Chapter 14: Encountering the Locals

Star Knight tisked in annoyance as one of her ‘victims’ managed to slip out of the building. Cleaning up the remainder of the Neon Dragons Triad was showing her just how much of a difference her preparation had made in her previous operations. Without pre-existing surveillance on all of their smaller hideouts, the Triad members were proving slippery. Not that any had actually escaped her yet, she was too fast for that as a general rule. This one would be no different as she chased him out into the back alley…

Or would have been no different, if he hadn’t already been rendered unconscious before she exited.

Suppressing a frown, chiding herself for letting her awareness in the Force narrow only to hostiles, she quickly reached out and found the interloper. Said interloper, a certain redhead in a bat-themed costume, realized she’d been spotted the moment Alyssa’s eyes tracked to her. Seemingly unconcerned by that fact, the redhead lept off the building she’d been perching on the roof of and glided down to rest with the knocked-out thug between them.

“Well, I’m pleased I get to gloat about being right. Batman thought you would move onto another major operation, since you didn’t spend time cleaning up The Hammer’s casino operation. I’m Batgirl, by the way, but I suspect you already knew, given you’re operating in Gotham and clearly not an idiot.”

Alyssa nodded, even as she extended her senses around to look for anyone else. She wasn’t exactly eager to deal with Batman, since she had no idea what flavor of neurotic this one was. Sensing no one and hoping the girl, woman really, across from her hadn’t summoned her boss just yet, she responded.

“Of course. Just as I’m sure you’re aware I’m Star Knight, if you were looking for me in the first place. Though that brings up the obvious question of why you were looking for me, of course.”

A carefully neutral statement. Alyssa hadn’t really been able to form a proper picture of this reality’s version of the Bat Family. Like most versions she’d read or watched, they didn’t exactly deal with the public much. A mistake, in her opinion, but it certainly meant there wasn’t a lot known about them. As a form of information security it was effective, even if Alyssa considered it to be horrifically detrimental to their overall efforts to clean up Gotham.

“Batman has been looking after Gotham for over a decade, with help from a few others like me. We always try to make contact with new Vigilantes, to get a feel for them and offer advice.”

Batgirl’s tone was light and friendly, but Alyssa wouldn’t have bought that line entirely even without Motoko’s downloaded skillset highlighting numerous things. Like the fact that the other woman’s ‘casual’ pose was actually a combat stance that would let her react almost instantly. Not to mention that she was broadcasting. Likely video and her location.

“Hmmm, a nice sentiment. If you weren’t currently broadcasting our conversation and location. Sorry, Batgirl, but I have no intention of hanging around to talk to your neurotic boss. The GCPD has, of course, already been called. Have a good evening.”

Batgirl shifted forward, mouth opening to say something, but it was much too late. Alyssa didn’t bother with the Chesire Cat routine, or with her tactical cloak at all. She just accelerated straight up from a standing start to just a hair shy of Mach 1 in less than a second, vanishing from the alley…

… … …

Barbara grimaced as Star Knight blurred and vanished. Super Speed confirmed, at least in flight, she supposed. Which wasn’t at all what she’d wanted out of meeting the new heroine. Not after solid confirmation that she was a heroine, from the joint operation the woman had run with the Avengers anti-human-trafficking program. Bruce might still be leery of her, but Barbara was willing to give her the benefit of a doubt, and had simply wanted to establish contact.

She was internally cursing herself for turning on her recorder and location beacon. Yes, that was standard policy when encountering a new Meta, in case they turned out to be unfriendly. But she hadn’t factored in the fact that Star Knight was clearly equipped with high-end tech. High-end enough to detect absurdly stealthy broadcast methods that Bruce had equipped her with. Normally, only people like Iron Man or Dragon could even get a hint of their comms, the far-outside-normal frequencies they worked with making them hard to detect.

Another data point, she supposed, since the woman had easily done so, without seeming to make any special effort at that.

Again, not what she’d been after, though. Worse, the one thing she did get out of Star Knight was that she was deliberately avoiding Batman…and considered him neurotic. It was, unfortunately, something she had considered a possibility. Most new Heroes trying to make a difference in Gotham touched based with them, or at least didn’t avoid them. There had been a small number, however, who actively went out of their way to not encounter Batman.

For reasons she unfortunately couldn’t blame them for.

Bruce had a reputation for being a bit domineering regarding Gotham, and had driven more than one potentially helpful individual to seek another city to offer their help to. Something he considered inconsequential, since if they couldn’t play ball with him, obviously they didn’t care enough about Gotham. Barbara on the other hand, considered all but one of those instances loses, as they frankly needed the help. They were barely treading water, keeping Gotham stable against the crazier plots, and hadn’t made any real progress at improving the city since Robin left to become Nightwing. The loss in manpower had slowed what little progress they were making to a virtual stop and Bruce refused to see it.

Worse, there were two Vigilantes currently in Gotham right now that seemed to have started from the position of considering Batman a problem to be worked around, rather than an ally. Possibly three, considering that Black Canary hadn’t made any moves to connect with them either. Canary was currently only really focused on small time crime in a relatively small section of the city, though. Which hadn’t drawn a direct attempt to visit her yet.

It might have, if the martial artist hadn’t gone active only a month before Star Knight showed up. As it was, they weren’t looking into Black Canary nearly as much as they would normally be, since Star Knight had drawn their attention before Canary had done anything major. More to the point, they knew precisely who Black Canary was and why she’d started going hard against a few local gangs. Which was part of why they hadn’t approached her yet. It was hard to say if Dinah Drake was going to be in it for the long haul, or if she was just protecting a place personally important to her.

They knew exactly who the other Vigilante who was avoiding them was too, of course. Nocturne was an X-men affiliate whose physical appearance meant she didn’t exactly have a dual identity. Real name Talia Wagner, daughter of Nightcrawler and the Scarlet Witch, both of whom were currently members of the X-men’s primary roster. Fully registered and operating under an X-men Independent Affiliate license, Nocturne wasn’t really a concern. She was avoiding them, however, which wasn’t exactly a great sign for what the X-men thought of Bruce.

Now, apparently, Star Knight was also avoiding him. Not them, either. She hadn’t seemed to have an issue with Barbara herself. She’d specifically stated she didn’t want to meet with her boss, and Barbara didn’t think the statement had been an accident. No, she was afraid it was a sign of something she and Nightwing had been concerned about. One of the reasons he, himself, had stopped being Robin and become Nightwing in the first place.

She was afraid it meant that Batman was actively the one keeping Gotham from getting better, as Bruce’s paranoia drove off those that were trying to help…

… … …

Alyssa had triggered her tactical cloak only after putting a few buildings between herself and Batgirl. Hovering over Gotham, she debated with herself what to do next. She’d been intending to sweep several of the remaining Neon Dragon sites tonight, including a couple of apparent fallback positions for the Triad that had only come to her attention due to pre-placing tracking devices.

She’d placed those devices on a few lieutenants of the Triad, knowing they might well try to abandon all previous locations after the first big raid. Something that had proven to be excellent foresight as several of their previous hideouts had been cleaned out. Three had not, and she’d just finished clearing the largest of those. She’d intended to sweep the remaining two, even having gone so far as jamming communications for the first facility to make sure they didn’t get the word out.

The problem, of course, is that Batgirl now knew what she was doing.

Presumably, the Bats had known about many or most of the Triad’s operations. Hence why Ms. Gordan had been able to predict her actions. Which, unfortunately, meant that trying to hit the other two locations might well lead to another encounter with Batgirl…or worse, with Batman. At the same time, she wasn’t all that keen on the idea of letting the Triad go. There were still enough loose members left that they might be able to reform if she didn’t clean up more of them.

Pondering the situation, using her neural interface to skim the data she had, she finally settled on a choice. The remaining two untouched locations contained no leadership. Presumably, that was why they were still running business as usual. Whoever had been in charge of them had likely been snapped up in the main raid, and the underlings had no idea what to do. They could keep, or even be passed off to the police with the GCPD still in the position of needing to dot their i’s and cross their t’s. The fallback points she’d identified with her trackers, on the other hand? Those contained most of the remaining low and mid-level Triad leaders left in Gotham. If she could capture most of them tonight, there wouldn’t be much chance of the Triad recovering.

The flip side was that she had to hit them all tonight, if she went that route. Which meant it was time to get some help. Two of the three locations were basically safehouses, with only a handful of goons and a lieutenant at each. Something which could easily be handled by a pair of people she’d been eyeing as possible recruits anyway. Black Canary she’d already made digital contact with in the aftermath of The Hammer raid. The woman had made good on the information she’d been slipped, taking out one of their outposts near her stomping grounds.

The other, Nocturne, had been someone that she wanted to approach, but hadn’t been quite sure how to do so. As it happened, however, she knew for a fact that Nocturne had been on the same team as Shadowcat before going independent, and Shadowcat had provided her with a number to reach her at. Mentally bringing up a texting interface, Alyssa composed a quick message for the X-men member. Included was what data she had on the safehouse in question, along with a question on if the heroine would be willing to forward it to Nocturne.

Sending it off, she switched to contacting the same phone she’d managed to track down for Dinah Drake. This message she rewrote a couple of times, trying to find the right balance. The second safehouse wasn’t all that close to Black Canary’s current stomping grounds, which meant she’d be asking her to go out of her way to fight criminals that didn’t normally bother the area Canary had been protecting. Hopefully, the woman was serious about being a Hero and willing to step up a bit more on data provided by a source that had already fed her proven-good information. Striking the right balance, though, particularly when Canary hadn’t bothered with a mask at all, was a bit more touchy than dealing with an active Heroine like Nocturne.

She’d just finished and sent off a final version of the message when she got a text message back from Shadowcat saying she’d sent the information to Nocturne, complete with smiley face. A bigger surprise was, a moment later, getting an incoming call…from a number with the same Hero-Network designator that Shadowcat’s used. Ugh. She’d always hated actual phone calls. Still, better accept it.

“Star Knight. I’m assuming this is Nocturne?”

There was a moment of hesitation, where she could almost hear a blink, before the answer came.

“Yes. How did you…no, Kitty would have sent you a return message. You just guessed.”

Alyssa smirked.

“Of course. It wasn’t that hard to connect the dots when I’d literally just finished reading her return text. So, are you interested in hitting the Triad safehouse I sent data for?”

No hesitation this time.

“Yes, but I want something more, too.”

Alyssa blinked, frowning as the unexpected addition.

“I won’t be able to help personally, I’m hitting another safehouse with a larger presence.”

The reply was immediate.

“Not that. I figured it was something like that. No, I want to meet after this. I haven’t been making headway in Gotham, despite being here months longer than you. I never even considered trying to just bypass the local corruption. But, then, I didn’t hit any targets nearly big enough to draw in the DEA or Shield. I want to see if we can work together.”

Huh. Were teammates supposed to recruit themselves? Alyssa wasn’t exactly an expert on this Hero Teams thing, but she was almost certain it didn’t normally work that way. Still, she had been eyeing Nocturne as a possible recruit.

“I’m fine with that. I’d actually hoped to possibly recruit you and one other down the line, but I figured I’d need to establish myself more first.”

Nocturne laughed. It was, thankfully, a light laugh rather than a scornful one.

“Maybe if you hadn’t impressed the hell out of both Kitty and Storm. Or if you hadn’t driven two major gangs out of business in less than a month. I’m not promising anything, we haven’t even met yet, but I’m willing to give it a chance, see if we can work together.”

Alyssa nodded, a smile stretching her lips.

“I’m good with that. I’m even willing to show off the little base I’ve been putting together, if you’re up for it. Given who you’ve worked with in the past, I trust you can keep it a secret even if things don’t work out.”

Well, that and the base wasn’t established enough yet that she couldn’t just write it off. There wasn’t even any real risk to her civilian identity, given that she’d used an entire series of shell companies to buy the property.

“Oh? You actually have a base already? No, of course you do. You’ve been too damn professional since the start not to have thought of that. Fine. So, we hit our respective safehouses and meet up after? Or do you need more time than that?”

Alyssa hummed, giving herself a moment to think. Slowly, she nodded, even as she eyed a confirmation from Black Canary that she was going to hit the last safehouse.

“Tonight is fine. I might bring one more, if I can convince her. Black Canary just agreed to hit their third safehouse. I’m a little more leery of showing her the base without getting to know her though…”

Nocturne offered an immediate solution.

“I’ve already worked with Canary twice, and I can teleport. Give me the location of her safehouse and I’ll swing by and pick her up. If you give me coordinates, I can teleport her and myself both into the base without her knowing where it is. Though I think she’s probably trustworthy.”

Well, that was certainly convenient. Shooting a quick message with Canary’s safehouse location to Nocturne, she replied.

“That sounds good. I’ll shoot you the base coordinates once I’m actually back there myself. Which, if we want to meet before sunrise, means we ought to get moving.”

Nocturne agreed, confirmed she’d gotten the data, and hung up. Taking a deep breath and congratulating herself on surviving another phone call, the ultimate in awkward communication as far as her introvert soul was concerned, Alyssa set her own waypoint. She had a Triad backup facility to clear, instead of just a safehouse. Better get moving if she wanted to be done in time to place host…

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

A/N 1: So, Barbara and Alyssa have officially met...but barely. A little insight into Batgirls thoughts and the hero politics of Gotham.

A/N 2: A couple of notes on Nocturne. First, this is NOT the version of her that was part of the Exiles. Second, literally no image I've ever seen of her, official or not, has EVER looked like she has fur. Even if she's described as having fur, it just...doesn't actually come across. I decided to make that a thing, given she's a hybrid anyway. Blue from Nightcrawler, but skin instead of fur from Wanda. Who are, in fact, actually together in this Amalgam. Though that might never actually be important. Second, I've altered her powers slightly. Frankly, her possession ability is just...not that helpful for story friendly. Nor does it actually fit with EITHER of her parent's powersets. As such, it's been swapped out for her father's teleportation ability.