Chapter Text
“You know, I wasn’t expecting an army.” Kate knocked another meta out, trying to be gentle. These were just kids, teens, no older than the one standing at her back.
“Well I wasn’t either, to be clear,” Duke grunted as he threw his winged escrima to knock a different meta off balance.
Duke had called her just as she was waking up, not even enough time to finish her coffee. He had been hurried, said he’d needed back up for a case and Bruce was still out cold. That hadn’t surprised Kate, she was pretty sure she hadn’t seen her cousin up before ten at night in the last week. Maybe he was staying up later and later because of the increase in criminal activity, but she couldn’t help her thoughts rolling towards a different, Diana-shaped reason.
“You said there was a leader?”
“I said I was tracking a guy who seemed to be a leader,” Duke corrected as he guided Kate out of the concussive blast that was headed for them, “I didn’t know he was building an army.”
Kate frowned, knowing Duke couldn’t see. She tried to hail someone on the coms, Cass, Babs, even Jason, but no one was picking up. She wondered if it had anything to do with what was happening around them.
She looked around, frantically trying to get eyes on the whole warehouse. Just a bunch of teens blasting them with powers. Metas in Gotham was still new to her, but she did try her best to roll with the punches.
“What else can you tell me about this leader? Is this the one you said was laundering money through the tutoring charity?”
“No, this is the other one. The one who was gathering metas through an online chat room.”
Kate suppressed a groan.
“Are you really that old?”
“I know what a chat room is, I’m thirty not dead.”
“Sure, sure.” Duke chuckled but was cut short and it turned into a grunt of pain.
Kate flipped around and saw that a meta had sliced through his armor somehow, maybe a psionic blade. Current company not-withstanding, Kate was getting really tired of metas in Gotham. Exploding penguins? Fine. Riddles written across mailboxes? Great. Teen who could beat you up with their minds? No thank you.
Instinctively, she reached for a rope-batarang to hopefully put the girl who had cut Duke out of commission, but she pulled out a regular one instead. She threw it and it cut the girl’s hand, but instead of a scream, she didn’t seem phased.
Feeling immensely guilty about the mistake, Kate reached for the right one this time. Odd, she knew her belt like the back of her hand, better even. She didn’t give herself time to think about though as she had the girl tied up. The thunk her body made as it hit the ground didn’t seem to faze the girl either.
Odd.
“You noticing that these kids don’t seem to be worried about getting hurt?”
Duke seemed to be recovered mostly from his scrape, Kate’s distraction giving him enough time to apply a foaming bandage. By the silence, Kate knew Duke was running scenarios in his head, taking inventory of the fight so far.
“That is weird, I would write it off as adrenaline but….”
His words tapered off as he flipped over a boy wielding fire from his hands.
Kate took a look around the room as she restrained another teen. There wasn’t any urgency to the fight, she realized. The teens seemed lethargic almost. Like…wait.
“Tell me more about the chat room!”
Duke startled. “Um, it was a pretty standard chat room, from what I could tell. DND, that’s Dungeons and Drag-“
“I know what DND is!”
“Right, it was a chat room designed for talking about homebrews, you know when you make your own elements for the game. I found it on my off time actually, and didn’t realize anything was weird at first, but the Chat Master,” Duke chuckled, “You know, like Game Master?”
“I really appreciate you being thorough, but I’d like to not be fighting well into the night.”
“Right, anyway, the Chat Master seemed off, so I did a little research, back reading, checking for keywords, and I noticed a pattern that was weird. He would always share a new spell and then ask if anyone wanted to join his IRL game, held in the community center. It was weird, not totally creepy, but it was only after sharing a spell. Now, I like a good wizard or warlock as much as the next guy, but I’m much more into bards or monks, more dynamic gameplay.”
Kate grunted as she shoved two teens at each other and forced herself to keep paying attention to Duke’s ramblings. “Relevance?”
“Well it means I didn’t really look at the spells when they were posted. But then I did, because it was weird, and they were really really weird. Like all demonic in nature, and all using the same basic principles. I had never seen any one point them out being so similar, so I decided to go check out the IRL group and the social worker at the center said that the group had all gone out for pizza, but I only just missed them. SO…I called you and here we are.”
“You said demonic?”
“Yeah! They all had the same weird little lore detail too, with a god that must be homebrewed, Yekeq? I think that’s how it’s pronounced.”
“With an ‘l’ sound, Signal.” Kate suppressed a shudder. That is a Hebrew word, maybe this ‘Chat Master’ was just Jewish? Looking around at the scene before her, she doubted it.
“Have you heard of him?”
“Not the demon, but the word is familiar. It means locust, or a young one. Would explain the teen situation.”
“Do you think it has anything to do with that demon you helped Batman take down?”
“The thought crossed my mind. Look for any energy leaking about, maybe the leader is still summoning.”
If there was something Kate hated more than fighting metas, it was fighting demons, but HaShem sure does enjoy testing his people.
Duke grew quiet for a while and just the sounds of both of them grunting with exertion filled the warehouse, along with the noise of the metas powers. They had nearly all of them subdued. Kate nodded towards Duke and took over fighting solo.
“Use your, light power…thing. Look for an absence of it or however it works.”
“I’ve explained how it works multiple times, are you sure you’re only thirty?”
“Less jokes more looking!” Kate despised banter sometimes.
Suddenly, Duke was pointing towards the catwalk. “There! There!”
Kate looked over as she knocked out the last meta teen. Past the cat walk a ways was a small door, probably to an office. Duke was already on his way before she had even spotted it. She swore this kid was more impulsive than even Bruce or Dick.
She tried one more call on the coms as she followed him up.
Diana, please answer.
The call didn’t pick up. Kate sighed, knowing it has been a long shot. She was sure Diana kept fairly normal hours, and was probably tired from fighting…Ares or whatever it was she did when she wasn’t either with the League or eating breakfast at the mansion.
Duke was already inside the door by the time she made it up after him, and she frowned when she saw what was inside.
Computers were placed around the room, wires making what she could recognize as a summoning circle. Kate was already tired and she hadn’t even been on patrol yet.
From the looks of it, and the sounds of clacking keyboards, the demon or whatever it was hadn’t been summoned yet.
“Looks like your connection is too slow there, man.” Duke kicked a computer clear across the room and the man typing away at the keyboard jolted up. His face was morphed from passive to furious in the blink of an eye, his mouth snarling and Kate was half expecting him to start foaming at the mouth any moment.
“You know not what you have done!”
The man lunged at Duke, but Kate grabbed his ankle as it moved off the floor, slamming his face into the hard floor. She couldn’t bring herself to feel bad at the sound of his nose breaking. Duke grabbed a canister from his belt and sprayed. The man stopped struggling to get up.
“MY FUCKING HAND!”
Kate looked down to the warehouse floor through the door. The teens seemed to be coming to.
“I’ll handle the kids, you make sure he doesn’t bleed out of his face.”
“Can you really be calling them kids? Didn’t Alfred pack you a juice box today?”
“It’s a Capri Sun and they are the bomb, I will hear no more slander.”
Kate snorted as Duke jumped off the catwalk. She turned to the man in front of her, splayed on the ground in a very undignified manner. Being cautious, she looked at the screen in the center of the circle and took a quick picture, maybe Luke would be able to tell them what the code meant. She messed up the wires and proceeded to tie the man up, finishing it with a bow that she knew would make Gordon smirk.
-
“Lucas Fox, I know you’re home!”
Kate banged on the door a few more times. Next to her, Duke looked ready to pass out from exhaustion, his back pack slung over one shoulder and the other leaned against the door frame.
Her voice lowered a few decibels. “I told you that you could stay home.”
“Yeah, but Luke might know more about the code and that’s MY case.”
“Your case I had to save your ass on.”
“But my case non-the-less!”
The door opened in front of them and a ragged man answered. Kate rose an eyebrow as she took in Luke’s current state. Stained tank top, gym shorts that looked like Jean Paul’s and an unkept scruff that told Kate he hadn’t left the loft probably since she saw him last week at dinner.
“You know what time it is? On a Saturday?”
“I already went to temple, Luke, it’s time to face the afternoon.”
He groaned and pushed the door open more. The place was tidy, like it always was, perhaps a bit more so in Jean Paul’s absence. The man was pious, but forgetful when it came to cleaning up after himself.
Duke fished his phone out of his pocket and hoisted it into Luke’s face. Luke frowned and snatched the device out of the kid’s hand.
“What the hell is this?”
“The code, remember, from the weird chatroom demon man?”
“Right, right…of course…chatroom demon man…” Luke shuffled over to his computer and flicked the screen of Duke’s phone, and somehow the picture was now on Luke’s oversized monitor. He tossed the phone back to Duke, who scrambled to make sure it didn’t fall on the floor.
“I’ll be doing my AP physics homework while you look at it, let me know if you figure anything out.” Duke set Luke’s coffee table up as his study area and Kate wandered over to Luke’s chair.
She leaned against the back of it, purposefully breathing loudly next to Luke’s ear.
“Can I help you, Kane?”
“Why did you rearrange my belt?”
Kate knew Luke was bored, since when he had ‘retired’ he had assumed he’d be spending most of his down time with Jean Paul. When the man left for space saying angels told him to go, Luke had understood as much as he could. She supposed it came with the territory of dating Jean Paul Valley.
“Well, it was impractical the way you had it set up, and anyway, you’re welcome for it being .4 ounces lighter.”
“It’s set up the way it is for a reason. It’s practical for me.”
“Which is impractical for anyone else.”
“Well, I’m me, so I don’t see why that matters.” She crossed her arms. She missed Jean Paul more immediately. He usually took her side in the teasing.
“You’re particularly annoying today you know, what has you in a funk?”
Kate thought about mentioning Diana, wondering if Luke had heard anything about Bruce dating her, but she dismissed the notion.
“Nothing is wrong, just overworked.”
Luke looked at her, considering her. He sighed. “Look, I thought maybe sprucing up your uniform would cheer you up.”
“It doesn’t need sprucing.”
“I’ve seen your apartment Kate, you wouldn’t know what needed sprucing if it bit you.”
“What’s wrong with my apartment?”
Duke laughed from the couch. Kate sent him a warning look and he went back to his textbook.
“Just saying, it’s not exactly goddess-enticing.”
Kate was taken aback. Did Luke somehow know something? She knew better than anyone that keeping a secret around a bunch of detectives was nearly impossible. Perhaps he was just teasing her, after her tirade a few weeks ago about how ‘all women are goddesses, how can you even consider men’ or something equally as embarrassing after a long late-night chat with a few too many beers. Kate threw up her arms and walked calmly and not at all stalked to the kitchen to escape the conversation.
She went to the back patio and flopped into one of the sun chairs. Day of rest, right? She nearly laughed at the thought. Did anyone who wore a bat symbol even know the meaning of that word?
It was cloudy, but the sun poked out enough to be seen. She closed her eyes and felt the weak sunlight on her pale skin. Her thoughts wandered to Diana, to her smiling. Her hair tied up and inviting Kate to call her. The curve of her collarbone. The way she held herself…
Kate must have nodded off, because when she opened her eyes again, the sun was no longer in the center of the sky. She groggily got to her feet and opened the sliding glass door, to be met with he loud laughter of the two men she had left in the loft.
“What’s the joke?”
“You,” Luke said, not missing a beat.
Kate didn’t even try resisting the urge to toss a throw pillow at the man’s face.
“Oh! Luke figured out the code, but it doesn’t help much. Looks like a spell but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen before,” Duke explained. “I mean, we figured it was a spell, but the code is like, I don’t even know how to describe it to you.”
“Again, not ancient, know how computers work.”
“Not like this, Kate I barely even understand this code.” Luke folded his arms and frowned. His shoulders were stiff, like he was stressed that he couldn’t be more help.
Kate walked over to the screen and looked at the…translation? Decryption? It looked like a mix of the two but looking at it made Kate’s head swim.
“This is over our heads, isn’t it?”
Duke shrugged, “Probably, but when has that stopped us before?”
-
Kate was trying to tidy her apartment, as Julia was due back tomorrow, depending on whether or not she had chosen her favorite lay-over or not. It’s not that it was messy, per-se, it’s just Julia worried if there weren’t a few bowls in the sink indicating that Kate has at least tried to cook in her absence.
She snorted to herself at the fact that what she was doing was in fact, the opposite of tidying up.
Her mind was still on the code that they had found at the warehouse. Luke had uploaded it to the, ugh even thinking it was tedious, to the Bat-Cloud. Duke thought he was funny, but it had just amused her that he was so much like Dick. She had spent a few minutes earlier looking it over, trying to figure out how far along the spell had been.
Spell work was not her specialty. She had given up after only a few minutes.
Duke had told her that the teens were doing better; the girl she had accidentally sliced had gotten a few stitches but none of them seemed to remember how they got to the warehouse. So more magic then. She suggested to Duke that she could take over the main case of the internet demon, both to help lighten the poor kid’s work load and also because she was kicking herself for not getting the name of the demon Diana and Bruce had helped her with.
He had agreed, reluctantly, but she did remind him that his AP History project was due soon.
She was bagging the evidence of take-away boxes like it was a crime scene when there was a knock on the door. She went over and peeked through the eye-hole, a hand on a knife. Just in case.
“Sorry for the intrusion, I asked Alfred for your address when you weren’t at the manor.”
Standing there was Diana, her hair down today, wearing a sensible blue top. Kate blinked to give herself a moment to reflect on her surprise and then undid the many locks and latches on her door.
“Is everything okay?” Kate was running possibilities through her mind, why was Wonder Woman at her door?
Diana walked over to the kitchen counter and seemed to take in the apartment. Kate was feeling scrutinized and Luke’s words from earlier rang in her mind. She swatted them away. Her apartment was utilitarian, despite the ‘homey’ touches Julia had attempted to introduce. It was practical.
“Everything is fine, but Bruce happened to mention that there was another demon encounter the other day. I offered to help, since magic isn’t technically a strong suit of the Bats, Lazarus pits not with-standing.”
Kate snorted at the joke. “Bruce agreed to have you running around Gotham?”
“Surprising, I know, but I promised I’d keep a low-profile. And that I wouldn’t tell Clark.” Diana winked and Kate felt her knees wobble. “So, get me up to speed.”