The Knight is the darkest just before the dawn
Part Eight: Hell has no fury like a woman scorned
Zoran and Pinoko had been keeping busy by surfing the web on the Batcomputer. Dr. Blackjack and Dr. Tenamann had the Joker's comatose body hooked up to an EEG machine studying the after effects of the mind download. Dr. O'Shay stood by them watching.
Zoran was the first to hear the approach of the Batmobile entering the Batcave, and she ran toward its parking spot. She reached the Batmobile just in time to see Batman gingerly removing the body bag containing Astro, and gently carrying it into the Batcave proper.
“Ani?” Zoran cried out, not seeing her brother, and then realizing what was inside the canvas bag.
“ANI! What happened?” Zoran was able to look through Batman's cowl with her vision cranked into the infrared. She could see the look of despair and grief on Bruce Wayne's face under the mask, and she knew. Batman carried Astro's body into the largest of the Batcave's tech laboratories, and gently laid him down on the operating table. Reno and Dr. O'Shay saw him carrying Astro into the lab and followed him, with a bawling Zoran not far behind.
“He fought bravely, but that damn robot was too powerful!” Batman said, with a distinct cry in his voice. “First Jason, and now Astro! I think It's time I hung up my cape and cowl!”
Reno and Dr. O'Shay started at once to examine what remained of the boy robot. Reno quickly connected a power supply to Astro's internal backup power bus, and a network cable from the Batcomputer to his internal LAN.
“It looks like I can save his AI.” Reno said. “He had enough reserve power left to keep his backup copy intact. I can upload it to the Batcomputer for safe keeping, it looks like I'll have enough disk space.”
“Well that's a bit of good news.” Dr. O'Shay said. “I see so much damage to Astro's internal circuitry that I doubt I'll be able to fix him without getting many custom spare parts from the Ministry.”
“You can use my circuits” Zoran sobbed, elbowing Dr. O'Shay in the ribs.
“Thank you Zoran, you're such a wonderful sister!” O'Shay replied to her sweetly. “However, I'm afraid that won't work, your hardware isn't up to the required precision that Astro's systems require.”
Zoran shuffled away to sit in a corner next to Pinoko whose eyes were also tearing after having seen Astro's battered body. Both of them were still dressed in their Cosplay costumes, though Zoran had stuffed the Batgirl cowl and mask into her pocket.
Suddenly the quiet was shattered by the distinctive ring of the Batphone. The instrument cried out and flashed with a red strobe light designed to get the Batman's undivided attention. Batman reluctantly picked up the phone to answer it.
“Yes commissioner, what can I do for you?” Batman asked. He stood there as if in a trance listening before hanging up the phone.
The three doctor's looked toward Batman upon hearing the phone ring, with looks on their faces that could only say “now what?”
“It seems that the Joker has started on a massive city wide crime wave.” Batman quavered. “He's been intercepting armored trucks, and smashing his way into bank vaults. So far, he's been hitting only the largest concentrations of wealth, but the list is growing.”
Batman turned on a television monitor to a news feed. The Joker had left a short video stream on the network and it was quickly going viral on the web.
“I dare Batman, the police, or even the Army to stop me!” The Joker robot laughed. “I'll make it easy for you mortals in fact, I've got this cellphone with me with the GPS enabled and I'll give you my phone number! OK Bat-Fink. Let's see you stop me! I'll take you apart like I did Astro Boy Blunder!”
A teary eyed Zoran looked up at the large screen TV. The sight of the robot body that Dr. Tenma had build for her brother, now dressed up in the Joker's clown suit and makeup seemed to really get to her. Zoran's bawling shifted into high gear and she ran out of the area where Batman and Dr. O'Shay had been standing.
“Zoran can be quite emotional, can't she?” Batman asked.
“You wouldn't want to see her when she's mad.” Dr. O'Shay answered.
Which in fact, didn't take more than a minute. Perhaps it was the Joker's last words ringing in Zoran's ears, or the sight of Reno taking inventory of what parts of Astro were the most damaged and beyond repair. Suddenly her psyche shifted from grief and sorrow, into a burning angry rage. Her brown eyes took on a red glow, and she reemerged into the room with an angry scowl on her face that could have scared the devil himself.
“THAT BASTARD IS GOING TO PAY FOR KILLING ANI!” Zoran yelled. She pulled the Batgirl cowl and mask from her pocket and carefully pulled it over her head. “I've got a lock on his fucking AI and I'm going to smash him into atoms!”
Batman, Reno, and Dr. O'Shay stared in disbelief at the transformed Zoran.
“HEY BATMAN!” she yelled from where the Batmobile was parked “Are you coming with me, or not?”
“Zoran!” Batman tried to calm her down. “He'll destroy you! We need an edge, we have to think this through carefully.”
“Well If you're chicken, I'll do it myself!” Zoran yelled. In a fit of anger, she picked up the Batmobile and hurled it down the length of the tunnel. The black supercar came to a stop just inches from the mouth of the tunnel, resting sideways against the far wall near the steel doors of the Batcave entrance. Those outer doors opened, and Zoran started running toward the end of the tunnel, taking a leap into the air. The soles of her feet split apart and folded inward as the exhaust nozzles of jet engines appeared at the bottom of her legs. Zoran flew in ground effect toward the now open mouth of the Batcave, reaching supersonic speed as she exited the Batcave and blasted skyward. The echo of her sonic boom filled the Batcave.
“What just happened?” Batman asked. “I didn't know Zoran had Astro's powers.”
“She doesn't!” Dr. O'Shay answered.
“Unless...” Reno interjected. “Remember the day she never made it to school? The same day the police caught Dr. Tenma hiding out at his old abandoned house? The same house Zoran had to walk past everyday to school. You don't suppose ….?”
Dr. O'Shay turned to Batman. “Can you use the Batcomputer to contact Dr. Tenma at the mental hospital?” he asked.
“Yes.” The caped crusader answered, as he started typing on a terminal. The Batcomputer contacted an international video phone circuit, navigating the on line switches to reach the mental hospital where Dr. Tenma was being held. After a many minutes, the crafty scientist appeared on the video circuit to confront Dr. O'Shay who was standing in front of the terminal's webcam.
“I wondered when you'd get around to calling me, O'Shay!” Dr. Tenma said. “And before you ask, I did not hand that robot body over to the Joker of my own free will. I woke up inside my old laboratory to find the super robot body I had built for Astro gone. It took me some time to get my memory back, and I then realized that I had been drugged and forced to comply with the demands of a madman. I couldn't leave the world defenseless, so I had to think of something.”
“What did you do!” O'Shay yelled.
“I left you with a means of defense.” Tenma answered. “I knew that Astro didn't stand a chance against that robot body. It has twenty times his power, and much greater armament. There was no way I could get to Astro to upgrade him, but I could easily kidnap Zoran. You did a good job building her, O'Shay, you must have followed the blueprints I left for her fairly closely. It made my job a lot easier.”
“What the hell did you do to her!” O'Shay demanded again.
“I upgraded her, O'Shay. Zoran now has every system Astro does, but at a much greater power level. She is now more than a match for the super robot body the Joker took from me. Since you're calling me, I must assume that she now knows that she is stronger than he is. She just doesn't realize how strong she is really is. Zoran now has not one, but two energy beam arm cannons. She has twice as many rounds of shells in her fanny guns that Astro did, and they are armor piercing, depleted Uranium shells to boot. Her digibeam finger lasers are more powerful that what the Joker has. She's fully shielded against EMP and laser fire, and her total power output is about twenty times what the Joker has.
“Twenty times!” O'Shay gasped. “That's Forty Million Horsepower!”
“Correct.” Tenma said, as he closed the video circuit at his end.
“Holly crap!” Reno gasped. “Zoran is really loaded for bear!”
“I think I'd better find where the Joker is” Batman said. “Zoran might need some help.”
“Not likely.” Reno laughed. “But perhaps you'd better find them before Zoran causes some collateral damage to the city.”
Zoran's AI locked onto the Joker though the symbiotic link that their AI's shared. She was still mad as hell and so she pushed a vision into the Joker's mind. “You're doomed Joker! Batgirl is coming!”
Batman didn't have any problem locating the Joker's location either. The cellphone link that the crafty criminal had given the police access to for the purpose of taunting them was now painting a target on the Batmobile's tracking system.
Uptown, the Joker walked through the halls of the Googleheim art museum. He was enjoying himself, using a can of spray paint to deface the artwork. The bodies of several Gotham policemen were lying at various places in the museum, and a swat team had take up positions at all of the exits. The Joker was about to remove a Rembrandt that he had taken a fancy to from the wall, when he suddenly felt a searing pain in his head. A voice tore threw his mind screaming at him, and he saw a vision of Batgirl glaring at him. “I'm going to tear you to bits Joker!” she cried.
Batman pulled up to the museum in the Batmobile. He noticed the Gotham police swat teams surrounding the building. The leader of the police squadron walked up to the Batmobile to speak with the caped crusader.
“I think we might have a stand off on our hands.” he said. “We're waiting to see what happens next.”
“What do you mean?” Batman asked.
“Batgirl just smashed her way into the museum.” he said. “She tossed one of my men away from the main entrance and barged in. I think the Joker's near the top of the museum, so I don't know if the two of them have met yet.”
“I'm going in after them!” Batman replied. He walked trough the front door and started up the winding path that lead to the top of the museum.
The Joker had killed the lights, burning out the circuits with a laser shot though the wall hitting the main electrical conduit. Zoran lit her eye search lights and had no trouble finding her way. Her heads up display showed the joker's position clearly superimposed on a map of the inside layout of the museum. Her subconscious mind had already started charging her arm cannons and digibeam lasers, the electronic adrenalin was already active in her computer networks. Her feet squeaked slightly as she took each step forward toward her prey.
Batman entered the darkened museum. He used a flashlight to light the way ahead of him. Just a few feet inside he came to the body of a wounded swat team member. He bent down to touch the body. It was still warm, and he felt a weak pulse. Batman quickly examined the man, he had a long, but shallow burn wound along his back. The Joker must have grazed him with a laser shot. Batman debated carrying the man outside, then decided to call the police and tell them to come get him. The lower floor of the museum was safe, the action would be higher up.
The Joker had a good idea where Batgirl was. She kept stabbing him with her jabs to his AI. He could see and hear her mental projections in his mind. She was trying to unnerve him, and it was starting to work. The joker tried to project back, but he couldn't. Dr. O'Shay's subtle hacking of his AI had been too good.
Zoran continued up the slope of the museum's spiral floor. She was getting close to the Joker's position, so she shut down her eye searchlights. She now navigated solely by her inertial guidance system, and by the sonar return of the sound of her own footsteps. Her highly amplified hearing and her computer brain's processor gave her an echo location ability to actually see around her by sonar, just like a bat.
The Joker slowly backed up toward the top of the spiral path. He tried to hid behind a marble statue. His hearing was good, and his eyes well well dark adapted. He could detect the wraith like apparition that was slowly approaching him.
They were now just tens of feet apart. The ghostly outline of the Joker's form was clearly visible Zoran's head's up display. The Joker could make out Zoran's outline as well. Neither one of them had a clear picture of the other, yet they both knew were each other was well enough to target a shot. Zoran's head up display outlined the Joker in her cross hairs. She aimed a digibeam laser at him and fired. The Joker also took aim with his own digibeam laser and fired. Zoran felt the laser as the beam glanced off of her. It caused no damage as her ray shielding did its job. On the other hand, Zoran's laser hit the Joker squarely between his eyes. His shielding provided some minimal protection, but he now had an unattractive burn spot where he'd been hit. Mad, and seeing that his laser was ineffective, the Joker switched to heavier artillery.
Zoran pointed both of her arms at the Joker as they morphed into cannons. The Joker had already raised his left arm with its beam weapon. Both of them fired simultaneously. Zoran's rage still burned in her brain, she didn't hold back anything. The twin blue hot beams of pure energy merged into one a few feet ahead of her. The combined beams hit the single white hot blast from the Joker's cannon just inches from where it emerged. Over powered by twenty to one, the Joker was thrown backwards by the force of the resulting concussion. He was blasted through the wall of the museum, and then two nearby office towers as well.
Batman heard the explosive thunder and felt the blast of hot wind heading down from upstairs. He picked up his pace and started to run. When he got to the end of the ramp, at the very top of the museum he saw a large gaping hole in the wall, and artwork scattered all around him. The Joker and Zoran were nowhere to be seen. The Caped Crusader leaped through the hole in the wall, and used his Batgrapple to attach a line to the building to rappel down to the street below.
Zoran had seen the Joker being blasted out of the building. She held her ground, despite the blast just a few feet away from her. Quickly she flew out of the building just in time to see her prey plummeting to the ground after emerging from the back of the second office tower he'd been thrown though by the force of her arm cannons. She zoomed down to follow him, but the Joker had finally regained control of himself and was now flying upward.
“I know I shouldn't hit a woman,” the Joker laughed, “But in your exception I'll make a case!” He zoomed upward and slammed into Zoran sending her flying backwards out of control, toward a nearby skyscraper.
But not for long. Zoran quickly managed to slow herself, and now hovered in the air a few hundred yards from the Joker. Now madder than a wet hen, Zoran turned around as if to moon the Joker. The twin barrels of the two machine guns extended from her hips and started to fire. The Joker managed to dodge most of the shells, and all but one of the rest were repelled by his force field. He now had a crease in his forehead where a depleted Uranium bullet had found its mark.
Zoran saw that the machine guns had done little damage, and she quickly changed tactics.
“Now you get yours!” She yelled. “I'm going to revenge Ani!”
At that instant, the Joker suddenly realized who was behind the Batgirl cowl, but he couldn't believe it.
Zoran balled her right hand into a fist. She took aim at the Joker's midsection, and pointed her left arm backwards. Three rocket engines, two in her legs and the one in her left arm reached full throttle and she shot forward like a bullet. The Joker's reflexes and speed were not up to the task of getting out of the way this time. His force field folded like tin foil as Zoran hit him, traveling at Mach 7.
Batman saw the final battle from the street. There was an expanding cloud of white hot gas in the sky where the two robots had merged, and shards of glowing hot metal were raining down on the street. For an instant, it looked like they had destroyed each other. Then Batman felt someone tapping him on his shoulder from behind. He whirled around quickly to see Batgirl smiling up at him.
“How about a ride back to the Batcave, Caped Crusader?” Zoran asked.
Part Eight: Hell has no fury like a woman scorned
Zoran and Pinoko had been keeping busy by surfing the web on the Batcomputer. Dr. Blackjack and Dr. Tenamann had the Joker's comatose body hooked up to an EEG machine studying the after effects of the mind download. Dr. O'Shay stood by them watching.
Zoran was the first to hear the approach of the Batmobile entering the Batcave, and she ran toward its parking spot. She reached the Batmobile just in time to see Batman gingerly removing the body bag containing Astro, and gently carrying it into the Batcave proper.
“Ani?” Zoran cried out, not seeing her brother, and then realizing what was inside the canvas bag.
“ANI! What happened?” Zoran was able to look through Batman's cowl with her vision cranked into the infrared. She could see the look of despair and grief on Bruce Wayne's face under the mask, and she knew. Batman carried Astro's body into the largest of the Batcave's tech laboratories, and gently laid him down on the operating table. Reno and Dr. O'Shay saw him carrying Astro into the lab and followed him, with a bawling Zoran not far behind.
“He fought bravely, but that damn robot was too powerful!” Batman said, with a distinct cry in his voice. “First Jason, and now Astro! I think It's time I hung up my cape and cowl!”
Reno and Dr. O'Shay started at once to examine what remained of the boy robot. Reno quickly connected a power supply to Astro's internal backup power bus, and a network cable from the Batcomputer to his internal LAN.
“It looks like I can save his AI.” Reno said. “He had enough reserve power left to keep his backup copy intact. I can upload it to the Batcomputer for safe keeping, it looks like I'll have enough disk space.”
“Well that's a bit of good news.” Dr. O'Shay said. “I see so much damage to Astro's internal circuitry that I doubt I'll be able to fix him without getting many custom spare parts from the Ministry.”
“You can use my circuits” Zoran sobbed, elbowing Dr. O'Shay in the ribs.
“Thank you Zoran, you're such a wonderful sister!” O'Shay replied to her sweetly. “However, I'm afraid that won't work, your hardware isn't up to the required precision that Astro's systems require.”
Zoran shuffled away to sit in a corner next to Pinoko whose eyes were also tearing after having seen Astro's battered body. Both of them were still dressed in their Cosplay costumes, though Zoran had stuffed the Batgirl cowl and mask into her pocket.
Suddenly the quiet was shattered by the distinctive ring of the Batphone. The instrument cried out and flashed with a red strobe light designed to get the Batman's undivided attention. Batman reluctantly picked up the phone to answer it.
“Yes commissioner, what can I do for you?” Batman asked. He stood there as if in a trance listening before hanging up the phone.
The three doctor's looked toward Batman upon hearing the phone ring, with looks on their faces that could only say “now what?”
“It seems that the Joker has started on a massive city wide crime wave.” Batman quavered. “He's been intercepting armored trucks, and smashing his way into bank vaults. So far, he's been hitting only the largest concentrations of wealth, but the list is growing.”
Batman turned on a television monitor to a news feed. The Joker had left a short video stream on the network and it was quickly going viral on the web.
“I dare Batman, the police, or even the Army to stop me!” The Joker robot laughed. “I'll make it easy for you mortals in fact, I've got this cellphone with me with the GPS enabled and I'll give you my phone number! OK Bat-Fink. Let's see you stop me! I'll take you apart like I did Astro Boy Blunder!”
A teary eyed Zoran looked up at the large screen TV. The sight of the robot body that Dr. Tenma had build for her brother, now dressed up in the Joker's clown suit and makeup seemed to really get to her. Zoran's bawling shifted into high gear and she ran out of the area where Batman and Dr. O'Shay had been standing.
“Zoran can be quite emotional, can't she?” Batman asked.
“You wouldn't want to see her when she's mad.” Dr. O'Shay answered.
Which in fact, didn't take more than a minute. Perhaps it was the Joker's last words ringing in Zoran's ears, or the sight of Reno taking inventory of what parts of Astro were the most damaged and beyond repair. Suddenly her psyche shifted from grief and sorrow, into a burning angry rage. Her brown eyes took on a red glow, and she reemerged into the room with an angry scowl on her face that could have scared the devil himself.
“THAT BASTARD IS GOING TO PAY FOR KILLING ANI!” Zoran yelled. She pulled the Batgirl cowl and mask from her pocket and carefully pulled it over her head. “I've got a lock on his fucking AI and I'm going to smash him into atoms!”
Batman, Reno, and Dr. O'Shay stared in disbelief at the transformed Zoran.
“HEY BATMAN!” she yelled from where the Batmobile was parked “Are you coming with me, or not?”
“Zoran!” Batman tried to calm her down. “He'll destroy you! We need an edge, we have to think this through carefully.”
“Well If you're chicken, I'll do it myself!” Zoran yelled. In a fit of anger, she picked up the Batmobile and hurled it down the length of the tunnel. The black supercar came to a stop just inches from the mouth of the tunnel, resting sideways against the far wall near the steel doors of the Batcave entrance. Those outer doors opened, and Zoran started running toward the end of the tunnel, taking a leap into the air. The soles of her feet split apart and folded inward as the exhaust nozzles of jet engines appeared at the bottom of her legs. Zoran flew in ground effect toward the now open mouth of the Batcave, reaching supersonic speed as she exited the Batcave and blasted skyward. The echo of her sonic boom filled the Batcave.
“What just happened?” Batman asked. “I didn't know Zoran had Astro's powers.”
“She doesn't!” Dr. O'Shay answered.
“Unless...” Reno interjected. “Remember the day she never made it to school? The same day the police caught Dr. Tenma hiding out at his old abandoned house? The same house Zoran had to walk past everyday to school. You don't suppose ….?”
Dr. O'Shay turned to Batman. “Can you use the Batcomputer to contact Dr. Tenma at the mental hospital?” he asked.
“Yes.” The caped crusader answered, as he started typing on a terminal. The Batcomputer contacted an international video phone circuit, navigating the on line switches to reach the mental hospital where Dr. Tenma was being held. After a many minutes, the crafty scientist appeared on the video circuit to confront Dr. O'Shay who was standing in front of the terminal's webcam.
“I wondered when you'd get around to calling me, O'Shay!” Dr. Tenma said. “And before you ask, I did not hand that robot body over to the Joker of my own free will. I woke up inside my old laboratory to find the super robot body I had built for Astro gone. It took me some time to get my memory back, and I then realized that I had been drugged and forced to comply with the demands of a madman. I couldn't leave the world defenseless, so I had to think of something.”
“What did you do!” O'Shay yelled.
“I left you with a means of defense.” Tenma answered. “I knew that Astro didn't stand a chance against that robot body. It has twenty times his power, and much greater armament. There was no way I could get to Astro to upgrade him, but I could easily kidnap Zoran. You did a good job building her, O'Shay, you must have followed the blueprints I left for her fairly closely. It made my job a lot easier.”
“What the hell did you do to her!” O'Shay demanded again.
“I upgraded her, O'Shay. Zoran now has every system Astro does, but at a much greater power level. She is now more than a match for the super robot body the Joker took from me. Since you're calling me, I must assume that she now knows that she is stronger than he is. She just doesn't realize how strong she is really is. Zoran now has not one, but two energy beam arm cannons. She has twice as many rounds of shells in her fanny guns that Astro did, and they are armor piercing, depleted Uranium shells to boot. Her digibeam finger lasers are more powerful that what the Joker has. She's fully shielded against EMP and laser fire, and her total power output is about twenty times what the Joker has.
“Twenty times!” O'Shay gasped. “That's Forty Million Horsepower!”
“Correct.” Tenma said, as he closed the video circuit at his end.
“Holly crap!” Reno gasped. “Zoran is really loaded for bear!”
“I think I'd better find where the Joker is” Batman said. “Zoran might need some help.”
“Not likely.” Reno laughed. “But perhaps you'd better find them before Zoran causes some collateral damage to the city.”
Zoran's AI locked onto the Joker though the symbiotic link that their AI's shared. She was still mad as hell and so she pushed a vision into the Joker's mind. “You're doomed Joker! Batgirl is coming!”
Batman didn't have any problem locating the Joker's location either. The cellphone link that the crafty criminal had given the police access to for the purpose of taunting them was now painting a target on the Batmobile's tracking system.
Uptown, the Joker walked through the halls of the Googleheim art museum. He was enjoying himself, using a can of spray paint to deface the artwork. The bodies of several Gotham policemen were lying at various places in the museum, and a swat team had take up positions at all of the exits. The Joker was about to remove a Rembrandt that he had taken a fancy to from the wall, when he suddenly felt a searing pain in his head. A voice tore threw his mind screaming at him, and he saw a vision of Batgirl glaring at him. “I'm going to tear you to bits Joker!” she cried.
Batman pulled up to the museum in the Batmobile. He noticed the Gotham police swat teams surrounding the building. The leader of the police squadron walked up to the Batmobile to speak with the caped crusader.
“I think we might have a stand off on our hands.” he said. “We're waiting to see what happens next.”
“What do you mean?” Batman asked.
“Batgirl just smashed her way into the museum.” he said. “She tossed one of my men away from the main entrance and barged in. I think the Joker's near the top of the museum, so I don't know if the two of them have met yet.”
“I'm going in after them!” Batman replied. He walked trough the front door and started up the winding path that lead to the top of the museum.
The Joker had killed the lights, burning out the circuits with a laser shot though the wall hitting the main electrical conduit. Zoran lit her eye search lights and had no trouble finding her way. Her heads up display showed the joker's position clearly superimposed on a map of the inside layout of the museum. Her subconscious mind had already started charging her arm cannons and digibeam lasers, the electronic adrenalin was already active in her computer networks. Her feet squeaked slightly as she took each step forward toward her prey.
Batman entered the darkened museum. He used a flashlight to light the way ahead of him. Just a few feet inside he came to the body of a wounded swat team member. He bent down to touch the body. It was still warm, and he felt a weak pulse. Batman quickly examined the man, he had a long, but shallow burn wound along his back. The Joker must have grazed him with a laser shot. Batman debated carrying the man outside, then decided to call the police and tell them to come get him. The lower floor of the museum was safe, the action would be higher up.
The Joker had a good idea where Batgirl was. She kept stabbing him with her jabs to his AI. He could see and hear her mental projections in his mind. She was trying to unnerve him, and it was starting to work. The joker tried to project back, but he couldn't. Dr. O'Shay's subtle hacking of his AI had been too good.
Zoran continued up the slope of the museum's spiral floor. She was getting close to the Joker's position, so she shut down her eye searchlights. She now navigated solely by her inertial guidance system, and by the sonar return of the sound of her own footsteps. Her highly amplified hearing and her computer brain's processor gave her an echo location ability to actually see around her by sonar, just like a bat.
The Joker slowly backed up toward the top of the spiral path. He tried to hid behind a marble statue. His hearing was good, and his eyes well well dark adapted. He could detect the wraith like apparition that was slowly approaching him.
They were now just tens of feet apart. The ghostly outline of the Joker's form was clearly visible Zoran's head's up display. The Joker could make out Zoran's outline as well. Neither one of them had a clear picture of the other, yet they both knew were each other was well enough to target a shot. Zoran's head up display outlined the Joker in her cross hairs. She aimed a digibeam laser at him and fired. The Joker also took aim with his own digibeam laser and fired. Zoran felt the laser as the beam glanced off of her. It caused no damage as her ray shielding did its job. On the other hand, Zoran's laser hit the Joker squarely between his eyes. His shielding provided some minimal protection, but he now had an unattractive burn spot where he'd been hit. Mad, and seeing that his laser was ineffective, the Joker switched to heavier artillery.
Zoran pointed both of her arms at the Joker as they morphed into cannons. The Joker had already raised his left arm with its beam weapon. Both of them fired simultaneously. Zoran's rage still burned in her brain, she didn't hold back anything. The twin blue hot beams of pure energy merged into one a few feet ahead of her. The combined beams hit the single white hot blast from the Joker's cannon just inches from where it emerged. Over powered by twenty to one, the Joker was thrown backwards by the force of the resulting concussion. He was blasted through the wall of the museum, and then two nearby office towers as well.
Batman heard the explosive thunder and felt the blast of hot wind heading down from upstairs. He picked up his pace and started to run. When he got to the end of the ramp, at the very top of the museum he saw a large gaping hole in the wall, and artwork scattered all around him. The Joker and Zoran were nowhere to be seen. The Caped Crusader leaped through the hole in the wall, and used his Batgrapple to attach a line to the building to rappel down to the street below.
Zoran had seen the Joker being blasted out of the building. She held her ground, despite the blast just a few feet away from her. Quickly she flew out of the building just in time to see her prey plummeting to the ground after emerging from the back of the second office tower he'd been thrown though by the force of her arm cannons. She zoomed down to follow him, but the Joker had finally regained control of himself and was now flying upward.
“I know I shouldn't hit a woman,” the Joker laughed, “But in your exception I'll make a case!” He zoomed upward and slammed into Zoran sending her flying backwards out of control, toward a nearby skyscraper.
But not for long. Zoran quickly managed to slow herself, and now hovered in the air a few hundred yards from the Joker. Now madder than a wet hen, Zoran turned around as if to moon the Joker. The twin barrels of the two machine guns extended from her hips and started to fire. The Joker managed to dodge most of the shells, and all but one of the rest were repelled by his force field. He now had a crease in his forehead where a depleted Uranium bullet had found its mark.
Zoran saw that the machine guns had done little damage, and she quickly changed tactics.
“Now you get yours!” She yelled. “I'm going to revenge Ani!”
At that instant, the Joker suddenly realized who was behind the Batgirl cowl, but he couldn't believe it.
Zoran balled her right hand into a fist. She took aim at the Joker's midsection, and pointed her left arm backwards. Three rocket engines, two in her legs and the one in her left arm reached full throttle and she shot forward like a bullet. The Joker's reflexes and speed were not up to the task of getting out of the way this time. His force field folded like tin foil as Zoran hit him, traveling at Mach 7.
Batman saw the final battle from the street. There was an expanding cloud of white hot gas in the sky where the two robots had merged, and shards of glowing hot metal were raining down on the street. For an instant, it looked like they had destroyed each other. Then Batman felt someone tapping him on his shoulder from behind. He whirled around quickly to see Batgirl smiling up at him.
“How about a ride back to the Batcave, Caped Crusader?” Zoran asked.