[center][h1][color=fff201][b] B A T G I R L[/b][/color][/h1][/center]
[hr]

	Ripples in a pond. When something was wrong, cities and people reacted like a pond when a stone was dropped into it. The bigger the ripples, the bigger the stone.

	Or maybe, it was like people being tied together with invisible strings. Shake the string and the whole thing shakes. Follow the strings back to the source.

	Or maybe...maybe it was just too hard to explain. It would be too hard to do, even if she could force words out of her mouth or onto paper. Batgirl saw a man stare down at his phone. Concern turned him yellow and blue, and he stared off into the distance. A fear that was familiar to him quickened his heart and tightened his throat, and thoughts of concern for his loved ones drifted off of him like big red balloons. They were taken by the wind… away from the danger. Away from something to the West. 

	Batgirl’s hair stood on end. Maybe she could just smell it. But this was her city now, and though Batgirl couldn’t read Gotham’s signs or understand her language, Batgirl and Gotham were connected. Everyone and everything was. That’s what people often didn’t understand, and if they could, Batgirl imagined there would be much less suffering in the world. 

	Before she could get stuck inside her own head again, she turned her thoughts outward. Wind pushed against her, so she had to ford through it. 

	From her belt she produced a wire. A unique weapon she primarily trained in with the league of shadows. This one was Wayne Tech, and instead of being a lethal, throat slitting utility weapon, it was now a non-lethal binding tool. She hadn’t acquired another sword ever since she pawned off her last one for bus fare and snack money. Asking Batman for a weapon such as that just felt wrong. 

	[i](Or maybe you’re just afraid of how it’ll make you feel.)[/i]

	The wire was thin but durable, and could separate at certain portions if she applied specific types of pressure. There were multiple different types of tips she could apply, from dull, to magnetic, to electric, to sharp. 

	Right now it snapped into bricks and wrapped around vertices, pulling Batgirl along as she sprinted across the rooftops. Following the scent of mayhem came more naturally to her than trying to decipher the alerts that would come to her from her cellular device. 

	Once she had oriented herself, she knew it would be faster to travel through the sewers. That would get her to the source of all this. It was becoming more and more apparent from the direction she was heading and the feelings in the air that the source was Arkham Asylum. She knew the way.

	Plunging off a rooftop, she fell silently for several seconds. Then she pulled on the wire that still connected her to the roof, slowed her momentum, and rolled sideways into a storm drain where she continued on foot without so much as a brief pause. She felt like she could hear for miles while in the sewer tunnels. The arteries of the city told a different type of story than the skin.

	Batgirl passed through a large chamber. Here several tunnels interconnected, pipes flowing overhead with water rushing through or stagnating within them. Maintenance workers used these tunnels to get at the guts of the city. Batgirl passed through another narrow tunnel, almost a ditch, slipping through like a shadow. 

	She perked up. Dark eyes scanned the tunnels.

	(Something. Someone. Scratching. Carving. Sharp.)

	Where?

	(The left.)

	Smells like...fear. People live down here.
	(People die down here.)

	Batgirl sped off, feet barely breaking the surface tension of the water around her ankles. 

	There was light up ahead, the tunnels opened up. There was a door down here on a platform built into the wall. Electricity and oil hummed behind it. Scrawled on it’s rusty green surface was...some kind of message. Five lines long. The bottom line had huge claw marks in them, scratched out to be made unreadable. Sitting next to the message was a homeless man. He’d just seen something frightening, and though he was sworn into secrecy, Batgirl knew that the perpetrator of his fear had gone to her left. Like he was watching his closet for the return of a monster.

	Batgirl approached the message and took a snapshot of it with her cell phone. Only then did the man see her emerge from the darkness like a spectre, and he shrank away from her dark, lightly armored form, that terrible scowl stitched into her over-shadowed cowl. Her eyes were little more than two dark pits from his perspective. Though she pitied him and his unfortunate situation, there were more pressing matters at hand. Within the scratch marks were flecks of fresh blood. Someone was recently clawed.

	(To death.) 

	A person with great, unnatural ability had done this. Released from the chaos beating it’s drum in Arkham. Batgirl couldn’t just let them go. She followed the direction she knew they had gone.
	
	(Ripples in the water. Stomps. Heavy.)

	Batgirl followed the ripples, looking to get to their center. 

	Somebody yelled.

	(Surprise. Disbelief. Recognition.)

	Blurring through the sewers of Gotham like a rabid rabid rodent, Batgirl glided to the source. It was a large chamber, like she had passed earlier. A four way intersection of walkable tunnels lead into a large, underwater pool area. In each corner of the room were four platforms with machinery, and each corner was connected with a metal bridge. In the far corner of the room, a man in a bright yellow safety vest was desperately trying to clamber up a ladder and reach the manhole above. 

	Beneath him, raising his gnarled, scaled hand, was the person Batgirl recognized as Killer Croc. Batman had instructed her to not engage with any of Arkham’s supervillains, but he had done her the favor of at least getting to know all of the infamous ones. Even if it had been difficult to convey the specifics, Killer Croc’s body told her everything she needed to know.

	Waylon Jones’s entire body was covered with green scales. They were his skin. His huge, hulking form was nine feet of pure muscle. He weighed nearly one thousand pounds. 

	In a flash, just as he prepared to bring his claw down to cleave the fleeing civilian in twain, a wire wrapped around his wrist and pulled him back. Batgirl had leaped across the room and used his arm as an anchor to both pull it back and launch herself further.  Landing softly on the narrow railing around the platform, she balanced on the arches of her boots. 

	As Waylon went to yank the wire off of him, it went slack, and returned with a zip to her sparse utility belt. The maintenance worker climbed to safety, frantically sliding the manhole shut behind him.

	Groaning in frustration, Waylon turned around. His head was bald, his facial features twisted by the X-Gene. A jaw painfully jagged with carnivorous teeth, a flat nose, the structure of his head almost seemed to slope down and out, oh so slightly. His eyes, though, were human. Buried underneath his distended eyebrows were two light blue eyes, with twin pairs of fleshy eyelids. 

	From the looks of it, he was trying to kill that worker so no one knew he was down here. Now it was only a matter of time until he was discovered.

	He was still wearing the jumpsuit the employees at Arkham had placed it in, though he had ripped off the grey sweater, leaving only his pants.
	For a moment, the two silently sized each other up. In some ways...they were similar. Waylon ground his sharp teeth together, squinting at the new vigilante in front of him. Batgirl tilted her head to the side.

	[b][color=green]”Who are you supposed to be?”[/color][/b] He asked, voice a dreep, echoing growl.

	Batgirl turned her shoulder while on the railing, indicating the yellow bat symbol on the back of her outfit. She curled her arm around her torso and tapped the symbol a few times to indicate it.

	[b][color=green]”Ain’t no kind of Batgirl that I recognize.”[/color][/b] He said, rolling his own shoulder.

	Batgirl only shrugged. She pointed at him, and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder and back to Arkham.
	
	[b][color=green]”What, you don’t talk?”[/color][/b] He asked, ignoring her obvious demand. He cracked his knuckles and then his neck, like rocks tumbling down a canyon wall. She just shook her head in response.

	[b][color=green]”I bet you scream just fine, though.”[/color][/b] He growled, and lunged forward. His claws caught empty air as she flipped over his head and landed behind him. 

	[i](He’s big. Fast. Strong.)

I’m faster. And while he’s stronger, I think we have the same amount of explosive power. I can take him off guard with that at least once.[/i]

Metal wrenched from concrete, and Killer Croc swung the entire railing she was just standing on at her in a full 180. It whizzed over her head as she flattened herself against the ground. He let the railing fly out of his hands and crash into the wall, and he took the moment to leap, opening his toothy maw. She rolled out of the way, and then popped up as he slashed at her.

	[i](See that mouth? It’s powerful. Could break through metal, let alone your flesh. But there’s a weakness there. Let him bite at you one more time.)[/i]

	Waylon growled, the deep sound echoing for thousands of feet throughout the sewers.  Dashing forward, he swept at her multiple times at high speed, but Batgirl ducked and weaved through all of them. She finished with a roll under his arm, effectively swapping positions from where they started. 

	[b][color=green]”Can’t dodge forever, girl.”[/color][/b] 

	Batgirl stood up straight, crossed her arms. She tapped an invisible watch on her wrist. 

	[i]True,[/i] she seemed to say. [i]But you don’t exactly have all night, either. You’re on the clock.[/i]

	Waylon surged forward, but she could see the feint in his arms, tingling from his fingertips to his eyes like a false string. He came to a few feet in front of her and prepared to leap in the direction of wherever she dodged, but she just stared him down.

	Frustrated, he went to grab her by the shoulders and bite, but she slid between his legs.

	[i](There it is. The muscles in his jaw are immensely powerful when closing, but very weak for opening. Like a real crocodile, you can keep his mouth from opening in the first place.)[/i]

	Behind him now, she kicked at the back of his knee, causing it to buckle. He dipped backwards and she grabbed him by the neck and shoulder, kicked out at the same leg again, and slammed him hard onto the concrete. It cracked beneath the impact. Surprised at the pain he felt, he swept out at her, but she flipped like she weighed nothing at all, and then slammed her foot down on his forehead like she weighed seven hundred pounds. [i]Crack![/i]
	[b][color=green]”[i]Graaagh![/i]”[/color][/b] He held his head and back handed at her, but she danced away. 

	[b][color=green]”What the fuck!”[/color][/b] He shouted, scrambling to his feet, shoulders heaving. She saw the mood shift. He had been underestimating her, but she couldn’t exactly blame him. As far as he knew, he hadn’t been dealing with someone like her.

	[i](Someone like me? Father calls people like me The Elite. The supers of the world, heroes and villains both. The only people that matter.)

	Not now, please. I’m trying to concentrate.

(Why didn’t you just shove the pointy end of the wire into his eyes when you had the chance?)[/i]

[b][color=green]”[i]Rrrah![/i] Not even Batman takes me on when I’m in the sewers! I’ll feed your corpse to the rats!”[/color][/b]  Waylon declared, but she could tell he wasn’t really going to do that. If he did kill her, he would just leave. 

Wait.

His intentions changed. Why bring up the sewers? Because he was planning on diving in and either escaping, or using it to defeat her. That wouldn’t be ideal- the exact depth of the water was still unknown to her. Twenty feet deep or four foot deep- she hadn’t figured it out yet. Murky brown and green waters welcomed Killer Croc’s approach. 

	Like a metallic snake, the wire wrapped around his leg and pulled taut. Losing his balance, Croc bent the yet undamaged railing he was trying to get over as he leaned on it for support. Swiping at it proved fruitless, his mighty claws couldn’t get enough purchase on it to sever the cord. When he attempted to pull at it, Batgirl severed the connection at a predetermined point, a little black bead signifying its ability to be reconnected to something later. As he turned around to dive into the water, Batgirl thought to herself.

	[i] What would Batman do? 

	(What is this stupid insistence on non-lethality? What would an Assassin do? I could have blinded him in at least one eye already, or even killed him. Why didn’t I?)

	Shut up. What would BATMAN do?

	Use a gadget? Why don’t I bring more gadgets with me?

	(Because I’m too good for them. I can kill whoever I want, I don’t lose.)

	I don’t kill. I can’t kill. The non-lethal gadgets are just so...unwieldy. I’m no good with them. [/i]

	But she was good with almost everything else. Batgirl pulled another card out of her sleeve. Having tricked Killer Croc into thinking he was free of her, she whipped her wire around and flung it right at the wire wrapped around his ankle, reconnecting it. 

	As he dove into the water, she knew exactly where he was. He dove, and she felt the impact reverberate through the wire. The water wasn’t deep at all, it might come up to her waist at most. Leaning back to build up force, she launched herself forward with a mighty leap. Though he was completely invisible, swimming prone through the depths, she knew exactly where he was. Since she knew where his leg was, she knew where the rest of him was, too. She landed on his head with another great stomp, sticking the landing and forcing his face into the concrete below. 
		
	Roaring angrily, Waylon came out of the water and slashed at her like she was a stinging wasp. Flipping off of him, she landed behind him, sinking up to her hips in the water. Turning to face her, Killer Croc heaved his chest. Blood ran down his forehead from where she had split his skin. Her wire rose out of the surface of the water and ran through her fingers, connecting to her belt. 

	[b][color=green]”I don’t belong in Arkham.”[/color][/b]  Waylon took a step forward and casually slashed at her like he was shooing away a fly. Batgirl pushed through the water to avoid the attack, but she was slower than on land. Reading his intentions, he was just moving her around, not truly attempting to kill her. 

	[b][color=green]”I’m not crazy. I’m not some fucking monster.”[/color][/b] He advanced on her, swatting at the air again.

	[b][color=green]”They put me in there ‘cause I’m a mutant! That shitty place! Full of fucking lunatics! I ain’t one of them!”[/color][/b] Batgirl saw that he was telling the truth. Though his hatred and resentment coursed through his veins like poison. That in and of itself was a certain kind of madness, but not the kind that could be treated in an asylum for insanity.
	
	[b][color=green]”All my life, I’ve been treated like a freak!”[/color][/b] As he stepped forward to swipe again, Batgirl prepared to dodge but was stopped. Killer Croc had stepped on her wire, keeping her locked in place unless she let go or disconnected. But once she did that, she’d lose track of him in the water! He’d slip away into the sewers. No, her connection with Croc had to be maintained.

	Dodging away, Batgirl turned her shoulder. While she managed to deflect the blow, Croc was still of immense strength, his claws sharp. There was a wrenching of metal as he carved away her shoulder plate. Batgirl gritted her teeth as she felt flesh tear away. [b][color=green]”I’m gonna be the one in control!”[/color][/b] The impact sent her splashing into the water, her palms skidding against the bottom and her head submering. For a moment, all was murky water. Opening her eyes against the stinging, algae filled waters, she saw Killer Croc’s legs loom toward her. 

	It’s all just calculus. He was bringing his claws down on where he thought her shoulders were. A bite, to finish the job. Batgirl put her palms by her ears, curled up into a ball, and pushed. She came out of the water like a rocket, defying the weight and drag of the water. Catching his jaw with the bottom of her boots, she jerked his head backwards from the impact. Just like she predicted, his jaw was weak to closing pressure, and snapped shut, his arms awkwardly wrapping around themselves in the water. Curling in the air, she grabbed his head and sat down roughly on his shoulders. Still reeling from the kick, his neck was exposed. She disconnected her wire from around his leg and created a new one around his jaw and the top of his head, squeezing it shut. One of his claws came up to try and free himself of the pressure, but the carbon fiber wire was wrapped so tightly under his jaw and to his face that it was impossible to remove in such a short amount of time.

	His other claw came to slash at her, but she was ready. From her belt she produced a batarang, and matching her might with his, she impaled it into his palm, his own strength working to drive it all the way through. Roaring through his clamped jaw, Killer Croc felt Batgirl’s hands wrap around the fingers of his damaged hand. With a few well placed wrenches, she broke several of his fingers. Spasming, he threw her off, though now she had access to a wire connected to the back of his neck, like a collar. Batgirl dropped to the water and swam between his legs, pulling the wire behind her. She leapt onto his knee and then pushed off, kicking him in the face.

	Landing on her feet again, she balled up her fist and threw strikes into his abdomen, feeling them reverberate through his powerful form as she honed in on a weakness. He swept out at her with his undamaged hand, but she ducked it and drove her index and middle fingers up under his ribs like a knife. A paralyzing effect dropped him to his knees. As he did though, he brought his head down like a hammer right on top of her forehead. The movement of his headbutt was disguised by him falling to his knees. Batgirl’s own actions had deceived her.

	The headbutt connected hard, and Batgirl was shoved underwater. Unconscious for a moment, her eyes rolled up under her eyelids under her mask, and blood ran down her face as it had Waylon’s. Killer Croc found his legs impossible to move, and because of the pain in his ribs and the wire around his head, it was also hard to breathe. 

	Batgirl came too quickly, sputtering up water and scrambling to her feet. Blood and water soaked her mask, blinding her, so she tore it off and let it fall into the water.  There was a crack in her forehead. Once again it wasn’t full contact, but even the grazing hit had been devastating. It looked like there were three Killer Crocs in the water in front of her. Blurry. There was a ringing in her ears. 

	Waylon made eye contact with the Batgirl’s true eyes and squinted. Of course, he didn’t recognize her. Cassandra Cain was a nobody. But still, he was surprised to see her not care about maintaining her anonymity. He always imagined that was a big deal for the bats. As if removing a mask would somehow be a secret weakness. But looking at her now, there was no difference at all. They were still in this fight.

	Batgirl reached into her utility belt, and connected a grapple hook to the end of her wire. The hooks were closed, connecting tightly to the grapple, making it a tool purely for bludgeoning and weight.

	Twirling it for a moment, she launched it at Croc’s head. He deflected it, and it bounced high in the air. Batgirl twisted her wrist and placed her hand against the wire, causing the wire to whip around in a circle, wrapping down behind his left shoulder, around his right arm, and smacking him in the face. Roaring, he grabbed it and threw it at her, but this only seemed to work in her advantage. Sidestepping, her hands began playing her end of the wire like an instrument, and her arms whirled like she was conducting an orchestra. Soon it was slicing through the air like a blur, harassing him like a hornet.

	Batgirl spun, wrapping the wire around her lower body and then quickly undoing it. Her glare was white hot, like she had finally figured out everything about him. Every desperate thrash led to the wire binding his limbs like a chain, every dodge only coiled it around him like a snake. Finally, she pulled it taught, and it constricted his entire form, seizing his arms against his chest. 

	[b][color=green]”What the hell?!”[/color][/b] He roared. Muscles bulging, he tried to pull himself free. Roaring, he charged after her, looking to pulverize her with his weight alone. 

	As he bore down upon her, she stared him down.

	[i](...Now. Do it.[/i]

 	At the last moment, she grabbed his arm, put her foot against his ankle, turned her back to him, and slammed him over her shoulder and into the water with a tremendous splash. All one thousand pounds. Crashing onto the concrete. Batgirl was soaked through entirely, but when Croc floated to the surface, he was unconscious. Her already damaged arm screamed at her, but she ignored it. Blood streamed down her face. Nonetheless, the elation of victory reached her heart. Water rained down on her from above for a few moments. Once again there was silence in the tunnels under Gotham.

	Batgirl dragged Killer Croc through the waters and hoisted him up onto the platform with the help of wrapping her wire around some infrastructure. The police would have to figure out how to get him back into Arkham. Once again they’d have to bring the heavy restraints that he had broken out of. 

	[i]It seems like people created this monster.

	Not in the way that I was created. But rather, he was molded. In another time and place, he could have lived a normal life...and maybe that time and place is in the future, and maybe that place is Gotham.[/i]

	Sirens and radio chatter filled the streets of Gotham as one by one, many escapees were rounded up and captured. Somewhere out there, the Batman roamed. 

	Batgirl climbed out of the sewers, holding her bad arm, and made her way into the alley. Several police officers saw her face, covered in blood and obscured slightly by her hair, but there was no doubt they had seen her. An EMT offered her a roll of gauze. Batgirl didn’t care. She made her way to the rooftops and lowered herself to her knees, blinking the blood out of her eyes. 

	[i]I stopped one would be murderer. But there’s more. The Robins might need my help...Batman, Batwoman. Where are they? I need to keep helping. I have to keep going. This wasn’t enough. I’m not done.[/i] Batgirl jumped to the next roof, and then the next. The night wasn't over. Would it ever be over? The answer didn't matter.