"PAPA!"
"Go! Run!"
Bang.
Kimber ran.
"Surprise, girlie!"
Fist to the face. Knee to the groin. Run.
"Where are you, little brat?"
Bang.
A sharp pain in her side. Darkness.
-Eight minutes earlier-
"Ha! Check and mate!" Kimber laughed gleefully in her father's face as he put on his best pout. Circumstances aside, staying in the house and playing chess as the setting sun filtered through closed blinds was pretty fun. Rare were the days that she and her father spent time together and there was almost a nostalgic warmth to the old but familiar board and pieces. Usually, he would be busy at work or she would be away at the library studying or out with friends. It had been a while since she and her father had played chess, but she hadn't grown rusty.
"I told you you should have joined the chess club," Goren said as he admitted defeat.
"I would have if it wasn't for one thing."
"What?"
"It's the chess club."
"Oh please," Goren shook his head. "It shouldn't even carry that negative connotation. It is all about strategy, wit, and creativity. You've got to plan ahead, know your opponent, and trick them; lull them into a false sense of security before you trap them in place! It is like fighting a war!"
Kimber giggled."Yeah, against pizza-faced, braces-wearing losers!"
"You know… I was on the chess team in high school," her father said quietly.
The color drained from her cheeks. "Oh... Well, I mean today it is for losers." She quickly tried to rewind the words.
"Nice try, kiddo. But I ain't buyin' that. Partly because you were right." Goren winked and then flexed his muscles. "I wasn't always the strapping young man you see today."
"Oh please, Papa—" The phone interrupted her sentence. She looked at the handset on the charging cradle and read the Caller I.D. "It's Jacqueline."
Her father scrambled to grab the phone. "It's for me, kiddo." He picked up the phone.
"Hello? No, she's alright… Yes… Yes, I'm okay as well, thanks for asking. We're all okay… I know… I know! Look, I'm sorry I brought you into this..."
As Goren continued the stressed phone conversation, Kimber trotted off to the kitchen to warm up a slab of beef from the previous day's leftovers. Her suit was nowhere in the house – partly because her father loved to snoop – but right now, she wished it was. She had no idea what was going to happen, or when, or even if the threat was just a bluff; but whatever the case, she would have felt more comfortable with her suit on at least under her clothes. After all, some of it was bulletproof. "And some bulletproof is better than a tank top and sweatpants," she mumbled as she looked down at her loungewear.
There was a crash and instantly she set down the meat and looked at her father. "What was that?"
Goren hung up the phone with little parting words, his eyes locked on the corridor to the bedrooms and the rest of the house. "I don't know." He primed his pistol and hushed his daughter.
"Oops, my bad." Steve chuckled as he crawled through the basement's window narrow.
Before him, Rob rolled his eyes. "Pretty sure they heard that, Steve."
"Shut your mouth, Rob, and let's at least try and stay quiet."
The third man climbed through the window and then adjusted his helmet. "Let's do this. Be quiet and efficient. Try to not get that policeman outside involved."
The trio moved up the basement stairs; Rob on point, Steve carrying the rear, and the helmeted figure in the middle. All villains had their guns ready. They turned a swift corner and saw both targets in the dark. Neither target saw them.
"I see them," Rob whispered. "Lines up like lambs to the slaughter."
"Kill the girl first. It will shatter the father."
Steve aimed his silenced pistol at her head and pulled the trigger.
"Ouch!" As Kimber shuffled in the kitchen, she stubbed her toe on the edge of a dining chair. Instinctively, she bent down to rub it. Just as she did, there was a soft crack and a whistle of air followed by a dull thunk as something thudded into the wall. Dust from the impact sprayed out and dotted her tank top. There was a time when she didn't know what that sound was; but after being on the street as Batgirl for the last few months, she knew a bullet when she heard one, even if it was silenced. "PAPA!"
"For Dumas' sake..." Steve cursed and fired again, but missed as the girl had already ducked to the side.
"Go! Run!" Goren shouted as he aimed his revolver at the attacking group.
Bang! An unsilenced gun rang out.
"Fu—Spread out!" The bullet struck Rob in the left shoulder and he returned fire.
The helmeted man disappeared into a side hallway as Steve ran after Kimber.
Quickly, the fiend cut off her escape and grinned as he reached for her. "Surprise, girlie!"
Kimber didn't waste time screaming again. Her mind shifted and though she wasn't in the costume, she was Batgirl. Her left fist met his face and, an instant later, her knee was in his groin. The man doubled over in pain as he clutched at his aching crotch. As he went down temporarily to the short combo, Kimber ran. Her shoulder was pounding, the pain screaming in her head a reminder of her incident her last night out. Ouch, damn it! Left arm is injured, Kimber!
"Where are you, little brat?" Steve was angry.
Kimber ducked a corner and into the guest bathroom. She heard Steve rush past her hiding spot, his boots banging on the wooden floor as he went. As his steps receded, she peeked around the door jam and felt safe for a moment. Suddenly, she felt a presence behind her. Immediately, she spun and found herself face to face with a man in a skull-adorned motorcycle helmet. She glanced down and saw a knife barely reflecting what little ambient light there was in the hallway. A second later, there was a sharp pain in her side and everything went black.
"Got you." The helmeted figure pulled the knife from Kimber's side and she slumped to the floor. "Steve! She's here."
Steve backtracked to the bathroom and flashed a thumbs up to his ally weakly as his groin recovered. "Good job, boss."
The leader looked at the knife. There was not as much blood for as deep as it should have gone. "What in Dumas' name?" He looked down at his victim. She was nowhere to be seen. "WHERE DID SHE GO?"
The fight with one of the intruders was over. Goren had taken a glancing shot to the thigh and arm, but the home invader had a slug right between his eyes. The police chief turned his attention outside to the squad car. The officer was just getting to the driveway, running as fast as he could.
"Papa!" Kimber hissed. She was huddled under the kitchen table clutching a meat cleaver.
"Oh, sweetie! Are you alright?" Goren winced as he leaned down to his daughter.
"They stabbed me, but I'm fine." She drew the beef she'd taken from the refrigerator from under her torn shirt. There was a large puncture in the center of it with a similar gash on her side.
"Smart thinking," Goren reassured his child as he kept his head on a swivel. There were still more men in his house.
Kimber grimaced through tears. The meat only helped so much, she still had been injured. Even so, the thick cut of beef had caught most of the knife. She guessed it had punctured no more than half an inch on her side, but the surprise of the cold steel easily slicing into her skin still made her pass out.
"Where are you, wayward one?" snarled Steve again. "Well, hello Goren Lee!" Steve, passing the table under which Kimber was hiding, kicked Goren's injured leg and pointed his gun at Goren before the veteran cop could raise his own firearm. From her position, time seemed to slow to a crawl as she contemplated lunging at the gunman or not. Did her father have a plan? She wanted to act but her limbs betrayed her desires and kept her frozen under the table, listening to Steve. "I don't know where your little one has run off to, but this will be a delightful consolation pri—"
Boom.
His words were cut short and time sped back up as the police officer from outside kicked in the front door. The deafening roar of a gun followed soon after and Kimber instinctively jumped in her skin and for a second feared the worst. But then she heard Steve gurgle something unintelligible and saw him drop before her, dead. A dark red pool slowly spread from him. Half his face had caved in around a raw, bloody cavity where his eye would have been. Should have been. She'd seen death before, but never like this; never so close, so violent, so final. Her eyes went wide as she took in every gory detail of the man's mutilated face, burning the image, and the feeling, into her mind.
Goren didn't bother to get up when the officer held his hand out. "There is still one... more man... in my house." He panted.
The officer looked around the room for a moment and then charged into the back rooms of his boss' house to search for the final intruder.
"Pity he left you so soon, Mr. Lee." A dark figure emerged from the guest bathroom moments after the officer ran further back. He put his face in Goren's. The skull on his helmet aligned with Goren's head and he was so close that Goren could almost make out the madman's crazed eyes through the visor.
"You..."
"Sure. Me." The man in the helmet yanked Goren up roughly and pressed the tip of his knife to Goren's throat. "I've lost two good men in your home. Now a third good man is about to die."
Kimber's heart pounded in her chest, her breath catching in her throat as she watched as her father was again at the whim of an intruder. Questions flooded her mind. Just how many were in the home? Was this the last one? Where was the officer? But there was one question that rose above the rest: why am I not doing anything? Her fingers clutched the cleaver in her grasp so tightly that she felt like the wooden handle could splinter.
Goren tried to lean his head away from the knife, but the blade only pushed closer to his throat. "Why are you doing this, Jean-Paul?"
"I'm not Jean-Paul, foolish man. There is only Mr. Death now."
"Well, I prefer 'Mr. Dead'." Kimber exploded from under the table, overturning it. The crash of the table and silverware rang through the house and startled the killer, giving Kimber enough time and confidence to plunge the cleaver right into the shoulder of the man threatening her father. With a scream, he fell to one knee and released her father.
The officer appeared in the blink of an eye from the back hallway, summoned by the commotion, and aimed at the fallen enemy, finger twitching on the trigger.
"Don't shoot!" Goren yelled out just before the amped-up officer could 'off' the intruder. He ran between the officer and the injured criminal with his palms up. "Don't shoot!" Goren took a breath. "Get an ambulance down here immediately!"
The officer nodded and ran off to his car to radio for the medics.
"Papa!" Kimber ran up to her father and hugged him like there was no tomorrow. They were both shaking. Gunfights, knives, and fighting. All things she had become very familiar with in the past few months. But it had never happened in her home before. She had always been more or less prepared and almost always was the instigator, seeking the fight. Never had it been so personal, so real. This was something new. She was glad the lights were off because she didn't want to see the blood or the bodies in her home.
Goren and his daughter watched as an ambulance, followed by two squad cars, took Mr. Death away for treatment and then for questioning. The other two men, deceased, were wheeled away in open body bags as investigators did what they do best: investigate the scene. Even in the dark of night, all the lights allowed for a cleaner look at the two men who had died trying to kill Goren and his daughter just before the body bags were zipped closed. One was in a black turtleneck and tactical pants and the other was in white overalls.
"Mr. Lee? Your ride awaits." The paramedic helped Chief Lee onto a gurney after bandaging his wounds and wheeled him to a waiting ambulance.
"Kimber?" He called out to his daughter, standing nearby and receiving treatment herself.
"Yes, Papa?"
Despite how ragged he looked, her father smirked. "Mr. Dead? Was that really the best you could come up with?"
She remembered just what was going through her head under the table before she'd acted; the desire to act fought against the paralyzing fear. The internal turmoil felt like it took forever, but in reality, it had happened in a mere second. To overcome that fear and fight she'd just blurted out the first thing to come to her mind: her earnest wish veiled as a stupid pun. The two shared a small laugh at her terrible joke. Things like that were always funnier in retrospect. "Seemed to do what I wanted it to. By the way… This may not be the best time but about Mawk's party tomorrow... Maybe I could...?"
Goren sighed. "I don't see why not. Hell, I wish it could join you. After all this, we could use a break." He shared a gentle fist bump with his daughter and then was wheeled into the second ambulance.
"Raise your shirt for me, dear," another paramedic instructed Kimber.
Kimber raised her shirt and got a good look at where Mr. Death's knife had sliced her. It doesn't look that bad. Shouldn't leave a nasty scar... Probably just one of those cool ones. She laughed to herself and tried to ignore the pain of the antiseptic the medic swabbed over her side.
"There." The medic then carefully wrapped a bandage around Kimber's stomach with extra gauze on her side. "Just try not to be too active for a while and change the bandage regularly."
Kimber lowered her shirt. "How long is awhile?" she asked carefully.
"Probably two weeks to a month if you don't want to reopen the wound," the medic replied at the drop of a hat.
"Eh!" Holy... No city saving at all, for a month? Then she reminded herself it could have been worse. "Thanks, I guess."
"No problem!" The cheery response came as a surprise to Kimber.
And then they were gone. The lights, her father, the men. All gone. Kimber was alone on the curb before her house, but she didn't feel safe. Even with the police car parked on the same curb, and two officers sitting inside, she didn't feel safe. They said they would be there 'just in case,' but Kimber didn't want there to be a 'just in case' situation. Her home was the one place she was supposed to feel secure, but now Mr. Death had robbed her of that luxury.
She took the first chance she got and snuck out of the house to become Batgirl.
"Alright. I'm done." Curtis popped out from his perch in the ceiling and dropped to the floor. "Now to test..." He wasn't sure who he was talking to. Jerome had left hours ago and Mawk was in another room inflating up more balloons. Curtis tapped the play button on Jerome's laptop and music blasted through the house. After a measure of music, the lights started flashing in sync with the funky beat. "Nice."
Mawk entered as the swelled bass seemed to shake his house's foundations. "Well, I'll be damned. You did a great job, tech geek." He looked around the room. "Sorry that it took so long to get all the crap needed to set up the system. I guess I didn't think that part all the way through. New rig and all."
Curtis simply shrugged. "It's cool. It's only been..." He looked at his watch and then decided he'd rather not do the math. Either way, it was late.
Mawk plopped himself down on the couch and then turned on the television. A breaking news bulletin was running. "You can take off if ya want. From here on out, I got this." He said as he scrolled through the channels while the news continued to drone on in the background.
Curtis took that as a cue to leave and started for the door.
"Oh shit..."
For the first time since Curtis had met the jock, Mawk sounded sincere. Curtis stopped walking.
"Curt... check this out."
Curtis looked over his shoulder at the television screen. The news anchor, Jack Ryder, was in front of the police station saying something about the capture of Mr. Death... And a home invasion with attempted double murder at Police Chief Goren Lee's house.
"Kimber..." Curtis whipped out his phone and sent a text her way but received no response.
"...The Lee family has declined comment, no doubt traumatized by tonight's events. Police at the scene have denied any media from the Lee residence, but sources say that though both were injured in the fight, neither Police Chief Lee nor his daughter, eighteen-year-old Kimber Lee, were grievously hurt. This truly is a happy ending to a crime spree that felt right out of Gotham's sordid past. Back to you in the studio, Laverne."
Batgirl watched the news segment end from her perch high above One Police Plaza. She had a hard and slow time getting to the rooftops tonight, but it was understandable. She didn't want to aggravate her wound anymore than she had to. Hell, she wasn't even supposed to be in the suit, but it was the only way she felt safe now. The only way she felt in control.
Once on the rooftops, she made her way to police headquarters to catch the news segment live. "Real glad they didn't make a media frenzy at my house... Would have been harder to get away..."
Her phone buzzed but she ignored it. No doubt her friends and family had all seen or heard a report of events by now. If it was someone calling or texting to see if she was alright, they would understand if she didn't want to talk at the moment. She turned away from the ledge and lay on the roof, face up to the stars. So I didn't save the day as 'Batgirl,' but I still saved the day. She propped herself up on her elbows and looked at her surroundings. This is my city. It calls for me, and I will never tell it to leave a message. I will always be here to fight for it.
"Ow!" She grunted and fell onto her back. Okay, I'll heal first and then I'll fight for this city. She would be sleeping up here tonight...
Bruce turned off the television as the news item ended. "I knew it. She wouldn't be there. She couldn't. Her father wouldn't let her leave before the attack and she couldn't get away during it." He was sure of it now. That girl was the Batgirl. And that girl was in over her head. I could help her. She doesn't have the funds or training. I could show her; reveal to her I was Batman.
"No!" He announced to his mind, himself, and the manor. "Don't even think about it."
But he couldn't help it. He was drawn to it, as if by instinct.
"Why?" He looked at his reflection in the glass of the grandfather clock that guarded the main entrance to the cave. He longed to go down there. That was the place where his heart was locked up. He had to get down there. For himself. For Diana. For Kimber. For his city.
"Ten forty-seven." He spoke in a reverent voice as he adjusted the seemingly broken clock's hands. In response, the clock swung open. He started his descent down the stone stairs he had walked so many times before. "Diana..." His mind wandered again back to the Amazon. She was the last Justice Lord to accept their role as Earth's leaders and the first to actually admit guilt.
She didn't fight the change in the system and didn't fight back after she was captured. Well, when she was fully captured. She showed the most promise in rehabilitation. That was why she was in the correctional facility. Bruce Wayne was able to get her out of a heavier sentence and get her to seek psychiatric evaluation, arguing that because she was so new to Earth's culture, her mind was easily overwhelmed by the number of atrocities she bore witness to. He reminded the courts that the land Diana hailed from still had older, less democratic ways of rule. Themyscira wasn't a democratic republic, after all.
It worked. And now, many months later, she was about to go free.
"I sure hope it was the right thing to do." Who am I kidding? I could always read her like a college professor could read Cat in the Hat. She really is trying. Bruce found himself at the bottom of the stairs, facing the Batcomputer.
"I just couldn't stay away, could I?" He walked up to the armory and stared into the two lenses of his cowl. "I would blame you, but... I am you."
He turned away from the bat mask and approached the cot he had started keeping in the cave. Stripping out of his day clothes and donning a bland, gray pair of sweatpants, he lay on the mat. He would be sleeping down here tonight...
