[ Gotham City ]
Even with her face hidden behind layers of gear, Commissioner Gordon could tell the stranger was a woman at first glance when she appeared near them. After more than sixty years on Earth, if he couldn't distinguish something as basic as that, he might as well retire with a blindfold on.
Like those classic stories where someone puts on different clothes and suddenly becomes unrecognizable—because apparently, changing outfits is the ultimate disguise? Please. Gordon might wear thick reading glasses now, but he wasn't blind. Not recognizing someone's gender after decades on the force would be a personal insult to his legacy.
For a few seconds, silence lingered, broken only by the occasional groan or squirm from the netted thugs.
Thea had no plans to peel off her mask and start socializing. While Gordon was trustworthy enough to be in the know, the same couldn't be said for the rest. The Gotham police department had more leaks than a sinking ship. Staying anonymous was safer—for everyone.
The old commissioner was still puzzling over the city's newest vigilante addition when the chop of blades signaled the arrival of Catwoman's helicopter.
She exchanged hushed words with Gordon, the kind shared between two people who'd been through enough chaos to skip the small talk. The other officers, still bleeding and barely standing, lit up like patients spotting their favorite battlefield medic.
The city was a warzone—gunfire rattled like static, and stray explosions shook the streets. With their injuries, low ammo, and wrecked morale, the odds of surviving another hour were slim. A chopper, even a beat-up civilian one, felt like divine intervention.
Several of the captured thugs had gone limp in the webbing. Long-term exposure to Thea's modified spider silk wasn't exactly FDA-approved—it was potent, and nerve systems didn't take kindly to it. A green, eco-friendly version was still in the works. Meanwhile, Thea and Felicity, gloved and grinning faintly, crouched near their handiwork.
"Adhesion's solid," Thea muttered, tapping the web with professional pride.
"Next time, we should dial back the load. For just one guy, this much webbing is overkill…" Felicity replied, scanning the data.
While Thea was analyzing the spider silk's cross-section through her custom lenses and was busy tinkering and observing it, Commissioner Gordon and Catwoman approached at a steady pace.
Gordon examined the thick net of spider silk with growing interest. This—this was what he had been looking for. A way to subdue criminals without turning them into lawsuits. Unlike Batman's usual routine of dropping bruised bodies at the precinct steps, this web left no blood, no broken bones—just results. And maybe a little dizziness.
To him, it was brilliant. Safer for the officers. Cleaner for the courts. Less trauma for the suspects. Just roll up the criminals and toss them in the van. Honestly, if they weren't in the middle of a city-wide meltdown, he might have asked Thea what it cost by the pound.
He pushed the thought aside and turned toward the two girls still talking in scientific shorthand. With a polite but firm voice, he cut in. "Thank you, for what you did for Gotham just now."
"Oh? No need for thanks." Thea glanced at him knowingly. Clearly, Catwoman had spilled some beans. Not that it was hard to figure out. Felicity was just standing there, no mask, chatting away. Anyone with half a brain could trace the connection.
Still, Thea didn't dwell on that part. Instead, she cut straight to what mattered. "Where to next?" A question best directed at the city's top cop. After all, Gordon was no slouch—head of a major city's police force, tough in crisis, calm under pressure. That's exactly why she'd sought him out.
"There are some officers holed up at Gotham University," he answered immediately. "Come with me."
A university? In this living nightmare of a city? What exactly were they teaching—"How to Build C4" and "Philosophy of the Criminally Insane"?
Thea genuinely saluted the madmen who thought it was a good idea to put an institute of higher learning in Gotham. If she weren't in a hurry, she might've stopped to find them and give them a slow clap.
When it came time to split into teams, Gordon hoped Thea could take two officers along since the helicopter couldn't fit everyone. But one look at the cops—disheveled, half-dead, and smelling like regret—and Thea's mild mysophobia kicked in hard. There was no way she was squeezing onto her sleek little board with someone who hadn't seen a bar of soap in a week. The officers weren't thrilled either, eyeing the floating skateboard like it might ditch them midair.
After a bit of polite mutual rejection, the decision was simple—guys on the chopper, girls on the board. Honestly, Thea had to hand it to them. Of the four, three could fly a helicopter. Not bad. She made a mental note: maybe it was time to pick up a few flying lessons.
Catwoman, ever the confident acrobat, stood solo on one end. Thea took the other side, arms securely wrapped around Felicity's waist as they glided behind the helicopter at low altitude.
No one even brought up the goons stuck in the spider silk. Sure, Thea and Felicity had a special dissolving agent to free them, but with Gotham in shambles, there was nowhere safe to stash them. For now, they'd just have to hang out—literally. Whether they'd figure out an escape or not? That wasn't Thea's problem today.
Because her hands were full holding Felicity, Thea stuck to using her pistol to dispatch any trouble they met on the way. The helicopter's engine made stealth impossible, so subtlety was already out the window.
Catwoman was like a circus performer on caffeine—balanced, precise, and lethal. She didn't even need gear to keep steady, and her thrown knives hit with clockwork timing.
At long last, just as Felicity's face turned the color of printer paper, they reached the mythical destination—Gotham University.
This university was Gotham to the core—gloomy, decayed, and soaked in despair. The iron fence out front looked like it had been stolen from a haunted asylum, and the main building tried to put on a cheerful face with its faint pastel paint, but the years had caked the walls in grime until the whole place just looked... sad. The "white" façade was now more of a tired beige that had given up on life.
There was a greenbelt to the side, but even that couldn't escape the city's curse. The trees, meant to bring peace and vitality, but in this setting, the trees looked more haunted than hopeful. The breeze rustled through the leaves with a chilling whisper, like banshees muttering secrets from the beyond.
Thea felt her teeth itch just looking at it. Forget building a horror set—just rent this place out to the Ring reboot. Plant a body here, and you'd have a crawling corpse in ten minutes, free of charge and makeup. She could already hear a voice-over: "They thought they were safe… but the semester had just begun."
Even Felicity, who could chatter through a war zone, curled up in Thea's arms like a terrified quail. The atmosphere had done what bullets and bombs couldn't—made her shut up.
The cops and Catwoman didn't even blink. They are Gotham natives, immune to creepy vibes. Born and bred in this darkness, it was just another Tuesday for them.
Only a Gotham university could breed talents like a guy who has loved scaring people since he was a child and loves scaring people even more as he grows up. He become professor here and as he was fond of psychological torture since childhood, he turned the fear into both a thesis and a profession. He grew up to become the infamous Scarecrow. Yeah, that Scarecrow—the psycho in a mask who could make people pee themselves from fear.
Then there was the school's pride and joy—a perfect student, a gymnastics champion who almost made the Olympics, and later a bright psychologist with charm and brains to spare. Idol of half the campus, and destined to be one of Gotham's most unpredictable disasters. Her name? Harley Quinn.
Of course, it wouldn't be fair to blame the university for producing so many future lunatics. You can't say Hogwarts is evil just because Voldemort graduated from there. A university's job is to teach. Whether its students use that knowledge to save the world or burn it down is entirely on them.
Did Scarecrow and Harley Quinn actually learn anything useful here? If they did, then clearly, the university did its job. What they did afterward is none of the faculty's business.
Even Batman, the world's most suspicious man, ended up sending his own son here for higher education. If Bruce Wayne gave the place a stamp of approval, then the teaching staff must be halfway competent—by Gotham standards, at least.
To Be Continued...
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