served in the military. And he’d been Arsenal’s number one hand when he’d started to re-organize the group after last year’s shake-up. He deserved a chance to lead the team. Harper had had it for years, mainly because no one else had wanted the job. He’d done OK, but now it was time for fresh…

“Get your feet off the table.”

Gren’s boots whipped through the air as he spun in his chair. Arsenal stood leaning against the door frame. Like most of the older heroes, Roy Harper’s age could be read only on his face… on the weathered lines around his eyes and mouth, and in his fading, slightly thinning auburn hair. From the neck down, he was still a young man, hard muscled and solid. Gardner, who was taller and skinnier, resented the older man’s bulk and his inconsistent sense of authority. If you were his daughter or a pretty woman or one of his old friends, you got the softer side of Roy, he thought. Gren mostly got his attitude.

“Yo, Arse,” he said, pleased with himself for what he considered an extremely subtle insult. “Anyone here yet?”

“Do you see anyone else?” Roy dropped into a chair across from him. “Should be a good meeting today. Martha’s back. Supes has agreed to come back part-time and Batman said he ‘might’ return, which is what he always says. And we’ve got some new talent. We’ve got to get ourselves back in fighting form. So try and behave yourself, OK?”

Gren thought that if he had been in charge, there’d have been no need to “get back” in fighting form. They’d have never left it. It seemed like every few years, the Justice League took a massive hit and that after three decades of that sort of experience, the team should be able to bounce back from it better. And some of the deaths this time – they hadn’t even been combat fatalities. J’onzz had died of old age, for God’s sake, and his death was the one everyone had taken the hardest.

“Yeah, I’ll behave myself,” Gren said. “Try not to put the moves on the new girls. It’s pathetic.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

“Uncle Roy!”

Martha Kent threw herself into his arms and Arsenal felt grateful for the seconds he’d had to brace himself. She was usually pretty careful, but today her excitement made her almost forget herself. Getting Martha back was a coup. Roy had been cajoling her to rejoin the League for years – both personally and through his daughter, Lian, who was Martha’s best friend and sometime roommate.

“Drop the ‘uncle’, please?” he asked, hugging her back. “You make me feel old. As in ‘dirty old’.” He kissed her cheek. “Welcome home, honey.”

Martha leaned back and examined his face, smiling. “God, it’s going to be the most incestuous Justice Leagues ever. But… I’m so glad I’m here. It’s the right time.” A boot squeaked against the tile floor, shifting her attention a few feet to her right. Gren readied himself for his hug, but she just tugged playfully at his shoulder-length ponytail.

“Hey, Gren. Nice hair.”

“Wanna run your fingers through it?”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you’ve changed.”

Before Gren could retort, Martha turned back to Roy. “Lian here, yet?”

He shook his head. “You know she’ll be late. She’s gotta make an entrance. But the others should get here shortly. You might want to, you know, cover up.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

There was only one genuinely new “girl,” and she was 32. When Roy introduced her, he couldn’t pronounce her name. She was from Colu, and had the super-sized brains most natives of that planet considered standard, along with the green skin and blonde hair. She didn’t appear to share the cold nature that was characteristic of the Coluans most of them had met. She shyly offered to adopt a more easily spoken human name and Superwoman predictably pointed out that the team should have enough respect for its members to learn how pronounce the names they were born with.

“Except,” said Lian Harper, “you can’t pronounce it, either.” She tossed her glossy mane of red hair and grinned. “Politically correct isn’t practical here.”

Lian – Quiver as she was called in costume – was, like Gren and Martha, a second generation member of the League. Roy had not particularly wanted her to follow in his footsteps, but then, all of the superhero “brats” had been urged to explore other paths in life and none of them had listened.

It did make it easier that the Harpers had formed a close relationship with the Kents. Clark had suggested it not long after Martha was born. Roy was the only other member of the League at the time that had a child. Clark figured there might be a point where either of the girls might need someone to talk to who really understood what it was like to “have a dad in tights”.

He’d been right, though it took several years for the friendship to gel. Lian was four years older than Martha and was completely uninterested in socializing with someone she considered a baby. But by the time Martha was in her mid-teens, she and Lian were inseparable. When Martha’s fiancé was killed, Clark credited Lian with saving his daughter from the depths of what seemed bottomless despair. For Roy’s part, he’d always felt grateful that Superman – who stood alone in his stature in the superhero community – had trusted the Harpers with his secrets and his friendship.

He looked around the conference table, hopeful, if not completely satisfied. Lian slouched next to Superwoman, a blonde Amazonian who, if you really examined her, looked a little unreal, like one of those hot virtual reality chicks in the newest video games. Next to her sat Superman. Meera Buhpathi, who was something more than a telepath – and who couldn’t take superhero monikers seriously enough to adopt one – sat placidly across from the Flash, Roy’s old friend, Wally West. As usual, the Batman had no patience for sitting. He was leaning against a wall in the corner of the room, his arms folded across his chest. He hadn’t said a word since he’d walked through the door.

Roy asked the Coluan woman to wait in the lounge while they discussed her impending membership. As soon as the door shut behind her, Superwoman dissolved into Martha Kent.

Roy nodded toward her. “As I mentioned to most of you, in addition to welcoming back Superwoman, who is going to split duty with her father, we’re going to have our first team doctor.”

Flash looked amused. “We all need psychiatric care?”

“Well, of course you do,” said Martha, “but I’ve also got a cert in emergency medicine.”

“Turn the hologram back on,” Gren told her. “Green girl could walk through the door any moment with a real cool human name to suggest for herself.”

She regarded him coolly. “You’re just more comfortable around artificial women.”

Lian laughed and leaned affectionately against Martha’s shoulder. Gren glared at both of them. Superman murmured something to his daughter, who rolled her eyes and touched the button on a small device on her belt that activated the hot blonde illusion.

The secret identity issue was going to be a problem every time they brought in someone new, thought Roy. Only Batman and the Kents still kept their private lives private, at least when it came to the general public. Within the League itself, these secrets had gone out the window 14 years ago, during the final showdown with Eclipso. Fortunately, nothing disastrous had come out of the breech. The participants of that particular battle were either trustworthy or dead.

“Let’s talk about the candidate.” Batman’s impatient voice shot out from the back of the room, causing the Flash and Gren to startle. “What can she do?”

Arsenal reached for a DVD-ROM that included a summary of the Coluan’s talents, but before he could slide it into his SmartBoard-linked laptop, an alarm, reminiscent of the ugly blare of a diving submarine, rattled the building. Roy called up the alert and projected it onto the wall-sized white board.

“San Juan… new outlet mall… ah, here they are. Damn, I thought the Demolition Team was worm food.” Quiver moved next to her father and touched the keyboard, zooming in on a beefy middle-aged man held aloft by a jet pack. He was flying low, careening wildly amidst a screaming crowd of mall patrons, many of whom were running headfirst into his oversized workman’s boots. The SmartBoard offered no sound, but the bad guy was obviously struggling to control the jetpack as he cursed at the frantic crowed below.

“That’s Hardhat,” she said. “None of the other guys look familiar. He must’ve put together a new team.”

One of the new gang members, a statuesque, well-tanned woman with a large, obscene belly-button ring, hurled a sledgehammer into the window of a Charlotte Ruse store.

Quiver’s eyes narrowed behind her green mask. “Oh, no you didn’t,” she hissed.

“Hey,” said Superwoman, “I like that store.”

A violet blur shot past Roy, and suddenly there was an empty spot where Lian had been standing. “OK then,” he said, bemused, “Superwoman and Quiver, you’re on point. The rest of you…”

Batman, already at the door, said, “You’d better get control of your team, Harper.” Then he, too, was gone.

Arsenal lost the smile. “You go, too, Gren.”

The Lantern, wrapped in a light-green glow, shot from the room.

“Don’t feel bad,” said Superman. “God knows I can’t control her.”

Arsenal said grimly, “Let’s see what our wannabe makes of this.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

It would have taken Superman three minutes to reach San Juan from the League’s Headquarters in upstate New York. It took Superwoman seven. She was glad a conflict in several members’ schedules prevented a meeting at their main HQ – the Watchtower Space Station.

Martha and her father had decided long ago that the less people knew about Superwoman – she was still Supergirl back then – the better. Clark’s rationale was that it was safer for their enemies not to know that a half-Kryptonian girl only had about half the powers. Although she’d have denied it, his daughter’s reasoning was less logical: She would never admit it, but she did not want to disappoint hundreds of thousands of people who thought she was a full-fledged female version of the Greatest Hero Who Ever Lived.

She could fly as well, but not as fast. She was a little less than half as strong – though that was plenty strong, Lian often reminded her. She was not, as her mother incessantly nagged, invulnerable, though she was hard to hurt and healed tremendously fast. And she’d inherited none of her father’s super-senses – a serious handicap when flying long distances. She’d memorized maps in order to compensate, but her navigation skills were far from perfect. As she and Lian, who currently had a death grip on her shoulders, broke away from the Florida coastline, she hoped fiercely that they would make it to San Juan without any unintended detours.

She was spared the stress of this unknown when a black-and-green suited figure pulled up next to her and shouted, “Out of shape, Supes? What’s taking you so long?” Gren shot ahead, but not so quickly that she lost site of him before they landed in the mall parking lot.

The death of his cronies a few decades back in a battle with members of the OMAC Project had not rendered Hardhat introspective enough to reconsider his criminal past, nor even inspire him to select more intelligent partners. Besides the fashion-challenged woman who’d attacked the Charlotte Russe, he’d recruited two others that they could see – two nasty-looking men who were dressed similarly to their leader in work shirts, heavy boots and hard plastic helmets. From what Superwoman could tell, they were smashing through store windows for the sheer fun of it – as all of the stores had doors – in order to sledgehammer open the cash registers and grab as much money as they could stuff into their waist packs.

Superwoman shook her head in disbelief. “Stupid, stupid people,” she said.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

What Arsenal had suspected – and the rest of the team was learning – was that the Coluan woman was exactly the opposite of a “stupid, stupid” person. She’d soaked in the situation with a glance at the SmartBoard and asked Roy to switch the view over to an interior camera.

He couldn’t do that, Roy explained. The League’s satellite could only pick up exterior shots.

She blinked at him innocently. “But you can commandeer the store security cameras and use them to monitor the situation.” Everyone in the room stared at her. “Can’t you?”

The Flash leaned forward. “Can you?”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Years later, Roy Harper would remember the moment the strange green woman began taking apart his astronomically expensive, state-of-the-art computer and recall how close he’d come to vomiting. He was a technophile and it was his great pleasure to be the guardian every few months of Wayne Industries’ latest personal computer. Scratch marks on the black plastic made him cringe. Beyond this personal fetish, he knew that had their new recruit turned out to be a fraud or a lunatic, his credibility as leader, already strained, would be gone forever. Arsenal had been a member – and sometimes a leader – of several groups before the Justice League, but no gig had ever meant as much to him.

Flash, too, was staring at her, open-mouthed, clearly regretting he’d ever asked the question.

After five or six tense minutes, she looked up, round yellow eyes sorrowful, and said, “I’m sorry.”

I’m going to kill myself, thought Roy.

“I can only call up about 17 of the security cameras inside the mall. Lots of the store cameras are dummies and those smashing people – burglars? They’ve interfered with a lot of the electrical wiring.”

She pushed a few keys, causing the monitor screen to split into nine sections, each revealing a different perspective of the mall corridor. In one of them, Superwoman was hanging the female offender from a food court chandelier. She appeared to be bound by several pairs of colorful knee socks.

Through dry lips, Arsenal said, “You’re hired.”

“Welcome,” said Meera. She smiled. “I think it’s safe to say that we’re officially no longer an old boy’s club.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

It took Superwoman and the Green Lantern less than five minutes to corral Hardhat and his three accomplices. Quiver had immediately started to evacuate civilians; Batman, once he’d landed his plane in the parking lot, joined her, concentrating on getting the wounded to waiting ambulances.

“Damn,” said Gren. He flicked at a loose piece of glass dangling from the facade of an Old Navy store and the entire front window tumbled inward, smashing over a bevy of haughty-looking mannequins. “Took longer to get here than to take care of business.”

Superwoman surveyed the considerable rubble that had just an hour earlier been a gleaming mall concourse. “We’d better make sure the beams are stable before we let the cops in, though. Don’t want…”

>>Superwoman.<<

Martha jumped. It had been a while since she’d heard Meera’s voice in her head. It was gentle, but sudden and it left her brain feeling a bit stuffy.

>>Green Lantern.<<

Gren, more used the telepathy, merely lifted his chin.

>>There’s a fifth perpetrator – a small female hiding in the Cold Stone Creamery about six stores away. She’s got an automatic rifle of some sort.<<

“How do you know that?” asked Gren aloud.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Later

Superwoman was already inside the ice cream parlor. Gren heard a burst of rifle fire, but he wasn’t concerned. He’d known Martha since they were teenagers. She scarcely needed his help for something like this. By the time he’d ambled over, the gun was on the floor, its barrel now resembling a steel-gray Twizzler. Hardhat’s fifth partner was staring up at him from the inside of the glass-covered freezer unit.

The blond hologram encasing Martha Kent shook its head. “I should think before I act. She’s lying on my favorite flavor.”

Continued...