Chapter 7: Don't Trust Me
It was almost too easy.
Apparently The Broker didn't trust leaving behind human sentries, instead investing in silent alarms and security systems to keep nosy snoopers out of his business. The more complex the system, the closer she felt she was getting to the mother lode.
Catwoman had managed to infiltrate the modest four-story building The Broker owned and operated as a legitimate office with property agents operating underneath him. Of course, he never got involved himself in the day-to-day grind of buying and selling. Why would he? There was much more money to be made by assisting criminals.
Then again, there was much money to be had in running a successful property business as well. Who would think that someone would want more when they were making so much already? That was why no one would check for him running illicit activities that he couldn't bribe or hire someone to get rid of.
Inside of the man's office, Selina bypassed the safe and began searching less conspicuous areas for something that The Broker wouldn't have dared hide inside of a safe. Just in case it were cracked and his secret nighttime dealings ever came into someone else's possession.
Figuring that while she was rifling around the rather large work space she would check in to see if she was in any danger of being found, Catwoman touched a finger to a device on her ear to speak, "Any sign of our guy heading back to the office for the night?"
It took a moment to get a response, but she did receive one in return.
"Nope," Null said over the line, "I think he's delivering phony paperwork to some people who bought hideouts through him tonight. This is the third place he's been, he never stays anywhere for long, and his guys aren't turning around to bring him back to his place."
Fortunately, Catwoman was already well inside of her target's place of business, busy with trying to locate and make off with some of his more sensitive files, "Alright. Good work Null," She said encouragingly, "Stay on him and let me know if he gets close to me, but stay way out of sight."
"Are you sure?" The young thief asked, wanting to make sure things went smoothly for him and his semi-mentor, "You don't want me to distract him and his guys or anything?"
The skillful cat burglar almost laughed. He was getting smarter since he was thinking about ways to try and buy more time for her, but he needed to know his situations better. Fighting to sidetrack someone to provide an opening for someone else was only meant to be done in a pinch, as in, if the owner of the building was a block away.
"That depends. Are you confident enough in dodging bullets well enough to get away with it?" Catwoman asked, getting no answer from the other end, "Plus, getting into a fight would just rush him back here quicker, and when he finds out who you are he'll put a hit out on you later."
"Ooh..."
"Stick to the shadows, hon. You're doing fine."
She'd had Null pick up The Broker's train and follow him on-foot all night long. With what he already knew of skulking around, and the added accoutrements that his suit gave him in regards to that practice, this was something he could do quite easily.
It was also something he was quite comfortable with. It kept him way out of the line of direct fire. Even if The Broker's small number of hired guns didn't see much action, they were still very good. He had the money to pay for help with actual combat experience and he wouldn't have hesitated to set them on someone if he felt something was off.
The Broker was not a good person. He sold hideouts to the criminal element of Gotham City. He would have his men shoot first, and ask questions never. It was better to keep Null far away from that trouble.
"Ah," Selina said with a smile, "I think I have something here," Buried in a pile of junk records that would eventually be transferred somewhere so that they didn't take up space, Selina found that one of the manila folders contained some very sensitive names and aliases.
The best place to hide something in plain sight? By putting it a clustermess of boring, yet consistent paperwork that had no use to anyone. He could keep switching out the junk paperwork after it grew too far out of date to stay in his office, and keep the illegal stuff where it was while moving the decoys. It didn't take up much space.
Not a bad place to hide something people would actually be looking for, but to rob a criminal you had to know how to think like them. Catwoman had taken more than enough valuables from other criminals to find ways to pick up on their possible tendencies and habits.
Well that meant it was time to dismiss her second that was shadowing The Broker before he went and got himself capped again somehow, "Null, we're good here. Come meet up with me. The night's not over yet."
XxX
(Meanwhile – Undisclosed Location)
Rose had finished her workout for the evening and gone to inform Deathstroke of this before going on to tend to another point of interest when she found him sitting at a laptop without his trademark one-eyed orange and black mask. She was aware that he didn't care too much in particular about her training, just that it produced results when the time came for it to be put to use. Still, it was expected that she informed him of her comings and goings.
"I'm finished with my training for tonight," She said, not addressing him by name or alias. She knew to address him as Deathstroke at all times, and did when she absolutely needed to, but it was still odd that she wasn't allowed to refer to her father as just that, her father.
Oftentimes, she believed that he only saw her as a means to keep some part of his family close, as the rest were gone. His wife was dead, and Rose wasn't his legitimate child. Not like her half-brothers who had both been killed as well, one of them directly by Deathstroke's own hand and the other by trying to follow in his footsteps.
Would she even have met him had those things never happened? Would he even have her around if he didn't think she could be used to do something he didn't have the heart to do twice, kill his son Jericho in his place? It made her angry to think about, but she wasn't nearly skilled enough to try and lash out in rage against it the way she wanted to.
Besides, he was her father. The only family she had whatsoever. That meant something to her, so it must have to him as well, didn't it?
"Good," He said, which was the standard answer. She hadn't expected anything else since it never occurred otherwise, but as she turned to leave she was stopped, "Come and sit with me for a moment. You can learn something from this."
It was surprising at first, but if that was his order, she was going to follow it. Shrugging to herself, Rose obediently grabbed a chair and moved it over to her father's side, trying to get as decent a view as she could of what he was checking out.
He was getting all of his affairs in order for the big auction. He wanted it smooth, seamless, painless, and easy. Feathers would be ruffled, but product would be moved. The simpler the process, the better it would be for him and the less likely it would be that something would go wrong.
While the others on the call inviting them to the proceedings probably didn't know who else they would be in direct contention with come auction time, Rose did, as Deathstroke had been the one to reach out to them himself. Even now it seemed that it was all just a formality to make it seem as if he believed that anyone else had a chance. The only person he had really been banking on to make any kind of splash once the money started being thrown around was one man.
"Isn't Lex Luthor the guy that usually has the market cornered on tech that's meant to kill Superman?" Rose didn't expect him to be the one to buy in just because of that fact alone. Someone like Luthor would believe that there would be nothing better than what he or the people in his employ could come up with to get the job done, "You're putting a lot of your eggs in that basket."
Deathstroke wasn't so certain of that. Not in the slightest, "Lex Luthor will be the one to pay me for this once the auction begins. No one else will come close," He told her, "I know that from what little I showed of the blueprints, if anyone realized what it just so happened to be, it was him," That had been his intention for showing them and leaving the particular slides he chose up for the amount of time that he did.
Besides, it wasn't putting eggs into any basket. It was mere expectation. If Luthor was outbid, Deathstroke would hand the blueprints and the Kryptonite over to whomever the victor happened to be. It made no difference to him. It was just that he knew Luthor would get more out of it than anyone else.
Rose took it upon herself to look at the aforementioned blueprints, since her father wasn't particularly forthcoming with what exactly they were. She found herself at a loss, "What exactly am I looking at?" She asked, not knowing what it was supposed to be from the designs, "A gigantic transmitter? A generator?"
Deathstroke pointed to the one meant to be the finished article to give his daughter a better grasp on what they had. On the screen it looked like a radio tower on overdrive, "Close. It's a device meant to release a constant pulse of a particular sort of energy," He said cryptically, only to fill in his own blank moments after when Rose didn't, "…In this instance, the radiation emitted by Kryptonite."
As that one piece clicked into place for her, everything else did as well, "That's why you're selling the blueprints together with Kryptonite."
Good lord. Anyone with one of those things, if they could keep it safe, would have a bonafide anti-Kryptonian defense system. And that was if they chose to only use it defensively. Was it even something that could be used defensively?
Now she could see why Deathstroke felt so certain of the odds, "Not only will he buy it because of what it can do, he will buy it because the most necessary and rarest object it needs to work comes with it, with so much extra to spare. Enough to use on something else for himself, or to make more pulse machines."
"More?"
"He won't just make one or two," Deathstroke assured her, confident in his assessment of how Luthor would plan to utilize his winnings. The man didn't do anything halfway, "He'll make as many as his resources will allow him to. He may even sell use of them to others. But I believe he'll simply make as many as he needs to use them all at once. Everywhere."
That made sense. The second he turned on one, if a Kryptonian wasn't within range of it, things might have wound up being a waste. An ally of theirs might try to destroy it before it could finish its job. And speaking of range, "…How far would each one cover?" The silver-haired girl asked while it was fresh on her mind.
"A good question," Deathstroke said with a smirk, "I'll answer it this way. Two would cover the whole of North America. So how many do you think he would need to do the same everywhere else?"
Rose winced at the results her math produced, but let it go unseen. Someone like Lex Luthor could definitely afford to fund the construction of the necessary amount, "I thought trying to kill Superman did nothing for us?" She said, drawing upon Deathstroke's own words from the other day.
"Doing it ourselves doesn't," He confirmed for her, "Outfitting someone who will try to for an exorbitant fee is making money off of the investment we put into the theft-," An investment that only cost him 50,000 dollars, plus expenses for ammunition wasted and transportation, "-Plus there's the added benefit of someone taking it upon themselves to try and handle Superman without needing to be prompted."
And there was nothing wrong with that outcome from Deathstroke's benefit. While he didn't particularly have anything personal against the big, blue Boy Scout, or his extended family, they were a problem. Each of them, an obstacle that could pop up at just about any time and pose a nigh insurmountable challenge to his goals, whatever they may be at the time.
A full bank account, and a world with one less hero, minimum. It sounded like quite the net gain from the hired mercenary's point of view.
Rose's thoughts were on the negative fallout this could generate. It didn't matter much to her own standing. Deathstroke was almost universally seen as the enemy, and that extended to her. She was prepared for it as his apprentice. But if this actually transpired, and the building and use of these pulse machines resulted in Superman's death, Null would be crucified for it first as the easiest to find and take down.
He was scrappy, but in the grand scheme of things, he wasn't that tough. Even he knew as much when he came calling to her for some help to find a place to lay low. Back then, he'd probably been convinced that things had gotten as bad as they were going to for him.
Not if this auction went off and everything went as Deathstroke believed it would.
If it did, there probably wasn't a hole in the world deep enough for him to bury his head into.
But she had to put that out of her mind once again. He was just hired help that had done his job. A thief. One that was a dime a dozen at that. She had a greater responsibility as her father's apprentice. She couldn't fail him or disappoint him again.
XxX
(With Null – Gotham City)
The days were mashing themselves together.
Max couldn't even remember what he'd been doing in school the last few days outside of the information he'd been shoveling into his head. He had money, so he hadn't had to go out and steal. That left him plenty of time to study for once, and it was starting to stick. He was looking forward to his grades eventually picking up for the first time in a while.
Even so, it seemed more and more like he was just waiting for the sun to go down so he could throw on the Null suit and get more acquainted with it while working himself out. That thing was becoming the focal point of his existence.
Yes, it was killing him.
But it had also given him the chance that he'd wanted when he'd first put it on, despite the fact that using it for that end had brought him no end of trouble.
Even indirectly, he was connected to at least one person who would have preferred to toss his sorry butt in jail rather than speak if he saw him in-person. Null was extremely grateful that a buffer like Catwoman existed that could temper Batman's usual temper and outlook on people like him.
If he didn't have that, he would have felt far more uncomfortable about Supergirl hovering around him, trying to get a read on him. Apparently he needed a babysitter while the adults were in the other room speaking.
…He was still uncomfortable of course, but granted, it could have been far worse. She could have been trying to hit him. He'd take good old-fashioned curiosity over another fight with a cape any day of the week. It was just...
"You're not x-raying my face, right?" Null asked, a bit of nervousness seeping into his voice despite his best efforts to the contrary.
Supergirl came to a stop and landed right in front of him, "Well, not this time. Catwoman must really like you, you know?"
"Huh?"
Supergirl could see that the would-be thief was confused and explained the situation for his benefit, "She kind of got Batman to get the League to agree not to try and find out who you are, for now at least, until this is over. So she must really like you."
It was one of Catwoman's deal-breakers for helping to find Deathstroke. She didn't have much of a position to negotiate from, but she worked with what she had. The League wanted to save the kid, and they wanted to find the Kryptonite, so getting in a little condition to move the deal along wasn't much trouble. Still, as far as Supergirl knew, Catwoman rarely ever went out of her way to do something like that for someone else. She could count the number of people on one hand and still have four fingers left, at least before Null anyway.
Still, just because he was off-limits when it came to giving him the third-degree, that didn't mean that Supergirl couldn't try to figure out a little bit about him the old-fashioned way; by talking. Something two rather good friends of hers never got the chance to do previously because of their and his separate affiliations. Her cousin's alter ego was a reporter after all, and what was really the difference here?
Null sighed and leaned back against the wall where he was standing, "You know, I want to think like that, that she might really like me. But I can't trust her," Which honestly made him sad to think about. Selina Kyle was the only person that came close to getting his trust. The closest since his parents started to throw themselves into their independent research, but 'close to trust' still wasn't 'trust' itself, "I did that before, and it got me into this mess."
It wasn't fair, but it was how he felt. He'd put himself out on that limb with her once before and it had gotten him shot and used as a patsy. If there hadn't been something about him that resonated positively with Catwoman, and God only knew what it was because Null sure didn't, he would be healing in a prison hospital right now.
It was a pain in the backside not having someone to trust in, but Null hadn't had anyone to do that for in quite some time in the first place, so he was used to it. Still, that wasn't a good thing when he was a babe stepping into a world filled with people like… well, like the blonde girl floating in front of him.
Kryptonians, man. It was like humans were just a shallow parody of them. Nothing more than a cheap joke. One that wasn't even funny considering what they could do.
Null let out a laugh, getting Supergirl interested in just what he found to be funny, "What is it?"
"Nothing," Null said, waving it off before he wound up offending what was probably the strongest teenage girl in the world, "It's just, what am I doing here? I'm not a super-genius, or a demigod, or magical. I'm just a thief with a suit. And you, you're… you!" He exclaimed as if that explained everything.
"Well, that is true. I am me," Supergirl said, "What about it?"
Null shook his head, a bewildered smile on his face, "You, or anyone in the next room, if they acknowledged that I exist and decided to do something about me, I wouldn't last thirty seconds."
Those weren't the Titans in the next room. These were real Justice League members, two of the founding members to boot. If he had a snowball's chance in hell against Robin and company, just one of the chief members of the real-deal hero group would chew him up and spit him out.
"I'm out of my league," Null acknowledged, laughing a bit at his own pun, "And the thing is, I wanted to help. I couldn't stand someone else doing something like this for me, risking their neck, and leaving me behind. But what good am I supposed to be here?"
Supergirl stared Null down, before she finally seemed to come to a decision on what she was trying to see in him, "...You really didn't know what Kryptonite was when you stole it, did you?"
"No," The young thief revealed. Deathstroke had kept the wool over his eyes on that one. He should have known better, but all he saw were the dollar signs and the immediate dangers, "That's just an excuse though. I still did it. I'm still responsible. I should have just kept stealing shitty antiques to pawn, and swag from sports teams to sell on the internet instead of going for a real payday, but Null-Icarus had to fly a little too close to the sun. I guess my wax wings are melting."
Supergirl couldn't see or hear any lie from him. Oh he was nervous, there was no doubt about that. But there wasn't any tension from him as though he were trying to speak through his teeth and tell her what he thought would keep her or other heroes off of his back. He seemed legitimately remorseful for stealing something that was harmful and handing it over.
Why was this person a bad guy? He wasn't malicious or even thoughtless, "So why be a criminal? Were things really that bad? Or do you just hate the rules enough to go out and break them the second you get abilities of your own?"
"I don't hate the rules, I just didn't have the time to work with them."
"A thief that doesn't hate the rules and doesn't like stealing things for lots of money. You're a confusing guy."
Null didn't get what was so confusing about it, "Why? I get it. I'm doing something illegal. And it's your job to stop me. That's why I don't have a problem with heroes," Every job had to come with hardships, even the ones that were meant to be shortcuts, "And really, if you guys weren't around there wouldn't be anybody to deal with all of the psychos. I mean, who else would do it? Definitely not me."
For example, he had heard of how Gotham City used to be before Batman showed up. There were less freaks back then, but far more crime, reaching all over, even deep into the police department. To even imagine that place as way worse as a whole beforehand, it was brutal to think about.
"You... are really out of place," No bad guy she had seen or met would have ever validated the existence of superheroes as necessary. Still, Batgirl probably hadn't had a conversation proper with him the way that Supergirl just had, but even so she could see why Batgirl likely found him interesting. He probably wasn't like anything that she had dealt with on Gotham's streets before, "I dunno. Maybe you should try and take a crack at being a hero. You might like it more."
Not a chance. He had interacted with enough people willing to kill him without actually giving them a reason to, "No way. I don't even like doing this, and heroing definitely doesn't pay the bills. Besides, I'm too selfish to be any good at it. If it's ever a 'me or you' situation, I'd say that I'll probably pick me every time."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that if I were you," Supergirl told Null, "Someone who'd have really picked themselves every time, they wouldn't have offered to help Catwoman in the first place."
Whether she knew or not, he wasn't certain. But the blue-clad heroine's words prompted him to actually stop and think about the kind of person he was for the first time.
XxX
"You're late."
That was how Catwoman was greeted upon entering. She caught Batman hanging around in the corner, but her immediate attention was grabbed by the imposing, muscular figure, garbed in blue with red boots and cape, the large 'S' on his chest front and center for all to see.
This subtle figure was none other than Superman, the most powerful man in the world. There was no mistake about it. Anyone in the world would have known that at first sight.
"Cool your jets. Most of us can't fly," As Superman rolled his eyes at the obvious allusion to him, Catwoman waved an unassuming folder in the air for emphasis that she was making good on her end of the agreement, "Even if you don't trust me, I can't exactly cut and run without getting what I even agreed to this in the first place for, now can I? Here."
Superman walked over to the table that served as the focal point of the room. It separated all three of them physically and symbolically, "That didn't take long. And you got out clean?" He said, "I always figured the best burglaries took time to plan."
Of course he did, and for others that was indeed the case, but Catwoman wasn't anything like others, "I don't spend most of my time casing targets and scouting security," Because there wasn't really anything that she couldn't find a way to get past, "I spend most of my time looking for ones that I like. I'm picky. If I want it, I'm going to get my hands on it."
She dropped the file onto the nearest table for Batman to pick up and take. He placed his hand on it, but didn't pick it up or open it. From the scowl on his face, it wasn't what he had been looking for, "The deal was that you help us get to Deathstroke and find the Kryptonite. Not give us leads for goose-chases."
Catwoman sat down, dangling one leg loosely over the other as she leaned back and stretched carelessly, "This came from The Broker's files themselves. With the money he's been making, do you really think he's only got property in Gotham City? Not a chance."
Batman could concede that point, if nothing else. Reading through it, he quickly found just how useful the file really was.
Looking in from the side, Superman raised an eyebrow upon analyzing the intel that they had been given, "I can't believe he kept something like this," It was basically a cheat sheet for finding bad guys, "He has to realize how dangerous keeping all of this is."
Catwoman grinned at having impressed even the Man of Steel with her thievery, "It's his little insurance policy, just in case any of his buyers ever turned on him," Which wasn't a bad idea to have, given his line of work and the unstable nature of the people he interacted with, "He owns the properties himself, he just uses various aliases and names from employees that work for his official firm."
Even if this didn't lead to Deathstroke, Batman found himself wanting to keep and memorize what was on those pages before getting it to the commissioner. It was basically an address book for a good number of Gotham's law-breaking element. Something like this could change the course of the battle against crime in that city.
Still, he couldn't show his hand. As much of a boon as this had the potential to be, this was still a joint effort between a hero and a criminal. He knew firsthand that if you gave Selina an inch, she'd take a mile.
She knew that what she had was good. Very good. So good in fact, that she thought she could reap the benefits of the hard work she'd put in thus far a little early, "This is more than a good first step, don't you think? So how about you get someone to take a look at Null as a show of good faith."
There it was. Not entirely unreasonable, but again not what had been agreed upon, and the man behind the cowl was a hard one. That coquettish smile of hers wasn't going to shorten the road to the prize. Not this time.
Batman leveled an even glance Catwoman's way, arms crossed over his broad chest as he loomed over the seated burglar, "It's a little early for that," He said, "We're not done yet. You remember the terms and conditions, and those aren't fulfilled."
Yet again, claws came out, proverbially of course. That seemed to be happening more these days around Batman than it used to, "So I guess there's no such thing as paying now and later when there's a life on the line."
Ever the propagator for goodwill, or at least a working relationship between his allies (temporary as one of them may be), Superman interjected, "That's not why," He said, moving himself between the two sides, turning to Catwoman, "From what I've been told, even with our word, do you really think he would be alright with sitting around in our custody? By himself?"
"He will if I say it'll…" Catwoman's confidence in her own statement died off before she had even gotten it out of her mouth, "…He might not. In fact, no, he probably won't," She concluded with a frown, 'Damn it, Maxie.'
Null, or Max in this case, was a good kid, for the most part at least. It was just that he did not trust Catwoman with anything involving his safety, or physical well-being, with fair reason after the last time such a thing had come up, but still.
Superman was right. Null wouldn't be accommodating at all to being put into the Justice League's custody by himself. Even if Catwoman was there, against the League there wasn't really much security there, but it would make him feel better, that he wasn't in it alone.
That he wouldn't be left in the hands of people that would just as soon lock him up as fix what was wrong with him.
Without her, they would have to make him go, because he wouldn't on his own. And that wouldn't end well for him. Not at all.
"Do you even have anyone that can look at him in the first place?" Catwoman grumbled, mentally acknowledging how difficult Null would be to convince if she wasn't along with him, "Whatever's wrong with him is down to the atoms, or so we're told."
"We've got someone qualified to check out the problem," Superman assured her, "He's got to get here from South America though. In the meantime, you said there was a week until whatever Deathstroke has planned comes to pass?"
"That's what Ravager told Null, and that was two days ago, so I'd say we're down to five days or less by now."
Batman found something wrong with a hapless thief pulling something like that out of Deathstroke the Terminator's daughter/apprentice, "She trusts him enough to tell him that, but not anything that would help find them?"
Catwoman amused herself, thinking about Null's protests the other night when it came to earning a shred of partiality from Ravager, "She's a bit fond of him. I never said she trusted him," How many people on her side of the law that were her age could she possibly have run across traipsing about with Deathstroke? Null was probably one of the first, "Fine. Well I guess I'll keep with the theme and bring Null-."
"You can't keep taking him with you on this," Batman asserted. This was something that would get deadly serious, if it wasn't already, "It's getting to the part where junior varsity needs to sit it out, for their own good."
Which coincidentally left her ass quite uncovered once the shooting and the explosions inevitably started. She also wasn't comfortable with being left out, not so much unlike Null. While Catwoman was a loner, she didn't enjoy it so much when she was in mortal danger.
"You say that, but you're going to drag Robin and Batgirl to whatever the endgame winds up being," Catwoman said, "Null may not trust me, but at the end of the day I know he'll watch out for me."
Because he was a good kid, no matter what anyone thought of how he chose to support himself.
As a matter of fact, they were going to stay back and watch over Gotham in his stead. If he absolutely felt he had to, he would take one of them. One only, not both. And after Robin's recent stunt with the Teen Titans, he was probably going to wind up taking Batgirl.
Batman didn't touch on that though, instead going straight for the jugular in regards to the new matter, the competency of one supersuit-clad youth.
"You can't compare either them to Null. They've been doing this for years," The point he raised was good. Null had escaped and even succeeded time and time again because of luck and an uncanny ability to take advantage of any opportunity dangled in front of him. That alone couldn't be counted on for competency in a fight, "He's too inexperienced. He wouldn't know the first thing about how to handle this."
"Well how else is he supposed to learn then?" Catwoman protested, really not wanting to go it alone. Even with Null there, it was better than what she gleaned the alternative to be.
If she knew Batman and how he would plan this, and they had actually done enough of this sort of thing together for her to be certain of as much, he would put her with some other hero that she didn't know or trust to keep an eye on her, instead of letting her do her thing and retrieve the Kryptonite stores herself.
They weren't on the best of terms at the moment, and this was just begging for trouble that she didn't want brought down.
Batman walked forward from where he'd been standing and set one foot on the seat of one of the chairs situated around the table, leaning forward as he spoke, "I thought this was about getting him out of this kind of life, not getting him better at dealing with it," He said, "If you're doing this so that he can be fixed, why are you putting him in a position where he can get himself killed?"
He was right, and she didn't have an immediate answer ready. That was what it was about, and even Null felt as such. But there was so much potential there. And whatever Null said or felt, Catwoman believed that he didn't know just how off he was. Null may have believed that he was going to get out clean, but there was no such thing.
No one got out. No one retired, either on the hero or the villain side. No matter how old they grew to be. It just didn't happen. Once you were in, you were in.
She didn't want to voice that thought aloud though, because he wasn't going to be a hero. There was no interest in that kind of life for him. He was going to stay where he was, as a thief.
"Alright, that's enough," Superman was glad he'd decided to grab onto Batman's offer to come to Gotham City to talk about the ongoing operation, because he felt that if he hadn't there wouldn't have been anyone to play mediator. If not, nothing would have gotten done, because he could feel the unresolved tension between the two, and didn't know if it would have erupted in a fight, or in sex otherwise, "Actually, I think I may have a compromise here."
XxX
(With Null – Elsewhere – Downtown Gotham City)
Sitting cross-legged for comfort as he stuck to the top of the train, Null looked over to his left where he saw Supergirl effortlessly keeping up with him, "Are you just gonna follow me all night?" He asked, "There's got to be something better for you to do. I'm not gonna do anything interesting."
He had been planning to go and screw around with the suit some more, but he wasn't going to now that he had himself a tail. Now that he knew he had them, having superpowers was addictive. Even if they just let him grab and repel metal things from afar, it was more than 99% of the world's population could say that they were capable of and it was still a novelty.
Supergirl was able to stay with the train without even needing to focus on how she was flying herself. It was a leisurely pace for her, "Kal-El wanted me to come with him to Gotham. He didn't say anything about sitting outside of a dingy old bomb shelter underground."
Null could sympathize with her on that front at least. It had been painfully boring, and he was quite certain that there had been no need for him to be there, "Won't you get in trouble for leaving the meeting?"
"Won't you?" She shot right back.
"I don't think so," Null replied with a slight smirk, "If it was something for me to actually know about, they would have made sure I was in the room. I think Catwoman brought me just to start trouble," Selina could be a difficult woman like that.
"She might have brought you to meet Kal-El," Supergirl offered as a reason. She saw no harm in dropping Superman's real, Kryptonian name. It didn't link to his Earth name in the slightest, so it was fine, "If you're getting help from the Justice League, I'm pretty sure he'd want to talk to you about it just to clear up some things with you first."
Null almost reversed his magnetic charge out of shock at such a casual remark to something that wasn't so simple, "Are you kidding me?" He asked, "If I walked up to Superman... I'm imagining that it would be like if a bacteria walked up to a human being and started getting snippy."
"Kal-El's not like that," Supergirl said with a frown. Was that how he saw superheroes? He might not have hated them, but she had a feeling that even if he hadn't been a thief he wouldn't have trusted them, "It's not like he's even upset at you. If I'm not, how could you think he is?"
Null could feel the train slowing to a stop and stood up before it could begin to pull into the next station. Without warning he magnetically boosted himself off of the metal roof and landed smoothly on the top of a building. Best way to travel.
Supergirl didn't find an issue in staying with him, but did seem to be waiting on an answer. It seemed that her question wasn't rhetorical and his moves weren't flashy enough to impress someone who could fly into changing the subject.
"It's not that I think he's mad," Null eventually said with a casual raise and drop of his shoulders, "I'm not an alien, or anything like that. I'm just a guy that fell into this. He probably thinks I'm some kind of idiot."
"Like I said, Kal-El isn't like that," Supergirl insisted, arms crossed over her chest, unknowingly making her bear a quick resemblance in stance to her more famous cousin, "I know for sure that Batman doesn't think you know what you're doing though."
For some reason that struck a nerve. As though Null hadn't been giving Robin and Batgirl the run-around since the day they'd first crossed paths. Sure, he'd taken more thrashings at their hands than he ever would have wanted, and he still didn't know how to beat one of them on his own, but he'd gotten over more than his fair share against them for a newbie.
"Well I know that Batman can shove it up his-!" He almost lost his temper over such a small remark, and that hadn't at all been Supergirl's goal when she'd brought it up. How uncool, "...It's not rocket science. I steal stuff for money. You don't need to be the greatest detective in the world, or the leading scientific mind of the next generation to figure this shit out. Find something worth money and take it without getting caught. If you get caught, run and get away. Then sell it. The end."
It was simple. It should have been simple. None of this should have ever been a thing. He just so happened to get lessons from a thief that dabbled in acts of heroism and the occasional brush with villainy. Whoops.
Supergirl frowned and gave Null's suit a poke, feeling a tiny ripple of electricity go through her. Not enough that would hurt anyone, just be uncomfortable. That was coming from him, "So let me get this straight. You've got a suit that makes you superhuman. You've got more power than you ever thought you would have in your life, and all you're doing is using it to steal knick-knacks and collectibles?"
When she put it like that, it seemed very in the moment, a contrast to the whole plot he'd lain out for himself and his actions when he'd first put on the suit, "There's good money in stealing collectibles, and it's less traceable than artifacts and the stuff Catwoman likes," He argued, albeit weakly, "What's wrong with that?"
"Aside from being illegal?" Supergirl gave him as an obvious answer, one that reddened his cheeks with mortification, "There's a lot you can do, to help other people. Depending on how good you are, you could help the world."
Null wasn't thinking nearly that big. Months ago, he was stressing about paying his rent. To hell with saving the world. He couldn't even save himself, "I'd rather help myself first. God knows no one else was going to."
"I don't think you're that bad of a person," Supergirl said quietly. She'd been watching him all night to try and break it down. She'd gotten nothing. No hidden ambition bubbling under the surface. No resentment for society's rules that held him back, or any other evil spiel of that nature. Nothing, "I'm sorry, I just don't see it."
And she was right. Null wasn't bad. At least he didn't think he was. He was selfish, but that didn't make him inherently bad. It made him normal.
Null sat down on the ledge of the roof they were on, staring out at the city below, watching the cars go by, "The world isn't split up into just good guys and bad guys. There are people like you at one end of the spectrum, people like the Joker or something at the other end, and then there are people like me. There's way more of us than there'll ever be of any of the others, and we're all somewhere in between."
"Just because you're normal doesn't mean you can't be extraordinary."
"Says the girl with super-strength and laser vision."
"Hey, believe it or not I didn't always have 'em. Kal-El didn't either," Supergirl said before the sounds of people yelling for help caught her ears. Gotham was filled with so much noise that she normally had to downplay it all in order to pay attention to anything in particular, but even she couldn't block out that many voices in one place. She wouldn't have wanted to either. "Do you hear that?"
Null shook his head, standing up and pointing off in a direction where he saw black smoke rising into the starless night sky, "Do you see that?"
The source was a burning apartment building. Fourteen stories of a living hell.
Null barely had a chance to speak again before he found himself grabbed up and flown to the site at a pace that made his dinner churn in his stomach. Before he knew it, he was set back down, stumbling about as Supergirl kept her eyes locked, surveying the scene.
Firefighters were in place, already trying to hose down what they could, a team ready to head in and look for people to rescue. However the flames were too intense at the moment to send anyone in.
"Where are the other engines?"
"There's another one two blocks away! Is someone setting these?"
Supergirl gasped and then looked over at Null, who didn't seem surprised at what they had just heard, "Really?"
"Probably," He said. It wouldn't have surprised Null if it had been, "Did you forget where you are? This whole place is one big, stone nightmare," Supergirl turned back to the fire and rushed in to do what she could to ease the problem. If only every big city had a Kryptonian...
But that still left the problem of the person that was lighting the fires in the first place.
XxX
Firefly was out, and he felt the need to celebrate. What better way to let Gotham's finest know he was back in town than setting a place ablaze?
Setting half of the city ablaze of course!
The two high-rises were fine, but he had been locked away for so long. He needed to see something burn. Something big.
Firefly dressed in a full-body fire retardant suit, dark in color with a protective mask that resembled the head of his namesake. On his back he wore a large tank of fuel, connected to two flamethrowers in his hands, and wings that worked as a jetpack.
He found himself in his nirvana when he stepped into the chemical factory situated in downtown Gotham City. Sure, he had to burn two of the guards that had been watching over the premises alive, but he enjoyed that part as well. The fat one went up in flames especially well.
"Just like the rest Gotham will," Firefly thought to himself, clutching his twin flamethrowers like long-lost lovers he was getting reacquainted with, "I can see the sea of flames from here."
What he didn't see was the powerful blow that struck him in the back of the head, sending him flying face-first into several drums of chemicals, spilling them all over the factory floor. He pushed himself up, angry, but fortunately not covered in the slick, flammable chemicals.
Null stood back, cracking the knuckles on the hand he had just belted Firefly with, "I punched you in the back of the head as hard as I could. That should have at least knocked you out."
"Who the fuck are you?" Firefly asked heatedly before cutting off any response Null would have given him, "Actually, nevermind. I don't care," He punctuated this by turning on his jetpack, barreling at Null with his flamethrower set to scorch him.
Turning tail, Null ran and dodged Firefly's first pass, wondering all the while on the advice that he'd gotten on the cast of Gotham City's colorful nightlife, 'I can't remember if Firefly is one of the ones Selina told me to run from if I ran into him,' Not that it mattered if he wasn't since Null was running from him anyway.
"I didn't expect a cape to burn so quickly after getting out of Arkham," Firefly taunted, coming just short of burning Null with his trusty fire-belching weaponry, "Luckily, I'm not one of those loons obsessed with Batman and the grade school he runs out of his hideout. I'm perfectly fine with dressing the new blood in flames!"
"No, you're not obsessed with Batman, you're just obsessed with setting shit on fire," Null shouted at him, dropkicking open a pair of double-doors to get back outside, ducking his head just as Firefly passed over him, "And I'm not a hero! I just don't need you setting my city on fire. There's still so much I haven't stolen yet!"
Null had a problem. He had no flight capabilities. Sure, he was pretty fast on foot regardless, but Firefly had air superiority which put him in the better attack position by far. Null wasn't adept enough at his magnetic ability to hone in on any of Firefly's gear while he was moving so quickly, nor while he himself was busy dodging flames and minding where he led the fight. If he took them too close to a cache of chemicals, he and the rest of the downtown area could kiss their backsides goodbye.
Lifting his left hand, Null turned his magnetic powers on, sucking himself up into the air to grab onto the side of a metal tier, several stories off of the ground. Nimbly pulling himself over, he landed on his feet as Firefly slowed and stopped, standing on the exact same level as Null, the pilot light of his flamethrowers glowing ominously as they pointed right at the young thief.
"Tell me, before I burn the fabric of that hood to your head, are you scared yet?"
"Yep. Almost as scared as I am of the kid burning newspapers with a lighter behind the Gas N' Go. He's a real hardass, that one."
Not a fan of a teenager's snark, Firefly fired his flamethrowers. Null boosted himself at an angle, flinging himself forward over the jets of flame and allowing him to barrel into Firefly with a crushing punch to the face. Firefly stumbled back and tumbled over the railing, sending him spilling dozens of feet to the ground. He activated his jetpack, saving himself from going splat, but he unknowingly picked up a passenger in the form of Null, who finally had enough of an opening to aim with his magnetic abilities.
Unfortunately, Firefly's momentum had been too great for the strength Null currently had with the ability. He wasn't able to rip the jetpack off. He simply pulled himself over to it, as was what happened when he tried to attract things heavier than he could control. All he could do was saddle up and hold on for dear life as they careened through the skies of Gotham City.
Twisting, turning, and writhing, Firefly eventually managed to get Null off of his back and in front of him where he tried to pummel the boy and knock him off, "Let! Go! Brat!"
Null let Firefly hit him as many times as he needed to get what he wanted, which was to undo the harness that connected the man to his jetpack. "You hit like a girl!" They were in so close, the mad arsonist couldn't generate any real leverage in his punches to make them hurt, even if he had been any good at fist-fighting, "Actually, no! Every girl that's hit me did it way better than you!"
Angered at his remarks, Firefly grabbed one of his flamethrowers connected to his suit and aimed the nozzle in Null's face. Null quickly tucked the limb holding the flamethrower under his arm, causing Firefly to fire it safely behind him instead of at him. Keeping his grip, Null channeled the electricity in his body and played human taser, shocking Firefly.
Firefly's suit might have been flame retardant, but unfortunately for him it conducted electricity just like anything else.
Eventually Null ripped something loose and felt them both begin to fall as the wings of Firefly's outfit continued on, crashing into the side of a building with no one to direct their flight pattern. Null and Firefly both suffered a similar fate, each trying to use the other as a crash pad to cushion their impact.
Null grunted as he bounced off of the ground and away from Firefly. Lying down on his side, he found himself in a grassy field. From where their fight had started, they seemed to have landed in Robinson Park downtown, "I could think of worse things to land on than grass..."
Still, that had been some hard ground. It had been a lucky break that he hadn't injured anything or even killed himself from such a fall. Knocking the wings off of the only guy that could fly while fighting him in midair, not exactly his best idea ever, and he sure felt it.
Slowly getting up, Null started to look around for his dangerous adversary, only to see Firefly barely able to move, twitching on the ground and quietly wheezing. As Null limped over, he saw that Firefly was in too much pain to even keep a grip on either of his flamethrowers.
Null stomped down hard on Firefly's forearm, causing him to let go of the weapon entirely before setting his foot on his back, eliciting a harsher cry of pain than when he had unquestionably broken Firefly's arm not ten seconds prior. It took Null a moment to try and deduce what had happened.
When the crash had been coming up, Null had tucked himself and landed as safely as he could. He'd been taught how to take a fall for a reason, even one like that. Firefly on the other hand landed face down gracelessly. The tank had still been on his back when he had. That heavy thing had slammed right into his spine. More than likely, it had broken his back.
It served him right. Who celebrated their ill-gotten freedom by performing such an attention-grabbing crime like arson? There were far more subtle ways to thumb one's nose at the law right after you escaped. Ones that didn't put nearly as many lives in jeopardy.
"And let that be a lesson to you," Null said, rubbing salt into the wound. The crazy bastard had almost killed him at least twice and put who knew how many people in danger with his little firestarter stunt. A lot of them might have died, "Play with fire, err... get your back broken!"
XxX
From The Broker's files, Deathstroke had five different hideouts. One was in Gotham City, but that was likely clear of anything incriminating as it was the first place that Batman had put out the search for him after the theft.
"We don't know which one it is, and I don't think for a second that we'll be able to take them one at a time," If Deathstroke was the kind of man Batman thought he was, he would have had his safe havens covered, even when he wasn't there. That could have meant anything could be waiting; booby traps, hired muscle, or worse, "This way we can press on all fronts at once."
There was also still the chance that all of these places were vacant, but the locations covered a large portion of the American northeast. Even into Canada. Enough time hadn't passed from the time of the theft for Deathstroke to have made it out of the country, or even across it. After the Kryptonite situation became widely known, word was sent out to keep a close eye on suspicious travel. Not that it would have taken too terribly long for someone with his resources to make it out, it just would have taken longer than under a week.
The chances were very good that he could still be found at one of these places. If he wasn't and something went wrong, he would know and leave, so if they were going to make a move it had to be on everything at once.
Selina winced, her current understanding of the situation bearing down on her, "I don't like this."
The number one thing was that none of the Kryptonians could take part because of the standing threat of their most blatant and obvious weakness being present in large amounts, which put them at something of a loss. Superman had a problem with sitting it out, but realized despite that how impractical it could be to bring him directly into a setting where he could be neutralized by someone who would more than likely be ready for him.
Small teams would be sent to each location, with the express purpose of obtaining the Kryptonite and/or stopping Deathstroke before time ran out.
"I know you don't like this. I know," Batman told her, walking close "But I need you. You can pick which team you get to take. His too if it makes you feel any more secure about it."
It did, but not by much, "But I can't have Null with me," The pout was almost audible in her voice.
She tried to pass her actions off as protecting herself by keeping someone that she somewhat trusted close by, but it wasn't difficult to look through it and see that for some reason she thought she was the only one that would do something to protect Null.
Superman shook his head in the negative to her question, "We need one individual on each team to handle the actual infiltration and extraction while the others run interference if need be. Null is a thief by trade and he knows full well what he's looking for. He's more valuable in this than you would think," He said to her with a comforting smile.
In other words, he would not be left hanging.
"Oh, I know the kid is as good as gold," Selina pointed out, making sure that she had Batman's eye contact even though she was clearly speaking to Superman, "...Not everyone here seems to think so though."
Batman didn't bother answering, not that he got the chance, as his communicator went off, prompting him to take it up and answer it, "What is it?" The demeanor on his face changed as he turned, his cape whipping around with the motion as he went for the door, "This meeting is over."
Something was up, or at least it had been. Apparently, it had been handled already.
XxX
(With Null)
Null couldn't help but smile at the sight of Firefly being packed away into an ambulance and taken off. After getting medical attention, he'd be going right back to either Arkham or Blackgate depending on how his conviction and trial wound up turning out.
That sick jackass wouldn't even be walking straight anytime soon, let alone setting anything else on fire.
"Good," He said to himself, checking on the scene of the last extinguished fire before heading off on his own. It had been quite the excitement-filled night, but he didn't need the time to sit and process things the way he had to when he'd first started finding himself involved in these kinds of incidents.
In the end, all he did was win a fight against an arsonist with some top-notch gear. He didn't save anyone. Supergirl had done that. As he'd said out loud before, if it weren't for hero types, things like this would turn out far worse than they already had. He wouldn't have been able to do much to help with the rescue and the fire itself, but when a girl that could breathe with hurricane force, or cold enough to freeze things solid was around it was a moot point.
Speaking of the devil, Supergirl was able to locate Null not too long after he was able to slip away from all of the action, walking along the bank of the Gotham River. If he'd have actually been actively trying to lose her, he might have been able to, or he may have at least bought himself a few minutes, "Well, that's not the kind of time I was hoping to have in Gotham City," She said in greeting.
Null tilted his head up to see the Kryptonian girl flying up above him, "Sorry, but you can throw a rock up into the air and I'm pretty sure it'll land within ten feet of someone doing something messed up," As she landed, he noted that he'd gotten a pretty decent look at what was under that skirt, but wisely said nothing on the matter, "Good job handling those fires though. Did anyone get hurt?"
Supergirl looked down and away, not answering the question. With that kind of reaction, he didn't need to hear it anyway. With fires that bad, with three of them being set in separate areas, even someone like Supergirl would have had trouble safely putting them out and saving all of the people.
Not for the first time that night, Null was glad he'd broken Firefly's back like a twig.
Supergirl could feel a static feeling pick up around Null who had stopped to glare out at the water, "I should have shoved his flamethrower nozzle up his ass," She heard him mutter.
The vulgarity of that would-be threat didn't bother her whatsoever. It was a good thing that he was upset. It made her feel better. Not much, but some, "It could have been worse. If you hadn't gotten to him while I was helping with the fire, he could have done much worse."
Like blown up most of downtown Gotham City. But Firefly had failed in his bid to do just that. It wasn't worth bringing up, and Null didn't care about the props for stopping it, "Don't expect it to happen again. I just did it because it made me angry, thinking of somebody doing... that... just because they could."
It made him sick.
Seeing Null legitimately upset at the loss of life caused by another's callous actions was simply more ammunition for Supergirl's opinion of him to tilt in the positive, "But you see now? There's so much more you can do," She told him, "You're not as bad as you think you are."
It didn't compute with Null.
Because he helped people out of a burning building and stopped a violent crime? Not a chance. Something like arson wasn't the same thing as stealing. If you couldn't guard your own possessions, that was your own problem. You didn't have to hurt someone or leave them out of a home to get something out of that. Arson was just sick. It was meant to destroy. To harm.
Null would readily acknowledge that they were both crimes, they most certainly were not equal.
Firefly had done something horrible that pissed him off, and would have done something worse. It was happening right in front of him, and he had the power to stop it, so he did.
He honestly believed that a regular person would have done the exact same thing he did, given the same situation with the same capabilities that he now had. In his view, it didn't make him a good guy playing on the wrong side of the tracks. It didn't make him a miscast villain with a heart of gold.
"And what if I decided to take this and just go nuts like Firefly did?" That wasn't Null's only example either. Selina had told him enough stories to give him dozens of them. The enhanced teen wheeled around in a circle, gesturing to the city around them, "I come from the worst city in America. Born and raised. I'm just like all of them out there. I just have a cool suit. If I start thinking that I can do more, who's to say that the 'more' won't wind up being really bad?"
When people from Gotham City tended to find something that made them more than normal, it made them worse off for it. Power in a ruthless town, made you ruthless in turn. The spirit of this place was just dark. Null had noticed it when he'd left for New York. Everything felt better there, and he couldn't explain why.
Supergirl put a hand on Null's shoulder and stopped him, making him face her, "You being normal before all of this doesn't mean anything," Some of her best friends, some of the people she had come to trust greatly since arriving on Earth, they were normal people that came from Gotham City, "It just comes down to what you think is right and what you think is wrong, how much is too much, and what you're willing to do about it."
"Why are you harping on this anyway?"
Supergirl pursed her lips in thought, wondering how much she could tell him without letting something sensitive slip, "A friend of mine is really confused about what to make of you. At least when I talk to them again, I know what to tell them."
That Null was not some callous jerk who only cared about himself. He was confused. He wasn't aware of just how much he could really do, and only knew how to take care of his own interests first. That would change. It would change very soon as the fear that came with facing things beyond the norm became more common, and his confidence in dealing with them went up.
One day, whether it was within five weeks, five months, or five years, he would know just what spectacular things he could really be capable of. The only question was whether or not he would recognize that he could do these things on the right or the wrong side of the law.
"You're not bad. If someone needs you, I think they can trust you. I would."
She extended her hand for Null to take, and he found him reaching out with his own, eventually clasping it with hers. He couldn't take his eyes off of where her hand connected with his. Null slowly looked up from Supergirl's hand to her smiling face.
It was with great shock that he found his own lips twisted into a smile. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a completely pleasant interaction with... anyone. Not since his father died. Not even since his parents had begun to engross themselves in their private research that created his suit. It had been longer than he wanted to think about. In fact he'd made it a point to not think about it.
Everything would be better when he got the money to support himself. That was what he told himself. He would get everything else back in order once he'd secured a roof over his head. He'd done that, and with no need for that focus to be as intense any longer along with his own mortality looming over his head he had to think of some of the other things.
What kind of man was he shaping up to be? And even if he wanted to establish any kind of relationship, what was that going to be like? He had nothing in common with any of his peers in school any longer. He hadn't for quite some time. Not after all that he had entered into.
And then what of that part of his life? Who was he really going to turn to there? The criminals?
Rose Wilson might have been interesting, and they may have tolerated each other enough to speak cordially and tease each other, but he was not going to turn his back on that girl for the sake of his good health.
Selina Kyle was the closest thing to a mentor he had ever had, but the problems with that relationship had already been touched on.
What about the heroes? He'd pissed off a good number of them in his own hometown, deceived Wildcat (and oh, if he ever found out and got within arm's reach of Null again), handed a noted assassin the means to kill the most important hero that the world had ever known.
If he started trusting them, he still wouldn't ever be able to turn his back to them and feel safe about it. He couldn't rely on them, or anyone. The same as always.
A bitter frown crossed Null's face underneath his hood as he gently let go of Supergirl's hand. It seemed to almost pain him to let go of the proverbial olive branch, "Don't... don't do that," He said vaguely, much to Supergirl's confusion. Slowly, he started to back away, putting distance between the two of them, "Don't trust me."
Was what he said. But what went unsaid, what he really meant but just couldn't say out loud...
'Don't make me trust you.'
Because the last people he trusted, the ones he'd been born to, they had let him down, kept everything from him, and left him alone to pick up what was left of their mess without a word, all before he'd even been old enough to get his learner's permit. His parents. He loved them, but he resented what they'd left him.
From the very start of his adventure, that bled over into how he had taken every single encounter with another person since he'd thrown on the supersuit. That included this one. He legitimately liked Supergirl. She didn't irk him like Robin naturally did, and she hadn't dealt with enough of the criminal world's scum like Batgirl had to have a straightforward distaste for him just for being a thief.
The preconceived notion Supergirl had for him upon meeting him wasn't so negative that he couldn't shed it within two hours of making her acquaintance, just by being himself and showing that he wasn't some malevolent presence. It was unfortunate he wasn't man enough in his own mind to accept the positive that came with such a thing. Maybe he should have tried acting like an asshole? Then this wouldn't have been a thing for him to confront about himself.
Supergirl didn't follow him, watching as he got far enough to start taking to the rooftops, making his way elsewhere. As he left, either he didn't know that she had super hearing, or didn't know how potent it was, because she caught words that were meant for himself on the wind as he departed.
"I'm a friggin' coward."
Supergirl didn't want to make him think so deeply, she just realized what kind of person he was and wanted to share it. She wanted to go after him, but doing so would have turned him onto her inadvertent eavesdropping, "...I don't think you're a coward."
Noticing something else, she looked off in the distance up near the tops of Gotham City's sizable skyscrapers and found two of the very important adults in her life apparently having caught the tail-end of her little encounter with the adolescent thief.
XxX
From farther away than Null could have ever possibly seen with the naked eye, Superman and Batman looked down on the interaction between hero and outlaw.
Superman was proud of his cousin's effort. She had done all she could to save lives, as quickly as possible, and Null had been a pleasant surprise. Supergirl didn't even have to twist his arm to get him to do something about it to help, and he didn't do a bad job at taking Firefly down without destroying anything else, "They didn't do too badly."
Batman could agree with that. He'd gotten word that his younger wards were out combing the city for Firefly while the meeting had been going on, but no one had expected him to try and destroy anything so soon after escaping imprisonment, "No, they didn't."
If Null hadn't taken it upon himself to take out Firefly, it would have taken longer to get to him. From where he was found, that could have ended horrifically for everyone. If Supergirl hadn't been brought by Superman to try and get more of an unbiased reading on what they were dealing with when it came to the former, many, many more people would have died in the three fires that had been set.
Null may have been cleared when it came to Kara Zor-El, but he had not been screened by Batman yet. All he ever had to go on was what others had told him, and the boy kept coming up. He was compelled to form an opinion of his own that wasn't based off of the opinions of others, be it positive, negative, or neutral.
As Null left without Supergirl following him, Batman made to go after him. He wanted to face him in-person now, when the opportunity was present to find him. He would have been able to, had Superman not rested a hand on his shoulder, keeping him from going very far, "What are you doing?"
"You can do that later if you still feel the need," Superman reasoned with him as to why confronting Null could wait, "There's going to be enough on everyone's plate over the next few days without adding this along to it for him. He's not going anywhere."
He had heard the last conversation between Supergirl and Null as well without meaning to. Null had issues to work out and he was certain that the young man knew it himself. Having a surprise drop-in from Batman to put the fear in him that only Bruce Wayne could at such a moment wouldn't help his trust issues whatsoever.
The kid stopped Firefly before he could light half of Gotham City up in one fell swoop and he was going to do his part in cleaning up his own mess, so this one time he could be given a pass, mostly because of Superman's presence and influence, but it was still Batman's final decision to leave him alone, "Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if you weren't so soft."
Superman just laughed at the 'soft' remark. He got that quite often. It wasn't nearly as accurate as his regular demeanor would have said it was. He didn't see the way he treated people as soft, "Everyone makes mistakes, and he's a kid. Kids make more mistakes," The blue-clad powerhouse said, "Super-powered kids make super-mistakes."
And mistakes by themselves didn't make someone a bad person. In some cases, they could make someone that much better, because they could and oftentimes would learn from them.