Truth & Justice I #5

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Truth & Justice #5

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

RÉSO, Montreal’s underground city, was thick with Christmas shoppers, but Lian was on a mission and ignored Meera’s suggestion that they return at another time. She was determined to get Midori out of the utilitarian garb she had worn during her first months on Earth and horrified at her new friend’s attempt – apparently with Roy’s assistance and credit card – to order clothes from the Internet.

“She looks like a skank and a dockworker!” Lian railed at her father. “How did you manage that?”

Midori, whose emerald skin was drawing expected stares, Martha and Meera navigated through a food court thick with cranky shoppers, valiantly trying to keep pace with Lian. The latter two, both of whom yearned for the comfort of an oversized Barnes and Noble they’d passed, were growing impatient from hours of watching Midori emerge from dressing rooms, gamely attempting to please her new fashion coach. When Lian declared herself satisfied, sometime after 7 PM, they shouted “No!” in unison when the redhead aimed Midori towards a stylish hair salon.

“Oh, God, this is good,” moaned Martha as she sank deeper into the thick blue recliner and aimed her shoeless feet towards the crackling fireplace in Meera’s living room. She reached for the thick slice of Chicago-style pizza sitting in a plate in her lap, took a bite, closed her eyes in ecstasy and said, “Oh, baby.”

“You’re easy,” Meera said, stroking her aching temples. “I need a brandy after that ordeal.” She was joking. Like Roy and Lian, Meera didn’t drink, though her reasons were notably different from her colleagues.

Emma Jai, Meera’s wife, placed a small container of hot peppers on the small table next to Martha and smiled. “Hard day of shopping, huh?”

“It was wonderful,” said Lian dreamily. “Midori is going to look gorgeous.”

Diffidently, Midori said, “I hope we didn’t keep anyone out too long, though.”

Lian waved a dismissive hand at Meera and Martha. “Ignore those whiners. This was an emergency.” She looked deeply into Midori’s eyes, as though relaying the most important information ever. “Never, never allow my father to shop for you. You’ll end up with a combination of Frederick’s of Hollywood and Aramark.”

It was clear that neither of these establishments were familiar to Midori, who nonetheless said, “OK.”

“Atta girl,” said Meera, handing Emma a piece of pizza from a near-empty box. “You’ve learned when not to ask Lian to elaborate.”

Lian ignored her. “We’ll get your hair cut tomorrow. You don’t need a speck of make-up. The guys are going to love you.” As an afterthought, she added, “You like guys, right?”

“I think so?” Midori said. “On Colu, we don’t have the complicated mating rituals you have here. Everything is much more orderly.”

Lian laughed. “Well, thank God you’ve left there,” she said. “The mess is what makes it so much fun.”

Martha added, “But stay away from Gren. He’s a buffoon, but he’s got his share of groupies.” Grendel spent much of his time at League Headquarters. Roy had caught him coming on to Midori twice. The Coluan woman had been clueless, but Roy wasn’t amused. He, himself, had botched his way through several serious relationships and two marriages, but he had never intentionally harmed a woman. He felt responsible for Midori and didn’t intend to let a belt-notcher like Gendel exploit his innocent new protegee.

Emma offered, “There are a lot of nice guys.”

Lian smirked at her. “Well, they’re not any fun,” she said.

“Yes, they are,” said Martha firmly. She smiled at Meera and Emma. “This has been great. Gotta go, though. Lots of work tomorrow.” She carried her plate into the kitchen and placed it in the dishwasher. Lian had not moved when she returned to the living room. Martha looked at her questioningly.

“I’ll hang around,” Lian said vaguely. “Probably, I’ll go back with Midori.”

“She’s staying here tonight,” said Meera. “You’re welcome, of course.”

As she coasted over the cold Canadian air, Martha tried to push away the thought that Lian was hiding something. Her roommate was a fairly transparent person. In the lifetime Martha had known her, she had concealed only one thing, a shameful secret Martha fervently hoped was deep in Lian’s past.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The scientist’s hand shook so badly his drink sloshed all over his tuxedo pants and dress shoes. Reardon gently removed the glass from his trembling fingers and asked him to repeat again what he had been doing before the scythe whizzed past his head.

Dr. Terrence Oh looked wildly about the evacuated ballroom, gripped the hand of his equally frightened wife and dragged in a shuddering breath.

“Just started my speech… felt a breeze near my left ear,” he shook his head. “Think I heard a… a thwack and that thing is in the wall behind me.”

His wife, a stylish blonde woman in a white sequinned dress whispered, “Where was the security?” Reardon could see her terror shifting into anger. “You knew there were threats…”

The Four Seasons Hotel at Gotham had provided a dozen armed security guards, both uniformed and plainclothes, for the conference, Reardon knew. Her own department had contributed ten officers, most of them working overtime, to protect Oh and his other scientists from overzealous protesters who objected to the conference honoring recent strides in cloning on the grounds that the science defied God’s will. Most of the protesters had been vociferous, but not disrespectful. Some had even joked good-naturedly with the security team. Someone, however, seriously objected to Oh’s development, along with his team, of a process that would clone specific organs in vitro, without the need for reproducing an entire person. That someone, had either tried to kill the scientist, or hired someone else to do so. The assassin’s weapon of choice bothered Reardon. She would have rather be digging a bullet out of the wall than a scythe.

She heard a familiar scattering behind her and was not surprised, when she turned around, to see Batman approaching her. She filled him in as succinctly as possible. Reardon knew better than to waste his time with chit-chat.

He asked if a watchlist had been compiled of possible threats to the conference participants. She did, though the list consisted of one person and two organizations. All of them right-wing and religious. Only the individual was an extremist, Batman recalled. And he was last sighted in Idaho. “These people aren’t known to be violent,” he said.

“I hope you’re talking about us, Batman,” a voice behind him said. Both he and Reardon turned towards the speaker, a serious looking woman in her 50's. She wore a business suit and a button that said, “Donate – That’s Great. Don’t Clone – Atone.”

She introduced herself as Cassandra Fuego, president of the Gotham Branch of the Interfaith Alliance Against Cloning. “Please know that we would never condone violence of any sort against anybody,” she said. “It’s antithetical to everything we believe in.” She leaned around them to address Oh personally. “Dr. Oh, please know we’ll do everything we can to assist in the capture of this ungodly person.”

Oh nodded vacantly at her.

Batman said, “Your group is peaceful. We know that. Any members you may have thrown out lately for expressing a more extreme view?”

Fuego shook her head. “No. It’s a big group, though. I can put some feelers out.”

“Please do,” said Reardon. “And get back to me if you find anything.”

Fuego agreed and strode quickly from the ballroom.

A ballistics detective approached them, holding the scythe, now sheathed in plastic. He handed it to Reardon, who studied it for a few seconds, before turning it over to Batman.

“Thai,” he said, examining the blade before focussing his attention on the ornately carved handle. “Seems to have some sort of animal design on it.”

“Looks like one of those Temple dogs,” said Reardon. “Although that’s Chinese.”

He frowned. “Anyone get a look at the would-be assassin?”

Reardon shook her head. “Wouldn’t that be lucky? Not as far as I could tell. We confiscated a bunch of camera phones in the hopes something might come up, but it’ll take hours to go through them.”

Batman looked at her. “Can I borrow them? I’ll have them back before dawn.”

Reardon wasn’t nuts about this idea, but she never said no to Batman. She’d taken a lot of heat for this, but she’d never been wrong in trusting him. “Sure. Just share the wealth, OK?”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Bruce waited as photos from 15 cameras uploaded themselves onto the Batcave’s main computer. He sipped at a cup of tea Alfred placed on a coaster near his elbow and wrinkled his nose.

“What’s this?” he asked, raising his mug toward the butler. He usually served Earl Grey in the evening.

“White tea,” Alfred replied serenely. “Three times the anti-oxidants and a third of the caffeine. Quiet good, don’t you think?”

Bruce sipped at the steaming liquid again and replied, “Different. Where’d you get it?”

Alfred said, “I have my sources,” and wandered toward a monitor that suddenly needed dusting.

Bruce hoped Alfred wasn’t on another health kick, as the last one resulted in his serving Bruce only skinless, boiled chicken and brown rice for months. He looked up as the computer clicked and whirred and pumped hundreds of photographs onto his own wide-screen monitor. He was faintly amused by the number of people who used their cameras to commemorate sexual escapades, and by the even larger number of amateur photographers who seemed to believe they could capture the magic of a single flower with a low-definition cell phone camera. Eliminating those and other irrelevant photos took him almost an hour. What he was left with was a disappointing collection of blurs and shadows. He shook his head. Waste of time.

On the off-chance that the computer might catch something he hadn’t, Bruce activated a program that matched small groups of bits with any similar arrangement stored anywhere in his sizable computer network. No luck. He thought a moment about the scythe’s Asian origins, and dialled into the Justice League mainframe.

The program worked for a few minutes, to his mild surprise, spit out the original photo – which looked like a brown blur to Bruce – and a clearer image of a long, muscular forearm releasing what looked like a similar weapon. Under this second photo was the caption DevilDog (Tuksin Techapongvorachai).

The Batcave’s secure line rang and Alfred handed him the phone. “Yeah?”

“Are you fucking with our computer?” It was Gren Gardner.

“Yeah. Who’s DevilDog?”

“Assassin. Charges a million dollars a hit.”

Bruce scratched the back of his neck. How could a million-dollar assassin get past his notice? “League fight him?”

Gren said, “Not the group. Superwoman’s put him away and I’ve fought him. He’s not so great. Operates mostly in Asia.”

“What do you mean, ‘he’s not so great’?” It seemed like a strange comment, even coming from Gren.

“The girls think he’s hot,” said Grendel darkly.

Bruce didn’t know whether Gren meant that DevilDog had groupies, or whether he was referring to their female teammates. He didn’t want to find out. He closed his eyes, exasperated. “OK. I’m going to copy your files to my computer and be off in ten minutes.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Bruce considered picking the lock when Martha Kent failed to answer her apartment door, but it was 2 AM and Lian had said she was a deep sleeper. He dialed her home number on his cell phone and waited. She picked up on the third ring.

“H’lo?” she murmured. Her voice was low and thick with sleep.

“I’m at your front door.”

A few seconds later, he heard her shuffling to the front of the apartment, then fumbling with the lock, a process that made him impatient and irritable. He pushed past her when she opened the door.

“Hey,” she said, sleepily. She pushed back a lock of dishevelled brown hair and crossed her arms over the front of a very short yellow satin bathrobe. She wore nothing visible beneath it. Bruce caught himself staring before she did and directed his gaze to a black porcelain Buddha statue on the coffee table.

“That new?” he asked.

“Nah,” said Martha.completely unaware of his discomfort. “Just getting around to unpacking the knickknacks.” She paused, then said, “What’s up?” just as Bruce asked, “What do you know about DevilDog?”

She broke into a smile, significantly more awake. “The not-so-shy Thai! He’s in Gotham?”

“Yeah,” Bruce replied bleakly. Gren hadn’t been referring to groupies, after all. He filled her in on the attempted hit at the Four Seasons. “You’ve fought him three times. What’s his story?”

Martha held up an index finger, then wandered back into her bedroom. He hoped she was getting dressed, but she returned moments later with a laptop and no additional clothing. He found her unselfconscious half-nudity in his presence vaguely insulting, but her behavior wasn’t particularly unusual for someone her age. Lian was known for wearing much less in considerably more formal situations. Decades of cable television had set modesty on its last legs.

She set the computer up on a round two-person dining room table and motioned him to join her.

“You’re not the only one with secured files,” she said, as he pulled the second chair next to hers. It was a laughable statement. Her encryption codes were close to worthless, but she did have the sense to title her files, “Possible Arkham Patients – Get Ready!” even though few of the criminals listed in her small database were technically insane.

She clicked on a file labled “TT.” A series of photos of DevilDog, several of them showing him in flight, popped onto the screen. He was somewhere between 25 and 30, Bruce noted, with long black hair and a lean, limber torso. He wore a tight red suit with white and yellow trim.

“He flies,” Bruce noted.

“Yeah,” said Martha. “He’s about as strong as me, too. Almost as fast – not quite.” As an afterthought, she added, “He also uses weapons.”

He tilted his head sideways so that his eyes met hers. “How’d he get the powers?”

Martha ran her tongue over her lips, her eyes distant. “The Thai government engaged in some very unethical experiments a while back. Tuksin was a young kid in a refugee camp. No family. He disappeared and no one missed him.”

“And now he kills people for a million dollars,” Bruce said. He skimmed her notes, but Martha had told him most of what he needed to know. “Has he got any weaknesses?”

“Doesn’t everybody?” Her grin was a little jaded this time. “Well, there’s his ego. He’s learned a lot of moves – that muy thai stuff. But it’s not really a matter of moves, is it? It’s how you integrate them, so that they’re in your bones.” She looked at Bruce. “Basically, I just beat him up. He’s a better fighter, technically, but…”

“You want to win more,” Bruce finished.

She nodded. “This actually might be an opportunity for us. The Asian jails I’ve dumped him in won’t hold him and SuperMax here won’t take him because his crimes haven’t been –”

“— on U.S. soil,” said Bruce. He nodded at the computer as she started to shut it down. “I could improve that for you. Better encryption –”

“And suck all my files into your database,” said Martha knowingly. “I’d rather keep them to myself, thanks.”

He said nothing. She owned a Wayne Industries computer and he had access to every single one of them. Infiltrating her computer would be as easy as keying in her serial number.

“I think a question we need to ask,” Martha was saying, “is who would pay a million bucks to kill this scientist?”

“Religious fanatics?” Bruce suggested. He thought this possibility unlikely himself, but it was too obvious to dismiss out of hand.

Martha shook her head. Her face segued into a series of frowns, forehead creases and eyebrow shifts as she worked it out. It was a fascinating process to watch. “Money’s a bigger motivator than morals. Who stands to lose if Oh and his team start cloning body parts?”

“Black market organ traffickers,” said Bruce.

Martha nodded.

He grudgingly allowed himself to be impressed. So she was smart. “All right then, Kent,” said Bruce, rising. “Let’s get the guy.”

She got to her feet as well and he found himself once again confronted by her scanty yellow bathrobe.

“If you don’t think it will kill you to get dressed.”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Superwoman supposed Batman’s invitation to join her in the hunt for DevilDog was his way of apologizing for the nasty things he said to her on the night she’d caught Sylvester Slipp. The personal apology he’d promised Lian had not materialized, but this had not bothered Martha. The weeks since then had been busy for her and she supposed they had been for Bruce as well. Alfred had implied as much when he’d lured her to brunch the previous Sunday by promising to whip up his sumptuous strawberry pancakes. She’d thought the invitation curious and accepted only after Alfred promised that Bruce would be sleeping at that time and unaware of her presence in his kitchen. Martha found the old man delightful and believed it unlikely that Bruce would use him to spy on her, since her life was essentially an open book, at least to anyone who was already aware of her special family secret.

More likely, she thought, as she glided over Gotham, Batman’s decision to include her in this little escapade had more to do with her previous experience fighting Tuksin, and with the revelation that DevilDog could fly. You fight a flyer with a flyer. Batman’s little glider gadgets would be no match, and the idea of going after Tuksin in a plane was just silly.

She was glad to be a part of the search at any rate. Tuksin was nice to look at while you were arresting him. It was a shared attraction, except that DevilDog was hot for the hologram, nearly impossible to discern from a real woman since Midori’s modifications. Tuksin was not alone in his lust for the voluptuous blonde illusion, but it made it easier for Martha to punch him.

Most of her encounters with the Thai assassin had been in Asia and Australia. She did not know where he might be holed up here in Gotham. She wasn’t even sure he’d stick around.

Not that he’d quit before finishing the job. Tuksin was tenacious, as well as greedy. He lived well off of his bounty, though Superwoman knew he’d also given millions to underfunded (and unquestioning) hospitals and orphanages in his home country. He also cared deeply about his reputation. Oh and his team of researchers were definitely still in trouble.

But Tuksin wasn’t stupid and he was patient. Superwoman could see him flying a few states away, lying low for a few days or weeks, then striking when everyone’s guard was down. She had relayed as much to Lakeeta Reardon, who had assigned a task force to protect the scientists. Oh’s team had not taken well to this news, as the group was scheduled to return tomorrow to the University of Minnesota, where their lab was based, and where they had every intention of continuing their research.

Oh had recovered from the shock and now shared his wife’s anger, Reardon reported. Martha was sure speeches full of righteous indignation were being prepared and she wondered if her brother would be covering the press conference for The Daily Planet.

She and Batman spent most of the night searching for DevilDog, but, as she suspected, he was long gone. None of her U.S.-based informants knew anything about Tuksin, though she did learn, with amusement, that he apparently shared his nom de crime with a commercially produced cupcake Boy, would that piss him off.

Martha returned to her apartment about an hour before she needed to be at work, longing for a hot shower and some Cocoa Puffs. Batman had agreed to mobilize the League in order to protect the scientists and track down DevilDog. A meeting had been scheduled for that evening.

She ducked her head into Lian’s room and noted that the bed was still made. It wasn’t unusual for Lian to stay away all night – or several nights for that matter. Still, Martha was troubled.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Grendel was alone on the Watchtower when Superwoman squeezed through an airlock and shook her hair back into place. She sucked in a few mouthfuls of clean, freshly processed air into her breathing became normal. Gren pretended not to watch as she struggled for breath. He knew she regarded her natural limitations as weaknesses and that she hated to expose them.

“Where’s your hetro lifemate?” he asked caustically. It was rare for Superwoman to report aboard without Quiver.

She shrugged and deactivated the hologram. “Taking the Jav, I guess. With everybody else.” She walked into the kitchen and returned with a can of Dr. Pepper. Gren had been listening to an oldies station on the radio. She listened for a few moments, then tossed back her head and sang, “I smell sex in the candle-lit air… Who’s that sitting in my chair…”

Gren shook his head. “Jesus, Martha, will you ever get a lyric right?” He drew in an exasperated breath, then enunciated, “I. Smell Sex. And Candy. In the Air.”

She wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t make sense. You can’t smell candy. Unless it’s chocolate,” she added.

“The name of the song is Sex and Candy.” He was about to make her a half-sincere offer involving both components of the song when he heard the Javelin-11 pull into the docking bay. Gren walked into the control room and flicked a few buttons. In seconds, the bay had decompressed and his teammates – all of them – were filing into the conference room.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Keeping the scientists on Oh’s team safe for an undetermined amount of time would be the League’s biggest challenge, Martha explained to the group after Batman had filled them in on DevilDog’s latest caper. “Tuksin, I can handle.”

Roy said naughtily, “And we all know how you’d like to handle him, Martha.”

Lian laughed. “Her and me, both. The man’s a babe.”

“A bad babe,” corrected Martha. Her dark eyes glittered wickedly.

“The best kind,” her roommate countered.

Batman, through gritted teeth, said, “Could we get back to the matter at hand?”

“Anyway, he likes Superwoman,” said Martha, responding to Roy as if Batman had not spoken. “Not me. And she doesn’t even come naked.”

“I can make her naked,” said Midori innocently. She had been oblivious to the innuendo implicit in the conversation and was relieved when talked turned to a technical concern. “I can fix the projector so you have a full range of clothes for Superwoman.”

Meera and Wally snickered.

Realizing she was missing something, Midori shrank back into her chair.

Roy patted her hand. “It’s OK,” he whispered.

“Besides,” added Martha, “unlike some members of this team, I don’t sleep with people I’m supposed to be arresting.” She managed to capture both Roy and Batman in one sidelong glance.

“Thank you,” said Roy, who had taken no offense, “for mentioning something that happened three decades ago and resulted in the conception of your best friend.”

Lian grinned and outstretched both arms in a “here I am” gesture. Everyone except Batman laughed.

He was livid. It was bad enough that Eclipso had revealed his identity to the group 14 years ago. Batman had never gotten used to that egregious violation of his privacy and security. It was even worse that the current League roster was so full of close friends and family members that keeping things strictly professional was almost impossible. But some lines had to be drawn and Martha Kent had just crossed a big one. His failed romantic relationships – if you could even call them that – were a source of deep pain to him and, in the cases of Talia Al-Ghul and Selina Kyle, they were a source of shame as well. Martha’s casual, unprovoked reference to these profoundly intimate disappointments in front of the entire Justice League – even if she hadn’t mentioned any names – was unforgivable.

How she knew anything about his personal relationships was beyond him. It had been more than ten years since he realized Batman’s mission was incompatible with a private life of any kind. To continue to hope that he would find real love, either as Batman or as the playboy Bruce Wayne, was to believe in a pathetic delusion, one that drained time and focus from his quest. Having recognized this bleak truth, he had never allowed himself to think about a woman again. It hurt for a while, but all wounds, even the emotional ones, scar over and you get used to them. Not long thereafter, gossip columnists noted that Bruce Wayne had abandoned his womanizing ways and was becoming almost a recluse.

He bit back a retort about Martha’s dalliance at the Sorbonne: Sleeping with a professor was inarguably less of an ethical breech than repeated liaisons with a criminal. Or, in his case, two criminals. Given the chance, he was sure Martha would point this out, which would make an intolerable indiscretion worse. He wanted the subject terminated.

“Let’s get on with this,” he snarled. Meera gave him a quick, odd glance, but no one else seemed to sense his change in mood. It was just Batman as usual, disparaging all social pleasantries.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Midori was delighted to draw the assignment of monitoring the cloning lab in Minneapolis. On her home world, cloning was a matter of everyday science – school children learned to do it as a basic lab skill. Watching the evolution of an entire field of science intrigued her from a historical perspective – so much so that Roy felt the need to warn her not to offer the scientists any tips.

“We’re there to protect them, not to alter the course of scientific history,” he advised. She earnestly agreed and went to work devising a series of force fields she hoped would protect the scientists in their lab, and at the hotel that had been secured for the researchers and their families.

Flash, who was nursing a slightly sprained ankle, would alternate with Meera in watching the enclave at the Twin Cities Travel Lodge, just outside city limits. Arsenal and Quiver would float between both positions, leaving Batman, Green Lantern and Superwoman to surreptitiously track the bus that brought Oh’s team to work and back each day. During this twice-daily trek, the researchers would appear most vulnerable. If all went according to plan, that’s when DevilDog would attack.

It was a week of dead boredom for the full-time superheroes and one of discomfort and exhaustion for Meera and Superwoman. Arsenal had arranged for the busload of scientists to be transported earlier than Martha was expected to start her shift at Arkham, and being devoted researchers, they didn’t mind honoring Roy’s request that they work late hours. This made it easier for Superwoman to rejoin them after Martha Kent was reasonably expected to pack it in for the day. Unfortunately, no one at Arkham worked regular hours. Twice, she had trouble getting away.

Meera was openly a member of the Justice League, but she did have a patient load she was unwilling to abandon. This left her covering the night shift at the hotel, which was fine with Wally. He preferred evenings with his wife and teenaged son in Central City to a room full of nervous scientists and their equally skittish wives.

Meera was sitting in the dark hotel lobby, closed off to the public and locked for the duration of the threat against the cloning team, when a long shadow near the manager’s office made her jump.

“Me,” Batman said. He opened a bottle of water and sat down on the coach across from her. “Thought you could sense people’s presence.”

She nodded. “I’ve filtered out yours, though. Everyone’s in the League.” She was searching for a predator’s thoughts, not a protector’s. “You didn’t go back to Gotham.”

He shook his head. “DevilDog could hit anytime.” It wasn’t the only reason. Meera knew that Batman had returned to Gotham several times – when he could catch a ride with the Green Lantern. He’d declined two offers to make the same trip with Superwoman.

Meera wondered if she should tell Batman that Martha had not meant to upset him. In general, Meera was able to shield herself from people’s everyday thoughts and feelings. She was especially vigilant in respecting the privacy of her friends and teammates. But the force of Batman’s emotions had blasted clear across the conference table, startling her in their intensity. His reaction seemed dramatically out of proportion with Martha’s teasing remark, which Meera was sure had been aimed predominantly at Roy, who was used to being ragged about his love life. Martha had not meant whatever Batman had thought she meant. Meera knew her friend would not hurt a soul on purpose. Martha would have been mortified to have caused such offense, even to Batman, who had not been particularly nice to her. She would have rushed to apologize, something that in this case Meera firmly believed would have made things worse. An apology at that time would not have moderated Batman’s rage – it would have magnified it.

Enough time had passed that Meera felt she might bright up the subject without causing a resurgence of that anger, but she couldn’t be sure without prying into his thoughts, something she would never do. This left her in a quandary. There was more at play than her natural desire to defend her friend. Meera was concerned about how ongoing discord between Superwoman and Batman might affect the Justice League. No one else seemed to share her apprehension. Arsenal and Flash seemed to consider the squabbles amusing. Batman had drained most of the water in a single gulp. He capped the plastic bottle and without appearing to look, let along take aim, flung it towards a small recycling bin fifteen feet behind him. It was a perfect shot.

“Basket,” Meera said. It was hard to know what to say to him. Even sitting there, on a cheap hotel couch, he was intimidating.

Batman nodded in the direction of the guest rooms. “How’s everyone holding up here?”

“OK,” said Meera. “Not so much scared anymore as tired and irritable. Sick of pizza and Chinese food,” she added, referring to herself as much as the researchers and their families.

“He’s going to strike soon,” Batman said. “His employers won’t want Oh’s group to make too much progress.”

“Superwoman said the same thing,” Meera said. She took a deep breath and blurted, “She didn’t mean to upset you.”

Batman looked up sharply and Meera leapt to her feet. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she added. She bolted to a restroom she didn’t have to use, hoping that when she returned to the lobby, the couch would be empty.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

DevilDog made his move six hours later, just as the bus crossed into the Minneapolis City Limits. Superwoman, flying behind a cover of clouds, noticed immediately when two of the bus tires seemed to crumple, causing the vehicle to pitch precariously to the left.

“Knives to the tires!” she shouted. She knew Meera, still at the hotel, would hear her thoughts and send reinforcements. Meanwhile, she searched the skies for Tuksin. He had to be close to have aimed that well.

A third knife swished through the air and crashed through one of the small side windows of the bus. Superwoman bolted for the bus, frustrated that she’d have to lose her cover in order to check on the passengers’ safety. She hoped DevilDog wouldn’t run.

Everyone was OK, but Tuksin had seen her. Running didn’t seem to be on his To-Do list; Superwoman could tell that he wanted a rematch, despite his three previous defeats at her hands. Some people never learned, she thought. It seemed to be a chronic condition in criminals.

“Long time, Babe,” he called out in what Martha considered a gloriously sexy Thai accent.

“Hey, cupcake,” she replied, accelerating into a torpedo-like head-butt to his solar plexus. She must have been a little off, as he was winded afterwards, but still able to breathe.

“Well, wham-bam,” he said. “Missed you, too.” His spinning side kick sent her into a billboard.

Oh, man, she thought. It felt good to mix it up like this, with someone you weren’t likely to injure permanently. It was a shame Tuksin was a bad guy. He’d make a great sparring partner.

DevilDog followed her through the billboard, but he failed to look before moving through the hole. He flew into a strong left cross Superwoman could tell had made an impression. This was why he’d lost their three previous battles, she thought. Too impulsive.

He recovered and seized her, pulling her into a backflip that sent them both back over the top of the billboard. As she felt DevilDog tighten a forearm around her neck, Superwoman looked down and was relieved to see the Green Lantern on the ground projecting a force field around the crippled bus.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Batman pulled up moments later on the most gorgeous black motorcycle Gren had ever seen. They watched together as Martha threw DevilDog into a cluster of electrical wires.

“Should we help her?” Batman asked.

“Nah,” said Gren, checking to see that his force field was still protecting the frantic scientists. “This is nothin’.” At the sound of a loud, reverberating clang, he directed his focus back to the sky. DevilDog was still twisted up in electrical cables and Superwoman was looking around curiously for whoever had just thrown a stop sign at her head. The follow-up pitch, coming from somewhere on the ground, was a bus stop bench that bounced off of Superwoman’s shoulders just as DevilDog tackled her around the waist.

Gren pushed his ring against the bottom of his finger as though making sure it was secure and the green bubble disappeared from around the bus. “Now we help her,” he said, springing into the air.

It didn’t take Gren long to locate DevilDog’s back-up. He just retraced the trajectory of a trash dumpster that had suddenly set sail after Superwoman and spotted a tall, raven-haired woman standing behind a sheltered bus stop. She was dressed similarly to DevilDog and appeared to be hurtling objects into the air without touching them.

Gren reported the discovery of DevilDog’s telekinetic accomplice to Batman through Meera and learned that Arsenal was on the way to join them. Then he swooped down to confront the new bad girl.

“So, you the girlfriend?” he shouted as a huge green hand ballooned out of his ring and snatched the dumpster seconds before it hit the swirling human pretzel that was Superwoman and DevilDog. “Nearly hit your guy. You’re supposed to wait ‘til they separate.”

She turned a ferocious face toward him and roared at him in what he supposed was Thai. Then she followed up her incomprehensible retort with a rather large tree.

Gren parried the tree easily with the same green hand, but informed Arsenal through Meera that he wanted to switch positions with Batman. She might be strong enough to lift the bus, which he assumed was still where he’d left it. It wasn’t safe to evacuate the vehicle yet, with DevilDog loose and determined to kill Oh’s team. Gren had to get it out of there, without leaving Superwoman without back-up.

Batman had circled around the bus shelter. The woman couldn’t see him, but Gren could. Gren allowed his energy construct, still shaped like a hand, to double in size, then he attempted to wrap its green fingers around his opponent. To his dismay, the woman seemed to have activated an invisible barrier of her own – he couldn’t get within a foot of her.

>>Go,<< Meera told him. >>Batman says he has her. And Flash and Arsenal are seconds away.<<

Gren scowled at the telekinetic’s smug expression as he abandoned the battle. Apparently, she thought she’d won the round. Seconds later, just as he was flying out of sight of her, his chagrin turned to pleasure as a Batarang smacked her in the back of the head.

It took him five minutes to return the research team to the hotel and help Meera reactivate the force field surrounding the hotel. He hoped the presence of DevilDog’s female companion would not compromise the integrity of Midori’s barrier. Sometimes people who could make force fields, could break them.

Almost immediately, he found himself with a more pressing concern, in the form of a huge yellow lightning bolt that rocked the ground inches away from his right foot. Instinctively, he raised his right fist and a green shield spread across half the sky. A second golden bolt penetrated the barrier easily, as Gren knew it would. The Lantern’s Light didn’t work against yellow.

He jerked himself out of the path of the missile, but it still managed to graze him, slashing his favorite jacket and burning a small patch of skin under his ribs. Gren said a very bad word and headed back into the sky.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

“Wow, Tuk,” Superwoman gasped as she smashed an elbow into DevilDog’s temple. “You brought friends. I didn’t know you had friends.”

He shoved a heel into her ribs, then followed up with a spinning backfist to her nose. The hit caused her to bleed profusely, though the hologram concealed the mess. She threw her entire hip into a sidekick aimed at his shin and was gratified to hear his cry of pain.

“Couldn’t wait for you forever,” he panted, gesturing at the woman below. “But don’t worry. I’ve got energy enough to take you both on.”

Superwoman laughed derisively. “The energy maybe. But not the skill.” She brought an axe kick down on his collarbone.

He cursed in Thai and grabbed the spot with one hand.

She went in for the kill, but he’d been faking. As soon as she was in grappling range, he pulled her into another headlock.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

The Batarang had nearly knocked out DevilDog’s girlfriend, but she managed to rouse herself enough to fling a manhole cover at Batman before he came close enough to grab her. Batman had dodged plenty of manhole covers in his day and ducked this one effortlessly. The telekenetic had good follow-up though – he barely escaped the bicycle – still bearing its screaming rider – that she threw at him next.

Flash arrived just in time to grab the man as his bike fell away. Then he barreled into the woman, knocking her down and tying her up before Batman could pick himself up.

“She likes that,” hollered a hoarse voice from above their heads. DevilDog had apparently noticed the capture of his companion and was diving down to rescue her. Unfortunately for him, his downward plunge added momentum to the force of the impact when Superwoman slammed him into the ground.

There was a sickening crunch, a curtain of dust and then horrible silence as Flash, Batman and the telekinetic stared at the blue, red and white pile of the limbs on the ground.

“Wow,” whispered Flash. The bluer parts of the pile moved, and then Superwoman slowly, rather brokenly, rose to her feet and shook herself out.

“Oh…” she whispered through lips Batman could tell were swollen under the pristine hologram.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Oh…” Superwoman gasped again. “For. Four.” Her laugh sounded painful. “There goes the million dollar baby.”

Batman stared at her with such intensity that it seemed as if his gaze had penetrated the hologram. Then he said, “You’d better get him to SuperMax before he wakes up.”

Flash hauled up DevilDog’s bound partner and said, “I’ll follow along after you. I think they’ve got a cell for this one, too.”

His teammates and their captives were gone before Batman could straighten out his cape. “Meera,” he said aloud. “Where the hell are Green Lantern and the Harpers?”

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Meera had seen the attack on Gren and immediately re-directed Quiver and Arsenal to the hotel. She couldn’t see much from inside the lobby, where she was trying to calm six hysterical scientists and their families as well as serve as manage communication between her teammates.

>>Green Lantern, what does he look like? What are his powers?<< She opened a channel to Arsenal and Batman so they could hear Gren’s reponse.

“White guy. Throws lightning bolts,” he screamed, dodging one. “Yellow lightning bolts.”

>>Bad aim though,<< Arsenal responded through Meera. >>Hold on, Gren.<<

Meera could see Roy positioning himself behind a tree just outside the hotel. He was aiming a cross-bow into the air. >>Tell Gren to fly straight up,<< he told her.

>>He hears you.<<

The Lantern was already hurtling upward.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

Arsenal could see the guy floating jerkily above the hotel. There was a cushion of smoke and sparks beneath him, as though he was elevating himself through some sort of electrical energy cloud. Unlike DevilDog and his girlfriend, this guy wore black jeans and a leather jacket. He looked like an extra in a low-end motorcycle movie.

As Gren rocketed straight past the guy, distracting him, Arsenal let lose a “joy buzzer.” He was interested in seeing how the arrow might interact with someone who manipulated electricity.

Not perfectly, he noted. The arrow clearly hurt the guy where it penetrated both his expensive jacket and his bicep, but the shock effect was lost on him. No problem. Arsenal reloaded, squinted through the crossbow sight and reconsidered laser surgery. This arrow didn’t require precision, though. He fired and a moment later, DevilDog’s new accomplice was lying unconscious on the hotel walkway, wrapped in what could best be described as a giant white plastic baggie.

“So much for the Clone Wars,” Arsenal said, as a disgruntled Gren landed beside him.

“Real funny,” the Green Lantern muttered.

—

[Spider-Man Beyond]

“So Lightning Guy was a first-timer?” asked Flash as Quiver guided the Jav toward the Watchtower.

Grendel and Meera were still in Minneapolis, debriefing the police.

“Total amateur,” said Roy. He stretched his arms behind his head and carefully studied Superwoman, who was curled up in the back of the shuttle, sleeping. Her forehead was pressed against the bulkhead and she seemed to be breathing a little raggedly. Roy unstrapped himself and glided toward her through the zero-gee compartment. He stretched a hand toward her right hip.

“They can be the most dang –” Batman was saying.

“Jesus!” said Wally. Midori gasped. Both of them were staring towards the rear seat in the plane.

Martha Kent’s upper body was mottled with livid purple bruises. Her nose looked broken. Her lower lip was split, she had a cut under her left cheek and there was an apron of dried blood running down the front of her shirt and jeans. There were ugly green and yellow marks around her throat, where DevilDog had choked her.

Batman’s stoic façade was briefly eclipsed by an expression of pure shock. My God, he thought. He had rarely seen Clark with as much as a scratch.

Midori whispered, “Does she always…”

Roy touched the tiny projector again and the small, battered woman was swallowed up by her unblemished doppelganger.

“She always fights her heart out,” Roy said softly. He buckled himself back into his seat and grinned crookedly at Midori. “She’ll be OK.”

“She heals fast,” Lian agreed as she steered the shuttle into the Watchtower’s primary hangar. “Give her an hour – she’ll be back to normal.”

Roy let Superwoman sleep on the shuttle during the debriefing. She didn’t wake up until they’d landed back on Earth. Lian’s prediction of a quick recovery had been on the mark: At Arsenal’s insistence, Martha flicked off the hologram long enough to reveal that fading yellow bruises had replaced her swollen purple ones. Most of her cuts had disappeared and her nose and lip were healing. Batman offered her a ride to Gotham on his jet, but it was an unusually fine December day and she decided to fly back alfresco.

Continued...