Ablaze: Told Twice Book 2

The Girl & the Villian who finally Meet

Sakura watched as Cyborg began to ease out of the room. Sakura wished she could go too but that was probably a bad idea. She decided not to mention Vic's retreat. If one of them could get away with not having anything to do with the mess that was going on it should be Cyborg. Although, Sakura wondered what Batman's plan for him would have been. Sakura glanced at Batman to see that he was already looking at her. Sakura felt her breath catch in her throat.

"Stay," Wonder Woman's voice made her turn away. She glanced around to see who she was talking to and realized that she had noted Cyborg's retreat. "You're a part of this."

Sakura watched as Victor quickly hid his frustration. Sakura tossed him an apologetic smile that he half-heartedly returned as he eased back into the room.

"I'm not against Batman's contingency plans," Green Lantern began, "But letting someone steal them was pretty damn dumb."

Sakura scowled. "It wasn't a matter of letting anyone do anything. Batman didn't just stand on a corner declaring to everyone that he had them and taunt them to come and get them. Someone has been studying us. Flash, himself, said he suspected that the Chaos Bringer knows who are civilian identities are. If someone has that information there's no telling what else they know." Sakura ignored Batman's gaze on her.

"I've had some time to think about how it happened." A monitor popped to life behind them showing Mirror Master climbing out of Batman's Tumbler. "This is security footage from the Bat Cave. He's in hologram form so the motion detectors didn't have anything to lock on to."

Flash shook his head. "Mirror Master's not that careful and the technology the scope of all this means he isn't working alone."

Batman nodded his head agreeing with Flash's assessment. "The video is from the night we captured the Royal Flush Gang."

Sakura remembered that night and knew she had barged into Bruce's home unannounced. She was well aware that had she not arrived to distract him, to argue with him that it was possible that none of this would have ever happened. It was true that Batman shared the majority of the blame, but that didn't mean he was responsible for all of it.

"So whoever gave the RFG their technology also gave Mirror Master the ability the ability to break into the Cave and get him access to Batman's files." Flash reasoned.

"But the encryption on your files is all but unbreakable," Superman interjected. It was something all of them knew whether they admitted it or not. Batman was many things, but careless was not one of them.

"I can find them. As you say my encryption is formidable but in the event that it ever was cracked..."

Superman looked disgusted as he realized the truth. "You had a contingency plan."

Batman seemingly didn't care what Superman thought but that wasn't unusual. "When my files are decrypted they call home." Batman gazed at his computer which had shifted to a map of the United States. It narrowed down quickly to an area Sakura hadn't been to before. "Louisiana. Swamp Land." Batman stated.

"I guess we'd better go then," Sakura said and rose to her feet. Slowly, the others followed her.

:::

"So that things going to destroy half of Earth's population." Mirror Master questioned. Kaiyo smiled lazily wondering when the Justice League was going to show up. She wanted her chance to kill Sakura that the others had with their various nemesis.

"Not exactly," Savage said, "the Solar flare will do most of the work.

"Solar flare." Mirror Master repeatedly dumbly making Kaiyo roll her eyes. Bane saw her and his lips quirked in amusement. Kaiyo wondered whether or not she should take Bane with her when she made her escape. He didn't seem like the type of man who could be controlled. That...wasn't a bad thing to Kaiyo.

"Think of this as a pilot light. When our ideal launch window opens in under an hour this magnificent creation will fly into the sun trailing magnet resonance.

"And when it hits?" Mirror Master questioned.

"It will trigger a solar flare that will propagate at light speed along the magnet trail we've left. Eight and half minutes later it will utterly destroy the sunward facing side of the Earth nearly half the world's population will die instantly. And thanks to the accompanying electromagnetic pulse any technology more advanced than say, the steam engine will simply stop working."

"No technology, no superheroes, no functioning government." Cheetah mused.

Savage smiled, "Except the one that we provide."

Kaiyo let her eyes trail over the room. It seemed like it was just the right time for an annoying intervention. She let her eyes stop at the statue of Vandal Savage. There was something on top of it. Something that made her flesh crawl. Her lips curled into a snarl when she heard the familiar voice of Sakura Haruno said, "Quite an ambitious plan you've got there. No wonder you wanted us out of the way."

Kaiyo slowly rose to her feet ignoring Savage's angry growl of, "I thought you got rid of her!"

"Don't feel bad," Sakura said with a grin that Kaiyo wanted to slap off her face. "None of you managed to get rid of any of us." She raised her hand to touch her ear. "Did you guys get all of that?"

Suddenly the room was filled with not quite dead superheroes Superman standing slightly in front of them all, with his hands on his hips looking utterly heroic. Kaiyo let her eyes trail over him for a moment and then averted her gaze. She saw the Flash looking at her. He looked like he wanted to say something to her but Kaiyo slowly shook her head and turned her gaze to Sakura. Sakura looked back and slowly pulled on her gloves and beckoned Kaiyo to come at her. Kaiyo wasn't one to back down from a challenge.

"Take them down." Kaiyo heard Superman utter but she was already on her way to Sakura. She hesitated briefly when she heard Flash cry out, "Wait! Kaiyo!" And it allowed Sakura to land the first blow. Inwardly, Kaiyo sighed. She couldn't do this with the Flash watching and interfering. She immediately began planning her exit strategy.