Warning! Chapters 14-18 were all posted back to back, make sure you pick up the story in the right place ;-). 

Chapter 16: Patrol

It had been three and a half days since the meeting with Nocturne and Black Canary, a meeting that had ultimately turned out surprisingly positive. A number of things had been hashed out since then, including working out a tentative name and starting the process for getting both of her new teammates outfitted with better gear. As to the name, Alyssa privately admitted to herself that that her own initial suggestion of ‘Gotham Knights’ would probably have been needlessly antagonistic, given the whole ‘Dark Knight’ sobriquet that Batman had. Also possibly a bit egotistical, given she was the only one on their experimental team with ‘Knight’ in her heroic persona’s name.

Instead, she’d been surprised by one of the suggestions from Black Canary, and the long-term potential that it immediately fed her visions of the future of had caused her to back the name. At least, she’d done so after making certain that there weren’t any teams currently using it, and that none of the Heroes that would have been members of it in another world and time were around.

Two of them actually were around, but weren’t Heroes yet, and the organization didn’t exist. She didn’t know much at all about the threats the group had faced, so she honestly hoped they wouldn’t pop up. From what little she’d gleaned, mostly out of curiosity after seeing Yuri Rule 34 art in her past life, she didn’t think the threats were particularly dangerous by the standards of this amalgam reality. But she couldn’t be certain. One way or another, she was more than okay with stealing their thunder when it came to a name, if they would ever have come to exist here in the first place.

Thus, with her voting for it and Nocturne not having an issue with it, even if Talia admittedly thought it was a little generic, they now had a name.

Overwatch.

Personally, Alyssa had bought into the name purely because it had inspired her nebulous long-term planning to firm up a bit. She, or rather he, might never have played the related game in his past life, but he had done a mild amount of wiki diving when a certain type of art had started popping up all over his various feeds. Which means Alyssa knew at least a little about the ‘Overwatch’ organization from the game of the same name. Not a lot, but enough to have had a little bit of a brainwave about an unfilled niche she felt really ought to be filled. One that could very well be an extremely important long-term goal for them, even if she wasn’t going to even whisper about the possibility just yet.

For all the good they did, Global Justice, Shield, The Avengers, the X-men, the Justice League, the PRT and Protectorate? All of them were, at the end of the day, treating symptoms. They were paramilitary police forces with superpowers, in most respects. Oh, they did other things like rescue and disaster relief, of course. But they didn’t really push into Research and Development, trying to solve the world’s problems in ways that didn’t involve punching them.

Sure, as had come up in their team-forming discussion, many teams held invention patents. Likewise, some groups happened to have rich members like Stark who had their own R&D initiatives. For the most part, however, it was generally either an afterthought or focused specifically on the field of Heroics. The X-men held patents for holo-tech due to their Danger Room having been among the first true uses of complex Hard Light. The World Hero’s Association had patents for several common ‘Heroic Support Equipment’ items, like handcuffs that were rated for a degree of super strength.

Yet, for all of that, none of the major Heroic organizations had an explicit ‘science division,’ whose purpose it was to turn various Meta talents and hypertech advancements into something that could benefit or uplift mankind. The closest any of them came was actually the Guild, down in South America under Dragon. That group actually did do some manufacturing of hypertech, with a focus on improving the world. However, Dragon was most known for figuring out how to mass manufacture other people’s designs. The Guild only had a few members that were engineers or scientists, and it was always secondary to their combat personas. Much like Stark, really, who focused the vast majority of his personal R&D efforts on his suits.

Something she remembered from that wiki-diving about Overwatch the game, was that the Overwatch organization had taken a different track. They’d employed scientists from the beginning and expanded on that once the original crisis they were formed for was over. In doing so, they eventually became an organization that went far beyond peacekeeping. They ended up pushing forward the fields of space exploration, medical research, biology, chemistry, infrastructure, and even climatology.

Alyssa thought there was potential there.

It only had a little bit to do with the fact that Angela Ziegler was apparently real, and currently trying to gather money for research into healing technology. The fact it was a type of nanobiology and she was only twenty-two with a brand-new PHD was causing her problems. Alyssa might have spent an hour setting up a research grant to the tune of two million dollars for the woman the day after looking her up. Likely a drop in the bucket to what Ziegler would need, but enough to get her started and the best Alyssa could do…for now.

Really, the more she thought about it, the more a lot of the problems most of the franchises that seemed to make up this Amalgam reality? They seemed like things that could have been solved. Could have been, that is, if the people with all the advanced tech had actually bothered trying to uplift mankind to the level of some other races out there and properly secure the solar system. It was something that would obviously be a heck of a long-term goal and project, but she was pretty sure it was possible…and that she personally now had a lifespan better measured in centuries than years anyway.

One way or another, their tentative and experimental little team had its name, she had some ideas for the future, and the trio had spent a few hours hashing out some other basic details. They still had a lot to figure out, but Dinah had eventually needed to get back to her dojo and Nocturne apparently still had a few standing commitments to take care of and jobs to finish up. They had met once more since then, and would be meeting again tomorrow to continue. In particular, Alyssa had finished work on the initial round of equipment upgrades and requests, which she’d be presenting the other two with. For now, however, Alyssa was busy doing something that her new teammates weren’t overly interested in.

Patrolling.

It was something even she saw mostly as a chore, but a necessary one to set the stage the way she wanted. She’d eventually make sure to patrol with the others, of course. Even if it wasn’t something they were looking forward to compared to directed raids. For now, however, she was fine continuing the Daylight Patrols that she’d already done several of. Never the same route, exactly, but she always passed through at least one of the less savory portions of Gotham. Flying the flag and being brazen about it, as it were.

Today, it was the Narrows again, and as she arrived, she almost instantly realized something was off.

The most obvious sign of that had clicked the moment she came down off the bridge from downtown. There weren’t enough people. Oh, there were still quite a few rapidly-walking individuals moving around, and regular traffic was continuing. Yet most of the street vendors were conspicuously absent at a glance, and the overall crowds were thinner than usual by at least a third. Gothamites tended to have damn good instincts, particularly those who lived or worked in an area like the Narrows, and it was clear to her that something had set those instincts off.

It was an observation that was firmly backed up by her precognition and danger sense as she started to move deeper into the Narrows. She hadn’t really pushed those abilities beyond being alert for immediate dangers, so the feeling she was getting was nebulous at best, but it was also pervasive. Clearly, something was wrong here, and from the feel of it that something was aimed at her specifically.

Well, it was about time.

That someone would attempt to take a potshot at her sooner or later hadn’t been a question. Not really. Even the most basic bitch paranoia had said that someone would, at minimum, eventually try to snipe her. It wasn’t likely to work, unless they both tried it from at least a kilometer out and had an anti-material rifle, but they couldn’t know that yet. Even with her live-streaming her take down of KGBeast to the authorities, her enemies should only have a very limited idea of what her powers were so far. Even that was assuming they’d gotten their hands on that live-stream at all, given that had been directed only at law enforcement.

Of course, given the amount of corruption required for Gotham to be Gotham, it was almost certain they’d gotten at least a basic report. Possibly even copies of the live-stream and security footage. Yet even that would only tell them so much, doubly so since she’d been holding back quite a lot even against KGBeast, and he’d been her toughest opponent so far. Gotham just didn’t have that many heavy hitters, a major part of the reason it hadn’t previously attracted a proper team. Batman’s inability to play nice with others was far from the only reason it hadn’t done so. Though the fact it did have a local Endbringer but didn’t have a local team was an extremely unusual state of affairs. One only made possible due to the main Avengers team being based close enough by to usually muster a quick response to Grundy.

Back to the threat at hand, though, this situation begged the question of if she should walk in bold as brass and let this ambush happen…or if she should be concerned with possible civilian casualties and try to avoid the attack as a result. After a moment or two of thought, she settled on an option somewhere in between. Doing her best to look visibly disappointed in the direction her favorite food cart for the Narrows was normally set up, she ‘listlessly’ took off to fly over the cars moving along the street, rather than over the heads of the crowd. She could feel tension ratchet at that, but not in a way that said they were thinking of calling whatever this was off. Instead, if felt distinctly like they were pleased she’d done so.

Well, that at least said they probably weren’t enthusiastic about firing into a crowd of civilians in broad daylight. Even if it didn’t tell her what exactly they were up to. Pushing on, making sure to weave a bit as she ‘investigated the sights from the air,’ she pushed out her senses to try and map the danger as much as possible.

It was on the rooftops, she quickly decided.

Perhaps her thoughts about snipers earlier were accurate after all? Though that didn’t account for the number of people she was feeling moving around. No, she thought this was likely to be something a little noisier than a sniper. Speeding up just as she felt the tension about to snap, she made sure she was in a mostly-empty intersection…then came to a dead stop in the heartbeat before the ambush kicked off.

The vast majority of that ambush was composed of massed small arms fire.

Streams of submachine gun and assault rifle fire, some of the later even complete with tracer rounds as they tracked on her, filled the air where she should have been. Her abrupt stop had caused all of them to miss, though at least some of them began very professionally shifting their line of fire towards her almost instantly. Those, however, were a secondary priority she dealt with by virtue of jinking towards one of the rooftops and engaging her tactical cloak to foul aim still farther.

The bigger problem were the four RPGs that had fired from four different rooftops. Many RPG designs had a nasty tendency to only go off when they finally hit something. Which would mean a bad day for someone if she didn’t do anything about them. Thankfully, they were painfully slow to her precognition and Tamaranean boosted reflexes. Equally thankfully, she’d been actively pushing her telekinesis in both training and everyday life, despite having barely used it in combat.

With a muzzle velocity of under 400 feet per second, her very much superhuman reflexes were able to snag all four RPGs halfway to where her former position had been. She gritted her teeth to force them to come to a stop harshly enough to register as an ‘impact,’ losing her telekinetic grip a second later as they detonated in midair. The biggest threat of collateral damage dealt with, she accelerated into the group on the roof she’d jinked toward. A group who were now wildly hosing the general area with bullets in hope of hitting her cloaked form.

She laid into the group, her cloak failing as she brutally knocked them out in rapid succession. She didn’t bother holding back as much as she normally would, given that they’d already risked innocent lives with their actions. As a result, they only lasted seconds, and she accelerated to the next roof, blurring in a way that might well make them think she’d teleported. She had, in fact, broken the sound barrier in doing so, causing the second group she fell on to already be cursing and disoriented. People breaking the sound barrier weren’t large enough to cause the sort of devastation that aircraft doing the same thing would, but it was still a brutally loud noise right in their faces.

She repeated the same trick to move to the third roof…and cursed incredulously as she had to intercept another RPG that someone on the fourth had sent at the third. Apparently, they were more than willing to accept friendly fire if it meant getting her. Getting her with an attack that likely wouldn’t have done much more than singe her, since she’d activated her full helmet the moment combat had started. An RPG would fuck her armor up pretty badly, but it would absorb most of the hit, while her own base durability would see her through the remainer. Only repeated hits of that caliber would really be dangerous, assuming they could hit her at all.

Thankfully, she’d been improving on the tunnel-vision that her battle precognition had tended to fall into at first, and caught the RPG halfway between roofs. Another burst of speed, more knocked out goons, all of them bearing signs of being Black Mask’s False Facers. Annoying, very annoying. She hadn’t wanted to target the single biggest criminal enterprise in the city just yet, but this wasn’t something she could ignore. Particularly as it was virtually certain some of their wild sprays of fire had gone down into the crowd.

Grimacing and making damn sure none of these assholes were going anywhere, Alyssa dove over the edge of the building and immediately zeroed in on three people and a car that had been hit. The car was wrecked, but the only occupant was already climbing out, looking shaky but mostly fine. One of the people hit in the general crowd had taken a headshot and there was nothing she could do for him. The other two, though, were only hit in a leg and the gut respectively.

Pushing bystanders aside, she ripped off the pant leg of the less injured one and slapped a hemostatic bandage from a pre-prepared kit on the wound. She could sense it hadn’t nicked anything important, so stopping the bleeding would be enough to stabilize him for now. The gut wound was much more serious.

Well, time to see if the limited Force Healing she’d managed to get working so far could at least stabilize the woman until an ambulance got here. She certainly hoped so, given that getting an ambulance into the Narrows right after a mass attack wasn’t likely to be fast by any stretch of the imagination…

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

A/N 1: No, I've never played Overwatch. In truth, I didn't know much about the organization either. I was researching possible team names when I hit on the idea and did a little reading. So, essentially, Alyssa's knowledge is literally my own level of understanding from a brief wiki-dive.

A/N 2: I'm in line with Alyssa on her thoughts, though. A lot of Marvel/DC issues, in particular, would just...go away...if all the people with Hypertech in the setting actually worked on uplifting Earth, instead of it being a stagnant comic-book setting that never grows.