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Michael (Slade Wilson), Cindy, and the three non-combatants moved through the shadows, with Barbara clutching her laptop, Vicki holding her microphone, and Pete, pale-faced, stumbling along behind them with the camera, looking like a zombie in the rain-soaked night.
Michael sensed trouble. It felt like a grim foreshadowing, as though when they finally breached the underground lab, they would unleash a horde of flesh-eating monsters.
Pulling out his twin blades, Michael sliced through the chain-link fence, sparks briefly igniting in the rain as he cut an X-shape into the wire. He bent the metal back, creating an opening large enough for Barbara's wheelchair to pass through and carefully lifted her over.
Barbara gave him a nervous smile before her attention snapped back to the pitch-black surroundings.
The junkyard was a graveyard for cars, their hollowed-out shells stripped of engines, spark plugs, and batteries—anything of value. The cars were discarded like corpses, piled into small mountains, their silhouettes looming over them in the darkness, making every direction look the same.
None of them—Barbara, Vicki, or Pete—had ever ventured to such a desolate place in the dead of night.
Every Gothamite knew what lurked in the darkness, whether they sought it out or avoided it like the plague.
Michael, ever vigilant, felt eyes on him. Glancing upward, he spotted a homeless woman in one of the empty car husks, watching them from the vacant window frame where glass once was.
He would have dismissed her, but then she started making a strange sound.
"Hoo… hoo…"
Bang!
Without hesitation, Michael raised his gun and fired. The shot startled the others—Barbara, Vicki, and Pete stared at him in shock. Was this the true face of a mercenary on a mission? Killing without warning?
But what stunned them more was that the shot missed.
The woman, in an almost impossible display of agility, bent her body in a way no normal human could, her head snapping down like a bird retracting its neck, avoiding the bullet by a hair. When she reemerged from the car, the homeless disguise was gone. In her place stood a masked figure with round, owl-like goggles.
She moved swiftly, jumping onto the roof of the car, dressed in a black, tight-fitting leather outfit adorned with gold embellishments and lace trim. Her attire resembled that of an aristocrat from a bygone era, but with a sinister, modern edge. The mask on her face, with large round lenses, made her look like a predator—a hunting owl perched and watching its prey.
"Watch them," Michael ordered Cindy as he pulled out his twin blades and leaped onto the nearest pile of wrecked cars, positioning himself to face the assassin.
"I always thought they were just a myth," Cindy muttered, drawing her own weapon as she took her place in front of the group. "Looks like you were right—Gotham hides too many secrets."
Vicki, ever the reporter, wasn't about to let such an opportunity slip by. She directed Pete to hold an umbrella over her and the camera, pulling out her notebook to record every detail.
"Cindy, do you know who that masked figure is? Can you tell us more about her?" Vicki asked, her tone excited.
Cindy shot her a glance, knowing Vicki was far from an ordinary citizen. However, in this world, Vicki was just another overly curious reporter—one whose recklessness would likely get her killed.
"Listen, all you need to know is she's a killer from one of Gotham's oldest secret organizations. If you dig too deep into them, you won't live long enough to regret it."
"Doesn't matter," Vicki said, her voice rising with excitement. "I'm a journalist. It's my job to uncover the truth. Tell me more—tell the people what's really going on!"
Cindy shook her head, unsure if she was agreeing or just resigning herself to the inevitable. She began reciting a nursery rhyme, one that was whispered across Gotham's streets decades ago, spoken in fear by children:
"Beware the Court of Owls,
That watches all the time.
Ruling Gotham from the shadows,
Behind granite and lime.
They watch you at your hearth,
They watch you in your bed.
Speak not a whispered word of them,
Or they'll send the Talon for your head."
Vicki froze for a moment, recognizing the weight of the words. Her reporter's instincts flared—she would need to dig into Gotham's history. There was something ancient and dangerous about this.
Michael had acted the moment he heard the eerie hooting. In Gotham, the home of the Bat, hearing the call of an owl, especially on a stormy night, meant something was wrong.
This woman was no mere homeless person. She was a Talon, one of the deadly assassins of the Court of Owls.
Even before Michael had transmigrated into Slade Wilson's body, the mystery of the Court of Owls had never been fully revealed in the DC Comics he had read. The Court was an ancient, secret organization formed by Gotham's oldest families, manipulating the city from the shadows.
Its members wore white owl masks and identified themselves with a unique ring, marked with their insignia.
The Talons were their assassins—trained killers tasked with eliminating anyone who threatened the Court's power.
Before Gotham's crime families took control, and even before the Four Families, Gotham had experienced a brief period where the Court of Owls ruled from the shadows. However, internal power struggles had weakened them, leaving a void that Falcone and others had exploited to seize power.
Perhaps Batwoman or Falcone would have more concrete information about the Court. But Michael, with his knowledge of an alternate universe, knew the darkest truths.
The Court's roots ran deeper—far deeper. They dated back to humanity's earliest days, to the times of ancient tribes like the Bird Tribe, the Wolf Tribe, the Bear Tribe, and the Bat Tribe—tribes that formed the foundation of European civilization in the DC Universe.
The Batwoman of Gotham was descended from the Bat Tribe, while the Court of Owls came from the Bird Tribe.
But the most critical secret was that the Court of Owls was merely a tool of the dark god Barbatos, the bat deity of the Dark Multiverse. Their members were brainwashed by their high priest, the Strigidae, and swore eternal loyalty to Barbatos.
In their minds, Barbatos was the one true god—the dark dragon of the multiverse, and they were his loyal followers.
The problem? Barbatos didn't care about his followers. He merely used them as pawns in his grand game, tools to open the way to the light and plunge the multiverse into darkness.
For Michael, that wasn't a reason to relax. If a Talon was here, the Court of Owls would soon learn everything. And once the Court knew, Barbatos would follow.
At that point, things would spiral out of control at a terrifying pace.
Michael had to kill this Talon now. Delay the Court's knowledge. Delay Barbatos's inevitable intervention.
He couldn't let her escape.
"You handle them," Michael called to Cindy before leaping forward, his twin blades glinting in the rain as he charged the deadly assassin, knowing full well the dangerous game they were now playing.