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The Silhouette and The Forge
Chapter 80
A volley of catarangs were tossed at Crocker, who just leaned back, falling off the beam above. Midfall, he grabbed the ledge and swung, tossing a collapsible spear at her.
Leaping to the side and rolling from the explosion knocked her towards another platform. Reorienting herself mid-air to kick an assassin in the face that tried to thrust their sword into her back, Jade felt the pressure she was under.
She fought her way to Artemis’ cage, seeing the wide-eyed look of terror on her face and then the look of mistrust she gave Jade. She growled, seeing a group surrounding it about to open it.
“Get away from her!” She leapt, and a blood-red rage overcame her. Her moves were fast, strong, and, above all else, difficult to predict, like fighting a rabid animal that only cared to cause pain whether it lived to see another day or not.
A swift grapple dislocated an arm, another found her foot smashing into their throat, making them gasp and fall back still barely alive. One had a catarang slash across where both eyes would be, making the figure drop their weapon and grab their face. Despite how she felt and wanted to kill these people, she knew Bruce would be incredibly upset.
So she pulled her punches as best she could. They were going to wish she had gone lethal on them as the group swiftly backed off when they had almost opened the cage. Placing herself between Artemis and the assassins, Jade was ready to fight to the bitter end even if it killed her.
“She’s mine.” Sportsmaster said with every single assassin moving out of his way.
He held a metal ball in hand with a cord attached to it before he began to spin it. The weapon hummed in the air from the speed it was spun, sounding almost like a high-powered fan.
He finally released it after two seconds when it began to make afterimages. She side-stepped the blow that heavily dented the metal bars, a metal ringing in the air before it was pulled back and tossed her way at odd angles, with Sportsmaster adding flourishes to it.
Each strike came closer and closer to hitting Jade, who was doing her best to avoid the strikes. The cage was looking far worse for wear with Artemis huddled in on herself, eyes wide in fear.
Sportsmaster noticed this when his eyes narrowed. “Still soft I see. That’ll be corrected soon, baby girl.”
“Like hell you are.” Jade growled, lashing out just in time using one of Daniel’s blades and severed the cord. Her hand grabbed the remaining portion of the cord, and despite almost taking her arm out of its socket, she managed to pull back on it, spin it back around, and send it flying right for his stupid hockey mask.
Crocker showed why he was chosen as the Lights' top enforcer and agent when he dodged the ball as it sailed past, crashing into something in the Batcave.
He chuckled ominously. “Alright. I can admit… that was a little impressive. So tell you what,” His voice changed from condescending to something warm as he clapped his hands together. “Because of that little display, you will only get a mild beating, and I can give you some pointers… a little father-daughter bonding.”
She knew that despite the mask hiding his face, he had a smug smile, knowing damn well it pissed her off. The kid gloves finally came off when Sportsmaster moved so fast Jade almost didn’t react in time. Arms crossed, she took the brunt of his punch.
Her back slammed into Artemis’ cage, denting it even more with the air driven from her lungs, an arm feeling like it was broken, and white-hot pain shooting up her back.
She countered with a sloppy punch that had a hidden blade in hand, aimed at his elbow. He disarmed her of the blade and grabbed both wrists before pinning her to the cage, slowly choking the air out of her throat with his other arm.
He sneered down at her. “Utterly worthless. That kid trained you, and even Batman and you still can’t do a thing to me. Pathetic.”
Jade found herself tossed off to the side, her back hitting a computer console hard enough to dent metal. She glanced back towards him, seeing him knock the cage door down and drag a crying Artemis out. She was fighting to not be taken back, her eyes going wide at the sight of certain weapons the assassins had wielded.
Jade wasn’t done nor out of the fight. Not by a long shot. Her eyes glanced over at a clattering on the floor. Two escrima sticks Bruce had used to try and entice her to a more nonlethal style of weaponry. While she preferred her bladed weapons, she would admit she had a talent for the weapon.
One that she was about to put to good use. Jade didn’t know how they had managed to disable the security defenses of the cave, but right now her highest priority was protecting Artemis.
She rushed back, and this time Crocker didn’t bother with her, instead looking down at Artemis. “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, baby girl.”
The assassins instead charged her from all sides. Jade didn’t know what happened, but all her fears and concerns just faded away, her only goal was getting Artemis away from them. Two swords lashed out for her arms. She ducked under one and pivoted to the other, countering with lightning-fast strikes, hitting the sides of their heads faster than they expected.
Another came with a series of slashes in an attempt to capitalize on her mad rush. One stick smacked into their fingers gripped around the blade's handle, breaking them before a vicious knee to the face sent them to the ground. Another, she slammed both into their shoulders, head tilted to the side, taking a cut to the cheek.
On and on it went, with more rushing in to stop her before they stopped. Crocker held his hand up and then signaled for them to back off. He wrapped Artemis’ hands and feet, tossing her to one of the assassins who held her.
“Alright. Maybe you are worth some of my time. Let’s do this.” He pulled out a metal staff that unfurled.
The assassins surrounded her, and Crocker was right across from her, but her eyes only focused on Artemis before he nearly disappeared, moving so fast Jade barely saw him move. His staff slammed into her escrima sticks with a crack like thunder.
The impact launched her backwards, rolling to bleed off the momentum. Pain exploded through her arms from just that single strike. “Good. You’re improving.”
She hated how he sounded so proud. Then he attacked again, and the fight became chaos. Jade moved faster than she ever had up until this point. She had known that Daniel and Bruce always held back with her, and so she never truly pushed herself like she was in what could only be described as a fight worse than life or death.
Both of her mentors had trained her well. Daniel was patient and taught her to use her head when facing an enemy well beyond her. Bruce taught her relentlessly through physical training, far more than Daniel.
For a few glorious seconds she managed to hold her own. A counter after a horizontal strike that would have her seeing stars that she foresaw coming was blocked, and a kick she sidestepped was retaliated in kind.
Sportsmaster's eyes crinkled in amusement that only grew when she managed to avoid a series of strikes that got faster the longer it went on. A thrust for her shoulder, another meant for her knee, she waited for her opportunity. Then it came after several dozen strikes had been exchanged. Almost… there!
She slammed her escrima stick through a small window made by Crocker, creating an opening mid-attack. The stick would have hit the side of his head head-on at a bad angle for him that would have knocked even him out.
Instead, he leaned his head out of the way just enough that it instead slammed into the side of his mask, knocking it off as it clattered and skidded along the floor.
His expression was one of surprise. Jade would savor it till the day she died, her smile taking a darker edge. His widened eyes narrowed dangerously. He now stopped holding completely back. She couldn’t stop the staff strike that bypassed her guard when it smashed into her ribs, a second brought her to her knees, and the third she was skipping across the stone floor.
Pain flashed through her entire body, yet she still pushed on, getting up or just fighting anyway she could no matter how futile it was. Every time she saw Artemis looking at her in fear and concern, the fire inside grew stronger.
Sportsmaster kicked her face, sending her toppling like a cut tree. He walked away thinking it was over, about to grab his mask, but paused when he sensed Jade wasn’t finished getting back up, wiping the blood from her nose and mouth with the back of her hand.
“While you have finally made me proud, this is getting annoying. Just stay down.”
His massive form slammed into her, knocking both sticks aside in a futile attack before his hand squeezed her throat. She clawed at his arm when she couldn’t breathe, darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision. Not like this, she just got her back. She couldn't move, she needed to move. Move now, save Artemis.
A smoke pellet had smacked Crocker right in the face, making him lose sight of Jade and instinctively let go of her, thinking it was an attack. She coughed, feeling the sweet rush of cool air enter her lungs again before quickly backing away and making her way towards her sister. Except Artemis had found her instead, somehow having managed to get a smoke pellet from somewhere, and her hands were now free.
“Artemis!” She whispered and hugged her, and for once the girl returned it. She shed tears hugging the life out of Jade, who grabbed her and turned, kicking Crocker in the side of the head when he was distracted.
Jade ran away from them towards the stairs that led out of the cave. “You suck!” Artemis yelled at Sportsmaster, who grit his teeth, an unhealthy shade of red forming on his face before it faded away as if it wasn’t there at all.
Sportsmaster just shrugged. “If you can call it that, but then again I suppose I have coddled you two far too much. Well, it’s about time I and the boys here taught you a valuable lesson, and pain happens to be an effective motivator.” He cracked his knuckles, about to charge at them.
Just when one of the assassins was about to flank Jade and she was about to dodge, the crack of a gun greeted her and the others' ears.
Bang!
Everyone froze when blood splashed out of the man’s head with the new smoking hole that bored through it neatly in the center of his forehead. Not even a second later, another shot rang out, taking another assassin with it, their lifeless body hitting the floor.
Everyone turned towards the staircase, and out of the shadows the last person Jade expected to come to the rescue arrived, not in a cape and cowl but in a butler's uniform. There stood Alfred Pennyworth holding two pistols with a shotgun on a strap on his back.
“My word.” He spoke calmly while adjusting the cuff of his sleeve as if he hadn’t just gunned two trained assassins down like it was nothing. “You people simply refuse to use the front door. Whatever are we going to do with all of you…”
A third tried to sneak attack him from the side only to get shot in the knee, making him fall from above with a sickening crack. Alfred looked at where the man had been, a calm mask that just didn’t break.
“How embarrassing.”
Then he descended the stairs with several assassins rushing him and Jade. Jade expected many things, but what happened next wasn’t one of them.
Any assassin that got close to her or Artemis was gunned down with lethal precision that was in complete contrast to everything she had seen of Alfred until now. He not only managed to gun down any of the assassins near them but also simultaneously killed the others that got near him.
Two shots in the head and another’s sword strike that would have severed his arm instead had the assassin getting pistol-whipped before two shots into the chest had him fall like a puppet whose strings had just been cut, and then he disarmed a third one with an impressive Judo throw.
He tossed a pistol into the face of another before grabbing a serving tray that had some snacks on it and unceremoniously smacked it right into the same assassin's head, making the metal sheet ring like a gong.
Alfred frowned at the now dented metal tray. “That was one of the good trays. A shame.”
Sportsmaster for once looked cautious. More so than he had all night.
Jade managed to make it to Alfred’s side with the Wayne family’s personal butler stopping by their side, the assassins and Crocker were now wary of giving chase.
He rested a hand on her and Artemis' shoulders just for a second. He was making sure both of them were okay and seeing that while Artemis was physically fine, he saw the pain in her eyes, and Jade's physical injuries had his hand turn into a fist.
The gesture was gone almost immediately. “Miss Artemis.”
“Y-yes?”
“Please refrain from causing your sister and the rest of us any more undue trouble.”
“…Okay.”
“Excellent.”
He then looked at Jade and saw all of her injuries. She was bleeding from several areas, held one side of her body where Crocker hit her ribs, and noted how Jade tried to hide how much pain she was in.
Alfred’s eyes softened slightly. “Don’t worry, they won’t hurt either of you anymore now that I am here.”
Before Jade or Artemis could say anything, Sportsmaster beat them to it. “You think one old man changes anything?”
He twirled his staff, and Alfred merely let out a sigh, giving him the most unimpressed stare. “A suggestion for some quality wood, sir. I personally recommend medium density fiberboard, or poplar, though you look more like a pine type of body.”
Crocker gave him a questioning look alongside everyone else. “Body?”
“Yes. The wood for your coffin.”
Alfred didn’t even hesitate opening fire with his other pistol, and Crocker preemptively dodged where he had aimed in that split second, but the assassin behind him wasn’t so lucky.
“You got a big mouth on you, old man, but at least you know how to shoot. I’ll give you that.” Crocker rushed towards him, dodging the few shots aimed his way, but he quickly realized Alfred wasn’t aiming for him but instead taking out his backup while he slowly walked back up the stairs, covering Jade and Artemis.
“Oh dear. I see where Jades and Artemis' manners came from. An attitude adjustment is in order, it would seem.”
Crocker leaped over several terminals, then stalactites, getting towards Alfred, spinning and angling himself to avoid the gunshots before he spun the staff and tried to slam it into Alfred. Alfred was old, he would admit as much. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t a capable fighter despite his many years as a butler.
He didn’t have the stamina he used to and had long since learned to fight smarter and not harder. His small pistol concealed up his sleeve slid out, and he fired again, forcing Crocker back, aborting his strike, and took a shot to his ear that made him growl.
He charged again after Alfred wasted his last few rounds on the assassins coming from the sides before he tossed the pistol away and pulled the shotgun out. Crocker's eyes narrowed, thinking he could blitz him. He was very wrong.
A pull of the trigger sent Crocker flying from the stairs, landing on his back, groaning and struggling to get back up despite the pain he was in. His eyes stung, blurred from the tears forming at the edges as he fought himself to not shed a single tear.
Alfred pumped it, ejecting the spent shell. “No matter how strong one thinks oneself to be, a rock salt shell is a cure for that and much more.”
Alfred calmly walked away, keeping his eyes on the man who leaned up glaring daggers at Alfred and what was left of his backup, who were now very much dead.
His hand reached for another sports-themed weapon only to pause when red lights and a loud alarm went off. His eyes widened before various security measures kicked in, and before he knew it, he was covered in some type of foam that was more like concrete.
He struggled and fought to get out of it, but it was impossible. Alfred took the two girls and made sure both were safe in a secure room in the manor, with Jade consoling Artemis while Alfred left to go and retrieve some food and drinks for them while also checking over the rest of the manor, finding no other intruders.
He took a bit longer, taking a detour back to the cave after giving Sportsmaster a goodbye gift. Artemis had fallen asleep cradled in Jade's arms before a figure appeared at the doorway just when Alfred set the tray of things down.
His hand was on the shotgun, but he relaxed when it was Batman. “I came as fast as I could… You killed them.”
He stated it more than asked, knowing full well guns weren’t Jade's thing, and considering Alfred’s own history, it made him the only culprit.
“Of course. They were intruders, and I exercised my right to get rid of them.”
Bruce looked down at the shotgun and then back at Alfred. “With guns. I didn’t even know we had guns in the manor.”
“And you will never find all of them. Now that dinner has been prepared, I highly recommend you get some supper in you since you have had a long day. Speaking of your day, how did it go bringing Mr. Hardigan to justice?”
Bruce noted how Alfred changed the subject and he swore he would find all of the guns even if he had to tear out the floor boards to do it. But the reminder of what happened made him feel sorrow at the loss of life. Even when he had proven himself as a threat, he didn’t kill him or the other League members. If anything he actively went out of his way to help them.
Bruce explained what happened after contemplating to let Jade know. He decided against it after learning of what transpired while he was away. Both girls had been through enough and Alfred had provided some first aid to Jade.
Leslie or Daniel will be necessary…
The latter would be difficult to get a hold of after learning all that happened while he was trying to stop the world from being taken over by Will’s creations. He still remembers his last line of text he sent to him.
Don’t tell Daniel.
He contacted Leslie Thompkins, making it clear Jade would need a checkup, but for now they could wait. With the state of the city any help would take a while even if he tried pulling his ‘Bruce Wayne is here’ card.
He turned towards Alfred, who began to check over the shotgun with terrifying familiarity. “How bad is the damage?”
Alfred paused before looking up at him. “Gotham or the state of the Batcave? Or the girls?”
“All three.”
Alfred nodded sagely. “The city is in a frenzy with the Alliance currently, as far as anyone knows, completely wiped out. All known members from the leaders to those on the streets are dead, their bodies long since found.”
“Then reports of strange plants appearing in a less populated part of the city with Daniel appearing and rescuing Pamela Isley. I can fill you in on the rest while you go back to save the city.”
Bruce knew Alfred didn’t like him going back out after just saving the world and after he had been through what was now his most tense, hectic, and, above all of that, difficult fight he ever had to be a part of. He could normally at least hold his own, but he was honest with himself-- Will carried him through that fight and was the sole reason the world was still intact.
Batman merely nodded towards him but looked at Jade for a long moment. She nodded at him in encouragement. “The city can wait for a moment. If they managed to get in, I need to make sure no one else can do that.”
Today was just a bad day. He swiftly went towards the Batcave after checking over the rest of the manor's security, making sure it wasn’t compromised. Fixing the gaps they had found in the security and briefly looking at each of the bodies, they were horrified yet thankful for what Alfred did… He was going to have a talk with him about this.
Sportsmaster had been handled when the salt rock had been shot at him. The bullet through his head wasn’t necessary. A deep sadness filled his heart at the loss of life and the waste it created when they all could have done so much for the world if they had simply turned their minds towards the better ways their gifts could have been used.
His hands tightened into fists before he let it go. Whatever they could have been, much like Will, were now gone, and no path besides a dead end for each of them was all that was left. Only one life that was lost, Bruce would privately admit to himself, was a good thing as he got to work on the Batcomputer fixing whatever it was they had done to get inside.
Will acknowledging what he did to Joker… Bruce just thanked him without even thinking about it before he realized what he had done. Deep down he knew Joker would eventually win. If some outside force didn’t do something to him, then he would one day have his hand forced.
He hoped it would never come to that, but with what Joker was capable of and his inability to bring himself to take a life, always hoping that even someone like Joker could turn his life around made him stay his hand… among other things. He pointedly didn’t look towards particular sections of the cave Alfred had decorated with the pictures of his parents.
So Will taking his life and saving who knows how many people and despite his desire to bring him to justice he was thankful Will didn’t truly harbor ill will towards him or the others. Wonder Woman looked like she had wanted to go and rip his head off but she was too preoccupied with taking care of the girl that willingly surrendered to them and after a quick dna test she was in fact the closest thing Diana has to a daughter.
Wonder Woman was both ecstatic and angry it made Bruce think of some people in Arkham. The methods they used to get in and bypass his security were patched and reset while also changing it enough to ensure it doesn’t happen again. He forced himself to not look at the bodies as Alfred came to cover each of them with sheets.
“… Do not blame yourself, Master Bruce.” Alfred said after closing Sportsmaster's eyes before covering his head completely.
Bruce let out a long tired sigh. “I wasn’t strong enough. If maybe I had been better prepared… no. If I simply let go of the image of myself remaining human to everyone else’s image of me then I could have saved him and brought him in to face justice. I could have stopped that truck and found whatever it was the Shadows were trying to get away with.”
His grip tightened around the edges of the Batcomputer, his head dipping down before his gaze stopped on a screen showing the reflection of his face with the mask off. To his sides and above him on the computer screen, three Pyramid Heads stood ominously, their blades poised around him on a screensaver Jade had used to show support for Daniel’s game.
A firm but gentle hand gripped his shoulder. “Bruce. You can only do so much. You are human just as I am and have, as such, the limits we all have. Do not blame yourself for the choices of others, the things you cannot control. Are you sure you need to go back out? From the screen over there it looks like Pamela and Daniel have it well under control.”
Bruce remained silent for a moment before his eyes briefly looked at the two projects on a screen. Brother Eye and the other project that was initiated when he saw how powerful Kirk became and swiftly realized how weak he had become even with his compromise to use the drugs Will had brought into the world to bridge the gap.
Except the gap had grown so much that Bruce realized his best now would no longer be enough. He needed more. Brother Eye would be his means of always being in the know after Will died saving the world from his Akira Station.
His eyes snapped back over to see Daniel and Pamela working together helping families out of a burning apartment building. Daniel was holding a child and a kitten after rushing into the burning window.
A small smile formed on his face. Knowing what was coming from what Will had vaguely told them and John’s warning, he was going to have to become stronger. Much stronger.
“Prep the Batmobile and prepare the emergency meal contingency when I get back.” He ordered Alfred, who paused, scrubbing up the blood and somehow getting it out of the stone floor of the cave.
Alfred quirked a brow at Bruce. “Sir… you don’t have a contingency like that?” Alfred tilted his head before his eyes crinkled in amusement, realizing the edges of Bruce’s mouth were curved up, but only if someone looked at him with a magnifying glass.
“Prepare the movie night for the girls and a feast of junk food.”
He turned and his cape swished dramatically as Alfred paused and smiled at Bruce. “Very well, sir. Popcorn, vanilla floats, or merely buckets of ice cream?”
Bruce paused before he looked back at Alfred with one of the few genuine smiles he had had in a long time. One that Alfred wished wasn’t on a horrid day like this one. It reminded him of better years when Bruce wasn’t consumed by his crusade.
“Surprise me.” Alfred smiled back and nodded towards his surrogate son.
“Very well sir. Please come back as soon as possible to enjoy sometime with the girls after they both have been thoroughly checked over with a clean bill of health.” Alfred replied calmly.
He ignored the bodies inside the cave with a complex kaleidoscope of emotions. He marched to Batmobile to go help the others. Bruce’s last thought before charging out of the cave burning rubber on the road was there truly was no rest for the wicked.
Author's note: I will not lie, these last several chapters towards the end of this story have kicked the crap out of me. Between working full time, constant health crises with my family, and juggling this on the side, it has taken its toll on me.
Apologies to everyone for the quality drop in the last couple of arcs that have stuck it out this long with me on this story’s journey. But I needed to finish this story instead of leaving it high and dry, and it might eventually get a sequel continuing the story, but for now I need to call it here.
Way too much burnout and if the sequel does happen I can’t make any guarantees on it because I cannot emphasize enough how much this has taken out of me to the point writers block got so bad with it numerous times when I was on break or lunch at work and would just stare at my phone trying to think of anything to write.
If the sequel does happen, it likely won’t be a long one simply because of how many perks Daniel has acquired over the course of this story, and it would just trivialize most threats beyond the massive ones. Not that the story couldn’t be made, just that it would be potentially something I don’t want to write.
The Smith turning against Daniel, while planned and hinted at him not fully going along with Daniel’s ideas in the chapters where Daniel had chats with him, didn’t turn out nearly as well as I would have liked. Again, sorry about that, and while I feel incredibly bad about rushing it out like this, the relief of having the weight of it off my shoulders is such that I feel like I can breathe again after so long.
With the Woodrue vs. Pamela fight, I originally intended for it to be far grander than what it was, but I also realized Pamela just got her powers, she isn’t going to magically know how to use them when compared to versions where she is already an established supervillain, so I had to dial it back besides her feeling the green properly and choosing her as its champion. By that point it was more about her personally getting closure and payback for what Woodrue did to her.
Jade's story with Artemis turned out about as well as I would have liked for it to go. Artemis finally realized Jade wasn’t tricking her and did care about her, for a moment Jade got to be a badass that made Sportsmaster, her dad, take her seriously for once. The stuff with Artemis missing did drag on for too long. And everyone’s favorite fictional butler got to show why he is Bruce’s butler and kicked some ass. Alfred, out of all the characters besides writing for Batman, was my favorite so far to write.
Sorry to everyone that the story ended like it did on a sour note with the last several chapters, but between burnout, writer's block, and lots of family issues like my dad needing a hip replacement but it getting put off because he wants us to desperately move because we have been stuck with his now ex-fiancée in a town she convinced us to move to that is a job dead zone for me where I can’t even continue my education, levels of bad.
Those are just the current issues, don't get me started on the past three years of crap we have had to deal with in this place, and it’s why I finally made a Patreon, among other reasons. But I am done rambling about my personal life and now to focus on what I feel like I learned a lot from and what I need to do better on in future stories.
For starters, it felt about halfway through the story my pacing went down the drain, at least it seemed like that to me. I definitely need to work on that. Things like grammar and just editing my story made a decent improvement when I swapped over to Quillbot for help in editing after someone suggested it to me, so that improved towards the end.
Another thing is the Celestial Forge. Even with me sifting through the perks, making sure nothing was too broken, it still got out of hand with way too many perks. It’s why I doubt I will do many forge or other celestial CYOA stories often after this. It was too much to juggle while trying to focus on the story and not end up like most gamer fics- the gamer ends up becoming the main part of the story instead of the MC and their journey. Numbers go up like our dopamine levels.
Not that I won’t do other stories using the celestial stuff like forge/grimoire, etc., like my Keigo insert in Bleach, which the backlog of chapters I have written kind of shows when I can actually smile at my work and get a laugh out of it so that I can enjoy myself. The snippets section I have isn’t just for putting down story ideas for the future but for helping shake off writer's block.
That’s something I have struggled with throughout this story far more than the others. Part of the reason I have so much burnout towards this story. Then the character interactions felt like they had become more scarce towards the end.
Other issues like character dialogue, especially in the early chapters, definitely showed this was my second story ever written, with nitpicks here and there, but those will get remedied in time as I continue to write and gain more experience. Thank you to everyone for reading and those of you who joined me on this journey with this story, and I hope to see you all on Your Body is a Template Naruto AU that will be taking this story's place.
