Daughter of the Timeless

Blast

Three years. 

In three years we almost have it all. Edge City, MidWay city,  Opal City,  Star City. 

Gotham as a whole was too tough to keep.  We'd no sooner acquire a district to have it taken by Penguin again.  Most of it is still ours.  Now we have him surrounded at Gotham Stadium.  Gotham will be all ours.

Selina is with my fath- NO, with Lex in Metropolis. The Riddler is in Croc's dungeon, Ivy is in Europe hiding in Chernobyl. Slade is here in Gotham with Penguin, the person with the highest bid and so desperate for elite protection from the onslaught of Joker's army.

Where I stand now , on the edge of the Colosseum of Gotham Stadium's receding dome, I see Slade walking closely with Penguin as the little ugly bird man stops to bark orders at his masked henchmen. They run around, up and down the stadium bleacher steps, posing at the ready for a incoming charge of Joker's men. 

Joker recruited some low levels against my pleas that he leave the poor alone. They are literally beggars and people wanting to work hard and elevate themselves, but he enslaved them with false promises and a do or die.  His argument to me was he couldn't sacrifice his good soldiers, the ones that were left over in Gotham. I have Cat and Techo, my friend Rich which is Joker's son, running interference right now, keeping Penguin away from the poor pawns, and the pawns away from danger.

Joker doesn't know I am here. He doesn't know that Delia, Fern and I are going in with our own team. 

Delia is surprisingly adept in acrobats and hand to hand combat. Harley had her train and let her come out of hiding to meet me. Harley sympathizes with my approach, since there were times she wishes she could have spared some of the Jokers pointless past victims.

"Alright, Delia, you are on a light show. Get in there and behind them. Use them against each other. Save your energy." I demand, with my ball bat resting over my shoulders. She looks at Fern out of the corner of her eye, Fern nods as Delia begins climbing the skeleton of the hidden beam that the dome rests on when it is closed. "Fern, focus on keeping Penguin away from Slade, and Slade away from me."  Her tail whips and a thorn posts itself on the inner ledge below where we stand and she lowers herself on a tendril. Her enchanting spores misting the air, keeping her hidden and invisible from the men below. 

As if she were walking on tentacles like an octopus, Fern navigates over the waiting men silently. She poises ready, suspended between the two bright yellow goal posts, and extends a tendril back to me so that I can drop down in the middle circle where the fat bird is hiding. 

A burst of fireworks explode above us, in all colors. They are loud like canons and bullets going off. Delia presses play on her mini-holo-frame to begin the music through the stadium speakers, and a disco ball lowers below her. Strobing lights everywhere.

Before I can even reach the middle vine between the opposite goal posts I see a stream of light glinting and traveling between each fleck of color and light.  Disco is  here. Great.

Penguin starts hissing and Slade is at the ready. Smoke billows out of the little clown bombs I drop below. 

3, 2, 1... ACTION

Gunfire is directed at me, since I am not invisible or hidden like the rest. Fern lowers me to the field below as she erects a thick plant shield around me. Delia drops and bounces off the rubbery dome, summersaults through the air and lands gracefully. She unfolds her titanium fighting batons and spins them to deflect a hornet swarm of bullets.

Fern starts abducting some of the henchmen on the field from below, making them sink into the ground and disappear. Vines swirl up and whip the others around like the Kraken that guards Atlantis. People are bouncing everywhere, light streams around me and I am imprisoned in this plant membrane.