[ Gotham City ]
In the back seat, Thea noticed Catwoman's pointed ears twitch twice, clearly picking up on Felicity's comment. Yet after a minute of silence, she realized the woman wasn't planning to say anything.
Still trying to play mysterious? Everyone already knew who she was, and with Gotham burning, Thea wasn't in the mood for any more guessing games. She shot Catwoman a look, sharp and loaded. "Give us the satellite control codes for Wayne Enterprises."
Catwoman paused, reluctant—but eventually rattled off a long string of letters and numbers that clearly wasn't made for human memory.
"Locked in." Felicity grinned with satisfaction, her fingers moving like lightning. With WayneTech's high-grade satellites under her control, she zeroed in on their target fast.
"Ninety-seven percent match—yep, that's Gordon. He's in a shootout with three officers holding off a gang of armed thugs. Location appears to be the corner of Fourth Avenue and Grundy Street… if this map's not lying to me."
Thea and Felicity turned toward Catwoman like synchronized swimmers. "Expert pilot, do your thing. We're out of our depth here."
Without a word, Catwoman banked the chopper hard and sped toward the scene.
"You might wanna hurry," Felicity added with a sharp glance at the screen. "One of the cops just went down."
Catwoman's jaw clenched, anxiety crawling up her spine. Commissioner Gordon wasn't just a name—he was an old friend, practically family. And he was also Batgirl's father. The helicopter wasn't built for combat, but she pushed it to its max—150 kilometers an hour—maneuvering with years of flight experience and pure adrenaline.
"Another officer down. They're cornered inside a private residence." Felicity's tone stayed weirdly casual, like she was hosting a podcast instead of giving battlefield updates.
Thea watched the speed gauge—no more room to push it. If they wanted Gordon alive, it was up to her now.
Gordon wasn't just a cop. He was Gotham's spine—unbendable, incorruptible, the kind of man who made paladins look like understudies. If he went down today, the city's timeline would crack in half. He'd dodged death more times than she could count, always saved by Batman leaping in at the last second. But Bruce wasn't here this time. Not unless he learned to teleport.
With a quiet sigh, Thea accepted what had to be done. No dramatic speeches. No hesitation. Just action. Thea began stripping off her current outfit—because, of course, she needed to change.
Catwoman glanced over, puzzled. This was hardly the time for strip poker. Still, despite the urgency, she couldn't help but sneak a glance.
"What are you staring at? Eyes on the flight path," Thea snapped. "It's your flying that's got civilians bleeding."
Fully suited up now, Thea activated her board, guiding it from the cabin into the night air, lining herself up with the chopper's horizontal position. The quiver was slung over her back—twenty arrows, more than enough for seven targets.
Pulling up her hood and adjusting the goggles, Thea signaled the two to accelerate. "Keep going. I'll meet you there."
Then she leapt onto her skateboard. With a thought, the board shot across the sky like a streak of lightning, slicing through the air.
"So cool—how'd she do that?" Catwoman muttered in awe, eyes tracking the blur Thea left behind. She hadn't expected a compact weapon like that to be hidden in a simple pack. Sleek, fast, and silent—perfect for someone like her. The idea stuck in her mind: if Bruce ever made it back, she was definitely putting in a request.
"Haha." Felicity chuckled proudly. From blueprint to final build, she'd been part of the entire skateboard project. She couldn't ride it herself—heights weren't her thing—but seeing it in action gave her a real thrill. And finally, someone was impressed enough to chat about it. She launched into explanation, just skimming the surface of the tech.
Catwoman, despite spending years beside Bruce, couldn't follow a word of the deeper parts. She'd once tried to study tech seriously to branch out from stealing high-value artifacts, but with no real education behind her, Felicity's jargon was like Greek. Still, she nodded along politely, tossing out the occasional "wow" or "sounds powerful."
Felicity was mid-sentence, glowing with enthusiasm, when a glance at the monitor made her jump. "Thea, you overshot them! You're flying past—turn back!"
Thea, focused on her mission, hadn't noticed the miss. She heard Felicity's voice and assumed it was her own error, not a distracted operator. With zero hesitation, she pushed the board into a graceful arc and whipped back toward the action, the wind slicing past her ears.
This time, Thea didn't dare to fly too fast. She kept her altitude steady and scanned carefully for any sign of the conflict below. Luckily, the distance wasn't far. After gliding over several blocks, she finally spotted what looked like a firefight. Counting heads from above—seven on one side, four on the other—it seemed she had found the right place.
She had flown past them earlier like a gust of wind, slicing the sky in a blur. At her speed, none of them could make out what had just happened. All they saw was a faint red shadow tearing from south to north—vanishing from sight in a breath.
The unexpected interruption had stunned both sides into stillness. For a moment, no bullets flew, no one shouted. "Was that a missile?" "A bird?" "A very stylish UFO?" But once the red blur disappeared into the distance, they returned to their brawl as if nothing had happened.
When Thea circled back, she saw them firing wildly into the air again. In Gotham, that was just another Tuesday. Whether cops, criminals, or unlucky civilians, everyone here had developed a sixth sense for dodging bullets. Even with all the noise, the actual injuries were few and far between.
The officer Felicity had flagged as "possibly dead" was only grazed in the shoulder. He was still firing, still standing. Four against seven. Commissioner Gordon was definitely under pressure—but far from doomed. The odds were bad, not catastrophic.
She figured that in the original timeline, Gordon must have made it out alive. But now that she was here, just floating and watching wouldn't feel right. She had to act. The only question was—should she strike hard and fast, or take them down one at a time?
While she was still deciding, one of the gangsters—a huge slab of a man, easily over 300 pounds—looked up and spotted her in the sky. Maybe years of living under Batman's shadow had numbed his fear of anything high-tech. He raised a rifle and fired a shot upward.
But Thea had already clocked him. That mountain of muscle had stood out from the start. She casually tracked the bullet's arc—it veered ten meters off on the X-axis, twenty-five on the Y. Unless his bullet learned how to turn mid-air, it wasn't getting anywhere near her.
Through the tinted lens of her infrared goggles, Thea studied the would-be sniper with detached precision. His thermal signature blazed darker than the average person—normal bodies flickered in soft red hues, but this one pulsed in a deep, almost angry crimson. Either he was a fire-type meta, or his body was just radiating absurd amounts of heat with no way to vent it.
Judging by his shape, Thea leaned toward the latter. Too many calories, too few workouts—definitely a repeat customer at every fast food joint within five blocks. She briefly considered using a freezing arrow to cool him off, but worried his greasy frame might dirty the arrowhead. Arrows were expensive and every piece of gear mattered; if it could be salvaged, it should be.
She quietly recalibrated—mentally marking everyone's location, increasing her altitude to gain better perspective. From her quiver, she selected a specialized projectile and notched it with practiced ease.
"Let's try the magnetic arrow." Thea whispered to herself, releasing a completely dark-blue shaft that darted toward a spot ten meters ahead of the thug.
To Be Continued...
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