Catch-as-Cat Can   By Maid Joy

A thesis on metahuman abilites lands the author in trouble with the Green Lantern Corps. When thinking up a way to copy metahuman abilities can have a lot of long reaching consequences, who caves and who stands righteously?   Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. The first attempt to write in this universe, this is allied with Lilith Langtree's series. This is a retcon of the story of Catwoman and her origins. Detective Comics owns the character of Catwoman, and Lilith owns the copyright to American Dream and Jade of the Green Lantern Corps. The pic credit is J. Scott Campbell.

Professor Steven Kyle looked out at his students and wondered how many theses he was going to have to read on “Building a Better Bridge” or “Redesigning the Circuit Board”. It is not as if this batch of students were going to come up with anything new in those fields, anything that could have been thought up had already been. Smaller, lighter, suspension, cross braces and more had been designed and were in full implementation. There were only so many ways to hang a deck off a pillar to span empty space.

The challenges of the past, the real glory was long gone. Iconic structures like the Golden Gate, the Brooklyn Bridge, or Hoover Damn, would never come again. The minuscule, the ordinary, that was the arena to utilize their skills.

Most students decided to focus on the little stuff. Microcircuits, silicon wafers and electron microscopes were the items where there was room to grow now. Engineering had certainly gone downhill since the middle of the 20th Century.

“Don't forget, today is the deadline for your Master's Thesis title and for you to choose your faculty advisor. You've had the sheets for about a week now, you should have made your first, second, and third choices you hope will agree to mentor you. Terry is over near the door to collect the completed sheets.”

The bell rang soon after that announcement signaling the end of the class period. He saw Terry Franks, his research assistant, waiting to collect the sheets.

“Professor Kyle,” came a tentative query. Stephen looked at the speaker, Jon Cho, one of the shining students in his Advanced Engineering 305. Stephen knew that Jon would be a name in the years to come as well.

“Yes, Jon, what can I help you with?”

“Professor, I know that you said that you didn't want all of us putting you down as our faculty advisor for the thesis, but I really can't think of anyone else to help me with this. If you could advise me as to whom I should request, I would really appreciate the help.”

Stephen thought for a second. “Let me see your title and we can go from there.” Class was emptying fast around them as Jon pulled out the sheet he needed. Stephen scanned down it fast until he got to the title; “Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology”.

Stephen stared at the title for a few seconds in silence. “Jon, what prompted you to write a thesis on this subject?”

For once, Jon seemed nervous. “Well, sir, with the emergence of the metahumans in America, and the sudden appearance of “The Samurai” in Tokyo, I started wondering if the powers could be duplicated for those of us who do not have the metahuman gene, and that led to my thinking of this topic. It seems to me that if reports are accurate and only about 6000 people worldwide are going to have these powers, it ought to be possible to use technology to give the normal humans the same powers, if only on a shorter time frame.”

Stephen thought about it. This was a ground-breaking field and he was unaware of any other research in the field. This could be a field of discovery of epic proportions, and it could make Jon's career, and his too if he was careful.

“Jon, I'll go ahead and be your faculty advisor on this. Don't worry about putting any other people on your wish list. I'll do it.”

Jon's reaction was what Stephen would call typical for one of the stoic Japanese. He bowed from the waist and simply said “Thank you Professor.” He took back the sheet, wrote Stephen’s name in the proper blank space, and handed it to the RA as he left.

Maybe this school year wouldn't be so terrible.

Class continued as it had done all the years before. Stephen could almost teach the classes in his sleep. It was the same material that he had taught repeatedly, and it took very little of his concentration to present the same information.

It was after class, in the hours he was in his lab, which consumed his time now. Jon had an absolutely brilliant thesis topic and Stephen was rapidly becoming almost as consumed in researching it as Jon was. They spent time searching on the Internet, looking at old magazines and articles in the professional journals, finding how technology could be used to mimic powers of the metahumans.

Flight was relatively easy, just use the magnetic field of the Earth. If they could create a set of magnets that could overcome gravity without creating too great a weight ratio, and you could skate along the waves of the field, instant flying, without flying out of the Earth’s gravity well they both hoped.

Invulnerability was a bit trickier, although the advances in Spider Silk impact armor were impressive. Telepathy was simply another form of radio communication; sensory enhancements were also simply combining a lot of existent tech into one form.

The problem came when trying to miniaturize this tech and fit it onto a person. A magnetic field generator could be made to repel a person from the Earth and to move along the magnetic field, but it would take a pair of electromagnets the size of manhole covers to do so. When you add in the required power source to generate the electricity to make the magnetic field, it wasn't practical anymore to mount it on a person.

The problem with duration effect time was immense. You could rig up a system that sprayed liquid oxygen and formed sheets of ice, instantly cooling things and making them fragile just as a few superheroes could do, but you couldn't physically carry enough LOX in a tank to make it practical for sustained bursts as shown in the comics. You might be able to find a substance that was ultra cold when in liquid form, colder than liquid Nitrogen even, and use very short bursts to generate the same effects, but then you might have the problem of the equipment containing and spraying that substance not being able to handle the ultra-cold either.

Stephen couldn't even begin to imagine the amount of technology needed to actually assemble chains of atoms and molecules together instantaneously to create physical items as demonstrated by the recent super heroine Jade. Sure, there were super sophisticated computers that could take raw materials and from that create finished objects of very complex molecules, but, once again, that took huge resources and massive amounts of time to get very small amounts of finished products.

It was just the kind of challenges that two engineers could relish tackling.

Stephen let Jon do most of the slogging through the available research regarding the tech. This was, after all, his Master's Thesis. Stephen would content himself with taking the research to the next level. He would work on the practical application of Jon's theory, to make dreams into reality and give a normal human the powers Jon had researched so well.

His lab seemed to develop into a mad scientist's laboratory. I guess that's actually a fair statement, I'm a scientist and this is my lab. Whether or not I'm mad, I'll leave to others to decide.

More and more items were appearing on benches, super miniaturized tools, high powered magnification devices, plastics and rocks and exotic minerals were slowly being shuffled into all in their proper places yet not so well organized that someone could casually deduce their purpose. He was still trying to keep this a secret from everyone else.

He kept his own notes in code that he had been writing in for some time. It was a simple substitution cipher, offsetting the alphabet by one vowel, so that A became E, B became F, C became G and so on. He had been writing like this for so long that he no longer needed to have the chart on which letter went where. His fluency with this script was nearly as fast as it was using regular English. He knew that it wasn't secure, but it would keep someone from reading what it was by glancing at the page. Like door locks, it kept honest people honest.

He made note of all the powers that were apparent in the current population of metahumans and what might be usable substitutions for those powers, no matter how outrageous. Then he noted the powers that many comic books showed their superheroes having. It was interesting that so far, it looked like several of the metahumans stepped right out of the comics, powers, vulnerabilities and all.

In one of their frequent discussions regarding the progress of Jon’s thesis, they agreed that it might be more practical for Jon to focus his efforts on one set of powers and theoretically replicate them. The narrowing of the focus led to the decision to attempt proof that replicating enhanced senses through technology currently available. Even that limitation left a lot of room to research.

It took time, it took computing power, it took looking in a lot of obscure places and web-conferencing with of other specialists, but eventually the thesis began to come together. Jon was thrilled and Stephen was pleased with it as well.

Jon needed to print out the first draft of the thesis to give to the second reader, for another independent opinion of the work. He was still a good five weeks under the deadline of when that needed to be in the hands of new reader, so Jon was thrilled. Jon went to the print shop in the bowels of the college and printed up three copies of the document (all 100+ pages) on the new digital printer.

Once they were printed and bound, Stephen received his copy, solemnly shook hands with Jon agreeing to meet in three days.

That's when the trouble started.

Stephen took his copy of the thesis home and went through it with a fine toothed comb. He read through it and carefully examined each section meticulously for mistakes and inaccuracies. He opened up his own database of information on his laptop to double check all his information finally deciding it was as good as they could make it. It was all Jon's work; Stephen had simply suggested several areas of exploration when Jon got lost.

Stephen was just about to close everything down and go to bed, when suddenly there was a girl in green and black standing in his study.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Calm yourself Steven Kyle. I am not here to injure you. However, you do have some information of interest to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your student in Master's Studies, Jon Cho, has written a thesis on the use of technology to mimic metahuman powers. Having seen the completed paper, I have determined it is too far in advance of the current level of technology on Earth and needs to be expunged.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“I have a very advanced supercomputer which went through the available information on the Internet. I had it mark several publications and articles as ‘potential to be abused’. Your student accessed 18 of them in one 24 hour period. When my computer informed me of this, I decided to investigate.”

“Your that new metahuman, Jade or whatever. Why would you come here looking for and expecting to take my student's thesis?”

She sat down on one of his chairs. “As you have surmised, I am Jade of the Green Lantern Corps. It is my duty to protect this planet from threats, both natural and man-made. I have examined the research that you and your student have been doing and decided that the trend represented by this research is dangerous to you and other humans, as well as being far in advance of what you should be capable of at this time in history. I'm concerned that there might be some contamination from alien cultures, but that doesn't concern you. What does concern you is the information you have on your desk right now.”

Stephen thought quickly. There was one copy of the thesis on his desk, and Jon had two more. If Jade wanted to get this information out of here, then those three documents would have to disappear.

“What about Jon's thesis? This is for his Master's of Engineering Degree and I don't think he will be too pleased that three months worth of work and research is being taken by someone in green tights, no matter how much of a threat it looks like to them.”

“That's true, and I have already talked to Jon about this. He has agreed to turn over all this information to me.”

“He has? How do I know that?”

She raised her hand and soon the air was filled with the sound of Jon's voice. “I, Jon Cho, voluntarily surrender all my research, notes and thesis entitled Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology to Jade of the Green Lantern Corps. I have been informed that compiling this information in one place could constitute a threat to this planet if it fell into the wrong hands. I further promise that I shall not pursue this research line for the period of at least two decades.”

Stephen was skeptical. “I don't know what you think you are pulling, but that's not going to convince me. He's worked too hard and too long to have someone come along and just decide that it's too dangerous. I won't give it to you.”

Jade sighed. “Call your student up on his cell phone. You have his number. Ask him yourself. This is his paper, not yours. If he surrenders it to me, you have no right to keep it.”

Stephen pulled out his cell phone and called Jon. Shockingly, he had surrendered all rights to his discoveries.

“Jon, what were you thinking? This is censorship, as bad as anything done in Nazi Germany during World War II.”

“Professor Kyle, I do understand that. However, Jade explained what kind of consequences this paper could have. She asked me to imagine what might happen if someone who didn't care about anything but power decided to make and actually use the tech I've been writing about. That person could use it all to become super powered and be a real threat to not only regular humans, but to the metahumans as well. They could start doing things that could cause all kinds of problems. I don't want that on my conscience. If someone else comes up with this same tech, fine, let them be the one who opened Pandora's Box, but I won't do it.”

He tried to talk Jon out of his decision. In the ten minutes they spoke, Stephen worked to get him to change his mind, but it was no use. Jon had made up his mind and there wasn't anything else to say. Yet Stephen was concerned by the robotic tones and inflections of Jon’s speech.

At least there are other copies of the thesis. It won't all be gone. “Fine, take it.” He held out the printed copy of the thesis.

Jade stood. “Thank you. I appreciate your cooperation in this matter. You've made the right decision and the world is safer because of this.”

Stephen smiled. “Well, you are right, it's not really my decision.”

Jade nodded. She took the document and slowly faded from view.

Stephen smiled and opened up his laptop. There, on the desktop, Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology. Stephen smiled and opened up the document.

The only thing in the document was “Erased by the authority of the Green Lantern Corps.”

Stephen tried for two hours, every way he could think of to restore the data. He tried the backups of the information, even the CDs that had been burned were ruined. He tried the USB keys that they had used, and those were corrupted and erased as well.

Fearing the worst, he grabbed his jacket and headed to the college.

He stood in the ruins of his lab, although most people wouldn't call his lab “ruined”. In fact, the cleaning crew might say that it was looking much better.

All the metahuman projects were gone. The experiments had just vanished. The notes were piles of tree pulp, his documents and instructions were gone as well. All his careful work was gone. None of the other experiments were affected, just the ones that were based on Jon's research.

He spent two full minutes cursing.

He checked his office computer. It would probably have copies of the documents. Once again, when he booted the computer up, those were gone. He then verified the College network backups weren’t any more. In desperation, he took a chance, grabbed all of the other USB keys, and checked each one methodically. They were empty as well.

Damn it, that bitch is thorough. When she decides to get rid of something, she doesn't screw around. He tried to think of other options. If she removed the documents off the hard-drives, she probably would go through the trouble to remove them totally, but I can't be sure. Let me get some utilities to work on this tomorrow.

Mad as a wet rooster, he went home and went looking for hard drive recovery tools. There were a lot out there, and he picked a couple to try out.

Since he couldn't sleep, he spent the rest of the night trying out the computer tools on his home system. Steve was hoping to see if he could recover the deleted data. It was hopeless from the beginning. He tried every way to recover it given the tools he had, but he still couldn't restore the data. He supposed that it was conceivable that the NSA had some tools that could read sectors next to the data track and still find the document, but those kinds of tools were out of his reach.

He went in to the college to be there for his standard office hours and tried it all on that system, with the same results. The data wasn’t just gone; it was like it had never existed. He called down to the technicians who maintained the servers and asked them to look in the backup tapes to see if it was still on them, but when they responded to him, those copies were gone too. One tech accused him of trying to pull a fast one on the staff.

Disgusted with himself for caving in so quickly, he took a long shot and talked to some of the computer geeks to see if they had any suggestions.

The one suggestion they could come up with was to look in the “print spool” folder to see if it remained. He understood that when the computer started formatting the document to print it, it had to put it into that spool folder in preparation for sending it to the printer. It was possible that it might have been overlooked.

Soon he was in the printing shop looking at the computer that was used to send requests to the digital printer. The story was similar to the same that he had lived with all the other copies. They were just gone.

His last possible hope so that he could honestly tell himself everything had been tried, was going to the digital printer and seeing if it was still in memory. The moment he got near the machine, a tech stopped him. His name plate read Phillips and he addressed Stephen, “I’m sorry sir, but no one is allowed to touch the printer’s setting. May I help you instead?” Stephen’s temper was a hair short of boiling over. Teeth gritted he explained, “I just want to see the print queue for the last 3 hours yesterday. Could you let me at least look over your shoulder while you scroll through it?” Baring his teeth in an attempt to smile made the tech gulp and step back a pace. “Uh, sure, sure no problem Professor!” Steve watched the print queue like a hawk as the orders started scrolling backward.

His heart skipped a beat as he saw the entry from yesterday at 20:44:18. He ordered, “Stop!” Print that one!” Phillips face paled and he jumped at the Roaring in his ears. A few taps of the keys and sure enough, the first page came out saying “Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology”. Stephen couldn't believe it and watched avidly as page after page appeared from oblivion until the entire document was back in his hands.

Not trusting things to chance, he pulled out a flash drive he kept on himself, and asked the kid to copy the entry just printed to that USB key. It took a few moments, but finally he had another digital copy in his possession. His heart pounding Stephen thought he smiled gratefully at Phillips but the tech only seemed more terrified and backed away slowly.

Stephen’s first order of business when he got back to his office was disconnecting his computer from the network. Next was making several copies of the document and the file, and planning where he’d hide them. One set would go in his safety deposit box at the bank, another copy locked in his safe at home. He was not going to put them back on any computer that had network access. He reasoned that Jade was probably monitoring his system somehow and would see that he had recovered the data.

Now that he had the data back, wanted to ensure discovery would be virtually impossible. He used the 128 bit code then encrypted the digital copy several times using different algorithms to make sure it was obscured. No more simple substitution cipher to take his notes in, he was going to make sure that this information was protected.

Shortly thereafter, he held a brand new netbook he was dedicating solely to this project and nothing else. It was not going to be hooked up to any other computer. He had the people at the computer store go in and disable the wireless network adapter and the infrared adapter as well. He wanted this to be completely isolated.

He was going to keep this information if it killed him.

Months of paranoia really wears on a person. It was nearly over. He only had a few more components to put together and he would be done with the ultimate non-government stealth suit.

He had been existing on four hours of sleep a night. His nutritional health had gone to hell. He was worried about being poisoned or drugged, so he began eating like he was a starving college student again. Never going to any market on a regular basis, buying only what he would eat that day and picking canned food from the back of the shelf instead of what was presented on the front. He made his own meals from raw components and didn't trust that the fast food joints hadn't be compromised. As such, he tended to opt for simple meals like sandwiches or soup.

He had lost nearly 60 lbs of middle-aged flab and his muscle mass began their transformation with the loss of nutrients; he was emaciated now instead of overweight and flabby.

He existed only for this project now. His research assistant was teaching most of his classes and doing all of the work grading papers. His only participation had been things he couldn't foist off on others. He nearly lived in his lab.

He had entirely eschewed using the computer for communications or research. No more emails to colleagues, he sent them letters through the postal system. It forced him to go slower, but he was able to take some time and really think of problems and their solutions.

Everyone had noticed a change. A few people even dropped by to make sure he was alright and to check that he was still among the living. He grudgingly did the minimum necessary to participate in life and grumbled about every “wasted” moment.

He finished putting the pads on the foot and then sealed it with the titanium screws, and that was it. It was a work of art.

Dark as the night, it actually absorbed light directed at it. It had no reflective surfaces anywhere on it and could blend into almost any background with subtle shifts in the surface coloration. He had discovered in the process of making the suit that while true black didn't blend very well with shadows, a very dark gray did blend in well. So the color 95% gray that would shift chromatically in areas to make the camouflage even better, varying between 92% and 99.8% gray. Not enough of a shift to be noticed, and more than enough to blend into the background.

Just under the surface, the second layer of the suit was spider silk woven as a very fine mesh. Yet it was strong enough to stop a 50 cal bullet, he’d tested it himself. The bullet wouldn't penetrate the final layer, but it couldn't stop all the impact. The final layer was his own design to help dissipate the force of the bullet (since he didn't relish the idea of having broken bones again). It was a material similar to Lycra in function, but very different in manufacture. It was a springy inner surface that channeled force directed at it away from itself and around a large surface area, letting a bullet that struck the surface dissipate its force in a one square meter area, totally negating the impact.

The goggles were made of polymers that could stop a bullet as well, but their function was to act as low light vision goggles. Using technology like the low light vision use by the military, he had managed to miniaturize the lens that gathered the light in and turn the area where it was enhanced from a TV tube into an LCD screen, making it much thinner, lighter and more efficient. They looked a bit strange, almost like a set of horned rim glasses, but they were effective in their function.

He had added small fingertip spikes to the gloves intended to allow for climbing on most surfaces. This design was one of his proudest accomplishments of the whole suit, allowing the wearer to literally poke their fingertips into a crack, where the ends of claws would expand on a molecular level, making them instant chocks to hold on the cracks and give a sure grip to allow for climbing. The boots had a similar set up, allowing for a sure footing no matter the surface. A simple push and tug would make the chocks retract and then you could move to another area. Free climbers the world over would be wild to get this technology.

He had added shotgun mikes to the suit; unfortunately, they looked like cat's ears. He couldn't figure how to make the parabolic dish that collected sound look like anything but a huge satellite dish on the head, and this was the best he could do instead. Thankfully, they could be swiveled or flattened out in different directions to gather the sounds the wearer wanted.

Balance was going to be very important to the wearer of this suit. Taking inspiration from the cheetah who could run at faster than human speeds, and also make turns very quickly using its tail as a counterbalance, he created a similar system. At will a tail could grow out just above the highest point on the backside and extend from the lower back all the way to the ground. Articulated, it acted as a gyroscopic counterbalance, allowing the wearer to maintain stability no matter the surface.

Finally there was the climbing aid. There would be times when it would be very hard to get from one area to another without a rope, so he added a thin strong whip-like rope that could be used to swing on, or to pull the user from one area to another with the flick of a switch. He used the principles of diminishing force and made it tapered down its length, so that swinging force from the hand would multiply down the length of the whip, until the tip could move faster than the speed of sound. Microscopic spikes on the very tip similar to the gloves and boots would allow a Velcro-like adhesion to a surface it hit or to itself if it wrapped around something. With the micro-chocks in the gloves, a solid connection to the handle was assured.

There was a host of minor improvements as well. A wide-band micro-circuitry radio scanner and transmitter, a set of high absorption gel pads in the shoes, on the knees, hips, elbows, shoulders and buttocks would allow for silence when moving and force dissipation of impacts from climbing and falling. It masked the entire face except the eyes. The goggles, keeping the flesh from being seen, handled them.

The control unit was a set of EEG contacts on the back of the neck, the jaw, and the forehead. He followed a lead in the prosthetics industry. Prosthetics used nerve impulses to control servos in hands, but he had improved on that design. When he unconsciously thought of moving, hearing, smelling in the suit the impulse would be intercepted by the contacts and translated into action. All someone had to do was wear it.

He couldn't wait anymore; he had to give it a test. Quickly he stripped down to skin and pulled the suit on. He carefully pulled it up, making sure things where they should be. He slid his arms into the sleeves and pulled the hood up and over his head careful to settle the goggles over his eyes. He then zipped up the closure and activated everything.

The goggles sprang to life and gave him information on the built in HUD, telling him the status of the suit, power remaining and other self-diagnostics. He looked at himself in the mirror in his office and had a shock.

Standing there was a woman who looked like a cat, except for the lack of breasts. He turned this way and that, with his genitalia hidden by a shield which protected them, his crotch looked smooth and without a bump. With the padding on his hips and buttocks and his own emaciated state, the resemblance was uncanny.

He grinned and decided to make the illusion complete. He took some of the remaining padding gel and fashioned breasts and slid them into the suit, securing them to the suit with some duct tape. He could add them permanently later.

Finally, he re-zipped the suit and looked at the reflection again. With the suit closed up completely, he did look like a catwoman. He extended the tail, picked up the whip, and smiled.

The world needed to look out now.

He stepped over to the computers and placed his left pinkie fingernail into the USB port and completed an uplink to the computer, then made sure that the contents that he had been using were totally encrypted again, carefully hid the journals he had been using and then hid the netbook. He wrapped the whip around his waist then climbed out the window. It was time for a full systems test.

She spent several hours testing out the climbing abilities of the suit, from the adhesion to the walls and climbing up sheer building fronts to the swinging with the whip, her balance on wires with the tail extended and retracted and more.

She discovered that the material to dissipate the force of a bullet in the suit helped her in other ways. As they acted as a supplementary musculature for any athletic feats she decided to undertake. Scaling a 45 story building using only her hands and feet to climb was not a chore of hours, only 15 minutes. She found that she had a vertical speed of nearly 10 miles per hour if she exerted herself. It was incredible.

She tried jumping from various heights to test the shock absorption of the pads. Soon she realized that a fall of 30 or 40 feet was no problem as long as she landed on her feet and knees. The padding absorbed most of the shock, and the third suit layer dissipated the rest. It was incredible.

She tested the stealth capability of the suit as well. She tried climbing while being visible in some heavily trafficked areas like Main Street, and no one noticed her hanging on the side of the building. She climbed up to a billboard people would look at as they drove through the city, and there were no calls on the police band saying someone was going to jump off that billboard. She knew several drivers saw her, or at least a section of shadow on the billboard, even if they didn't realize that the shape was human.

Mistakes were still made. That's only natural when testing something new. Acrobatic stunts she tried sometimes went wrong, not because she couldn't do them, but simply because the suit had her overcompensating due to the enhancements. Spectacular smashes on her face once or twice taught her that gymnastics would have to be learned or programmed into the suit.

But for the first test of a set of new technology, she was very pleased with what had been done. Too bad Jon would never know what his brilliance had been parent to.

On the way back to her lab, she spent her time walking and crawling along the power lines, to practice balance and slack-rope walking. She was extremely careful to touch only one line at a time. Power lines were like the third rail in a subway. You could touch one, but touch two simultaneously and you were dead.

She was passing the gem district and saw a flash of light inside one of the closed stores. Her curiosity peaked so she decided to investigate.

It was only a few moments until she was looking in one of the windows. She saw three people with flashlights in a very large showroom of Chaney Brothers. They were very obviously robbing the place.

She couldn't see how they got in from the ground level, so she scaled the wall to the roof and made her way around to the skylight they had been wired to not set off the alarm. Instead of just pulling the wires and letting the silent alarm sound and summon the cops, instead she followed them in, carefully scaling the wall without touching their equipment.

Finally, she was in a gallery above them, looking down at their slow and careful attempts to open the display cases. She watched for a little while, not trying to hide from them at all. She just lounged with her elbow on the railing, ankles crossed and observing what they did and how they did it. With a thought, she increased the magnification of her goggles so she could see them very clearly.

They were using old tech, lock picks and electronic combination crackers. There was a large tangle of wires where they had bypassed the various alarm systems on the cases themselves.

She waited for about five minutes, long enough to see them actually get the case open and empty it, and then she sighed loudly.

She was very gratified to watch as they started and then looked around to find who had made that noise. She simply stood there, waiting to be discovered. While the flashlight had played across her a couple times, they never seemed to see her. Well, chalk up one for the stealth properties of this suit, apparently they work beautifully.

She sighed again, louder and smiled when they looked near panic. “You boys sure to take your time. What's the hold up?”

Finally they spotted her as she jumped down from the gallery into the store itself. They pulled out guns and pointed them at her. The computer wired into the suit identified them as snub-nosed .38 pistols. Smart, take the shell casings with them, and six bullets are about all they should reasonably need.

She sauntered over to the nearest, exaggerating the wiggle in her hips as she did so. The tail moved smoothly behind her, going opposite of how she moved her hips, looking like it was alive. She smiled sweetly to the guy who had his gun on her and reached out with one claw, touched the hammer portion of the pistol, and had the micro-chocks go into the microscopic cracks and then expand to break the firing pin off the hammer, rendering it useless.

He seemed mesmerized by her actions, he didn't make any attempt to stop her or even move out of the way. “So,” she purred, “are you going to give me some of this, or are you going to risk discovery by shooting me and leaving me for dead?”

One of his partners, much brighter than the others, decided for them. He pulled the trigger.

A small explosion momentarily deafened her (Automatic noise level cutout, have to remember to add that.) and she felt the bullet slam into her liver area. It would have been a fatal shot, but the force just threw her into the guy in front of her, knocking him down.

She went down on top of him, shoving his head into the floor to ensure that he was out cold. Then she waited for the smart-guy to come up to her to make sure she was dead.

She couldn't hear him coming with her ears ringing as they were, but she could feel the vibrations of his tread on the floor through her hands. She waited until he stopped near her, making a guess as to his exact position, and her hand lashed out, grabbing his ankle and pulling, hard.

Once again, she had mis-judged her own strength, for she pulled him totally off his feet and slung him over herself and into the case on her opposite side. He hit with a solid thud that said he wouldn't be standing up again anytime soon, and she turned her attention to the last would-be robber.

He had moved to a flanking position to cover his buddy while she was playing with the first guy, and as she rose, she used the suit's enhancements to propel her a long distance to the wall behind him. When her hands grabbed onto the sheet-rock, she lashed out with her foot and caught him in the chin. His head snapped back and he went down like a ton of bricks.

She dropped off the wall, standing near the third guy to make sure he was also unconscious. She used her ears to make sure his heart was still beating, it was, so she wasn't a murderer just yet then directed her hearing to the other two discovering they were still alive, just unconscious.

Grinning evilly to herself, she used the necklaces to wrap their hands in some complex knots, using multiple strands to ensure they weren't going anywhere. She collected the guns and grabbed one of their messenger bag satchels, put them in the bag and climbed back out how she had entered. On the roof, she placed the pistols near the skylight, and then pulled the bypasses they’d attached to the security system.

She waited a few moments until she heard the call go out on the police band that there was a silent alarm going off at this location, then she made herself scarce.

Having an on-board computer with solid state hard-drives had a lot of advantages, it made diagnostics and downloading data really easy. Thank goodness he had the foresight to make one of the claws contain contact points for USB uplinks.

Back at the lab, he pulled out the netbook and downloaded the entire set of data from tonight's excursion, including a full recording of the attempted robbery. He had already come up with multiple improvements to the suit, and he couldn't wait to get them on the suit.

But, it was very late and he was really tired. Modifications could wait until tomorrow.

He took off the messenger bag which was still looped around his shoulder and dropped it on the table. There was a 'thunk' as it hit. He hadn't noticed any extra weight, but given the extra strength that the suit imparted, that wasn't surprising.

He opened the bag and froze when he saw light being reflected from the facets of gemstones and precious metals. Apparently, he had taken part of the robber's bounty.

Oh my, what in Heaven's name am I going to do with all this?

Finally, after pawing through the loot for a while, he decided to store the jewelry in the same place he hid the netbook and his suit.

Fairly quickly, he shucked the suit and had it folded up and in the messenger bag along with the netbook and everything else that needed to be hidden. He’d made a few entries on the netbook regarding additions to the suit. Then he headed home.

It took him hours to get to sleep. Thankfully, he didn’t have any classes to teach, so he took his time waking and eating. He was still confused and concerned about the inadvertent robbery he committed. Perhaps he could simply return the jewelry.

When he finally got into the lab again, he started to work on the upgrades to the suit.

First thing, he was going to move the micro-chocks from the claws to the pads of the fingers and the palms of the gloves. It would give him more surface area to grip the wall. Similarly, he added them to the entire sole of the boot, not just to the toes. The addition of a steel cap inside would protect his toes and give him something more to hit people with when kicking them in the face or balls.

More gel padding went into the crotch and under the hood. He thought about what would have happened if he had fallen on the back of his head with no helmet. So the shock absorption gel would act as a helmet. It wouldn't keep his brain from being sloshed around, but it would prevent impact pretty well. In addition, if one of those thugs had used their pistol as a club instead of as a slug-thrower, Catwoman might have been in serious trouble last night. Getting a flash of inspiration, he added some more padding to the face area, the cheeks, nose, and chin specifically to foil any facial recognition that might be working against him.

He made sure to add in the noise level and light level cutouts for the ears and eyes. Right now Catwoman was terribly vulnerable to flash-bangs. Just one could cripple her, and you didn’t want that during a confrontation.

He rethought the claws. Their form and function could change shape with a thought now that he had perfected the processes, now that he didn't need the claws to climb with anymore. He decided to make them retractable and to repurpose them. One was already an uplink to a computer, so he thought of what he could do with the rest. Lock picks, tension bar and lock pick all in one.

He made the thumb and first two fingers of each hand into a set of lock picks. It would be simplicity to insert the thumb claw into a standard pin-and-tumbler lock and have the micro circuitry push the tumblers around until they aligned properly, then a twist of the thumb, and open comes the lock.

He added a lot more solid-state memory to the computer system in the suit. He already had an idea about using the suit to do some computer information borrowing. If that were the case, he would need a lot of memory to download the contents of a computer

Oooh, Maybe I could also get some of the kids studying for a BA in Information Technology to create a computer virus, I could put it into a special section of the memory and upload that to the computer once I've gotten the information I want and need to ruin their originals. That should keep them busy enough not to notice what I grabbed.

That thought set off another; if he could keep people slack-jawed and slowed reflexes it would be a huge advantage. Thinking about it led to adding a pheromone/perfume pump of some sort to one of the useless breasts. It wouldn't be too hard to have a small vial or bladder of those chemicals and have them released on command. The trick would be insulating the wearer of the suit from the effects. Nose filters could do that, as well as protecting her from the knockout and CS gases. They wouldn’t work on her.

The sheer rush of blood from one head to the other should be enough to keep most men too busy trying to stay conscious and allow me to have a real advantage.

One last improvement; breasts. I have two big sacks on my chest and only one is occupied. I remember seeing that honeycomb structure that could be flattened out with the application of some electricity to it, so if I run a micro-current to it, the breasts can flatten so I can keep the suit on all the time, and then shut the current off to let them re-expand. Coupled with the collapsible design structure, she could use the boobs to carry any thing she might want to keep. That way she didn't have to carrying around a sack or a purse all the time. Just slide whatever into that section of the boob, the structure will hold it still while getting it out of his hands. As things were put in, the breasts could partially collapse to accommodate those items.

It would take more time to collect and manufacture the improvements to the suit, but he had time.

He kept a running list of what he wanted to do to improve the suit. Some of it would have to wait a bit. A fiber optic wire housed in a large bangle bracelet with a pinhole camera at the end. Use the micro-chocks to attach the camera where I want, spool out the fiber, and hook it up to the goggles, and I’m able to see what I want to see without exposing myself too much.

He tweaked the color range of the costume. If he lowered the bottom end of the color range to 50% gray, then he could hide in a lot more places, and the mottling effect would be enhanced. Really good camo, an adaptive camouflage that reacted as the wearer moved around. He smiled; it was nearly chameleon in nature.

He made a note to work on a voice masker. A male voice coming out of a female’s body shape was too incongruous. Some sort of widget resting against the throat changing the geometry of his vocal chords and voice pattern would be a very good thing.

This is getting expensive. How in the name of all that is good and holy am I going to be able to pay for all this tech? I can make some of this myself, but George at Pinnacle is asking either for the stuff back or some form of payment. I don’t have the money to give to him right now, and how do I keep stalling him?

He mentally went down a list of things he could do to raise funds. There was gambling, getting investors, selling some of the tech that was developed, trying to find a rich relative to fund him and more. None of the schemes seemed practical.

Then his eye fell on the messenger bag sitting on the desk.

I could sell the jewelry. It was already stolen, I could find someone to take it off my hands and I won’t get in trouble for stealing it. The crooks who were taking it in the first place can take the rap. I could earn a lot of money that way. After all, it’s not like I was being a criminal or anything, I did stop the robbery. I could do this for a living, and maybe even be hailed as a hero.

He thought the plan through as he added some cell phone technology to the miniaturized radio equipment. It could work.

A few weeks of remote computer searches led her to her quarry. She knew he wouldn’t agree to meet a complete stranger, so she located some of the best people he knew.

When she called him, she dropped names like rain before arranging the meeting. It was simplicity itself to intercept his call to the same people and arrange to confirm her bona fides.

Billy Maddison stood in the chill air waiting for the person he was supposed to meet. Some chick had called him out of the blue and arranged a meet with him to fence some expensive rocks. It didn't bother him none, but he wished that she would hurry up and show. Don’t know why this bitch can’t do this in a nice office, damned drama-llama; have to do things the hard way.

“Thank you for meeting me here at this hour.” The voice coming from behind him shocked Billy so badly that he drew his gun as he turned his bladder threatening his dignity, something he hadn't done since he was a baby.

“Damn, baby, don't freak a guy out like that. You almost got ventilated.”

She smiled a lop-sided grin and said, “I'll remember that next time.”

Billy looked her over. Damn fine body, but it was hard to see her. She had the shape of a looker though. When she stepped into the light, Billy nearly lost his bladder again. He had been hearing rumors for a couple weeks now of a Cat Woman who appeared, fucked up a second story job and left with part of the take before leaving the robbers for the cops. He never thought he would actually see her in the flesh.

“So, let's see the bling you’d like to... uh... sell.”

She unzipped her suit some and Billy found breathing a difficult proposition. She reached into the chest area and pulled out some nice necklaces. She had a string of five different glims and Billy knew that he was going to have some problems.

“Lady, you got some hot shit there.” He put up his gun and pulled out a jeweler’s loupe examining the stones closely. He spent some time going over them in the light of a street lamp. He wasn't worried about her jumping him; he knew that Ken was up on the fire escape covering him with a rifle.

“Man, bitch, you get some good shit. I'll give you 10K for them all.”

She laughed long and loud. “You have a very good sense of humor Mr. Maddison. I want 500K for them. Once each of the necklaces has had the stones removed and the gold melted down the rocks in different settings they will be worth easily three times that.”

“You get what I offer you. I can go as high as 100K for the lot, but it's going to be hard to dump these. You know as well as I do that the gems are probably carrying a serial number, and that makes them traceable. The people I work with aren't going to like that, and getting those numbers off is a pain in the ass.”

He couldn't see anything behind her mask, but she even stood pretty. Just looking at her was giving him a raging hard-on. He wanted to teach that pussy to come when he called, and spent a few minutes fantasizing about that while she thought.

“Four hundred thousand.”

“In your dreams. One fifty.”

“Three hundred thousand.”

“Split the difference with you, two hundred fifty K. That's the best offer I can give you.”

She froze for a few moments. “Deal.”

Billy smiled and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a credit card, one of those disposable card you load with money before the next shopping spree. The one he plucked out of the stack had 250K on it. He passed the card over to her.

“It's a pleasure doing business with you lady. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing each other again.”

She slid the card into the same place she got the rocks from. “Most likely, you are only one of a couple people who will fence this level of bling. I won't double-cross you if you don't do it to me. We can both get rich off this arrangement, if you play it smart. If not, then I'll have to leave you with your friend.”

She zipped up her suit and sprang into the air, vanishing almost as quickly as she had appeared.

It took him a few minutes to realize what she had said. When he climbed up the fire escape Ken’s location, he noticed that he was out cold, the rifle was broken in two pieces, and he had “Meow” scratched into his naked chest.

“Damn, that's a fine bitch there. Style AND class. Nice”.

It took her a little while to get back to the train station and to secret herself in an area to catch the train back to New York. She would have been five kinds of fool to fence the jewels in the same place she acquired them.

She didn’t see it as stealing as much as her fee for preventing a larger disaster. Imagine the loss if the crooks got away with several million in the jewelry. She figured that one necklace worth about 50 thousand was reasonable given that they faced losses of several million.

Besides, she found that she liked the sparklies.

With a lot of noise and a squeal of brakes, the train came in. This was the last one to the city until tomorrow. She leapt from the roof of the train station and landed lightly on one of the cars, then swiftly and silently ran back down the length of the train to a position where she could hide easily for the ride back to the City. It was a decent arrangement since it wouldn’t do for her “mundane” identity compromised, and frequent trips south to DC coinciding with a bunch of liberated gems showing up would eventually be noticed.

That is, if someone was watching the Professor.

She knew that Jade was still interested in Professor Kyle. That was apparent when she showed up again and tried to intimidate him into confessing that the criminal had gotten her technology from him. Catwoman just hoped that he had passed the test and that the heat was now off. It wouldn’t do for them to go to jail.

As the train pulled out and the diesel fumes spewed their toxins into the night, she settled down for the two-hour trip back to ‘her’ city. She couldn’t fly, but there were other ways for her to get around the city.

Gloriously every night there was something happening.

The police were fighting a losing battle against the crooks. She was to help balance the scales a bit. It didn’t take anything to catch criminals in the act and leave them for the cops. She knew that the cops were confused and frustrated by the cat theme that was carved into the flesh of the crooks, but as long as she didn’t get caught, that was nothing.

“Meow” was just one thing she carved. There was a silhouette of a cat, done in a stylized format, there was just the cat’s head, but her favorite icon was the eye of a cat. Just two curving lines for the eyelids, then two swooping parentheses inside those lines to denote the iris, then finally a vertical slash to make the cat pupil. It was easy and fast.

She knew the crooks were pretty wound up. They knew someone was targeting them and leaving them for the cops. She was enjoying their paranoia.

She may not have metahumans powers, but the suit gave her everything that metahumans had. All for the inexpensive price of just one or two necklaces or a pendant or two every night. Simple service and payment.

Once she had arrived in New York again, she went to the gym. She’d located a rigorous gymnastics training center that prepared the athletes for competitions and more. She “borrowed” one to practice her skills.

Balance beam, parallel bars, climbing area, vaults and foam block pit, trampoline and more, she knew how the body was supposed to move and she did all of her self-imposed regimen after hours. Three in the morning was an interesting time for gymnastics. In the pitch dark tumbling, running, jumping and leaping, every day raised her athletic abilities and skill. All it took was practice.

Once she stopped planting her face into the floor, she found that it was relatively easy to do the most difficult she’d ever seen in the movies. The third layer of the suit was acting as like a set of Sheer Energy Pantyhose on steroids, actually adding energy to her movements. It was an unlooked for advantage that really made everything else possible.

Every night she found more ways to improve the suit. More padding here, another tweak to the third layer there, an additional color added to the camo layer that night. She was very happy that the gel had proved out so well, it protected vital areas from any number of problems.

She had given serious thought to a belt with various little pouches and things for stuff like knock out gas or escape flash-bangs like the ninjas use. It seemed in the comics that every costumed hero had a utility belt. Ultimately she decided against it, after all, the suit did enough as it was. There wasn’t a lot more that could do to increase the utility of the suit without compromising the benefits it already had. The fiber optic camera was about the limit. When she continued thinking about it, she realized that a belt with pouches and compartment sticking out all over could get hooked on something. If she left the belt behind to make a quick escape she’d be located easily by the fingerprints on the contents.

She might add a belt simply for style, but that would be all.

Her Professor half had been consciously working to maintain the illusion of femininity, having electrolysis on his face to get rid of the beard. It would take a plastic surgeon to do more and to give a more feminine appearance to his jaw and cheeks, if he wanted to do that, Catwoman would be happy to let him.

Having warmed up sufficiently, she left the gym, carefully closing the window and resetting the alarm system, and she left to find trouble.

She had her first commissioned job. She had been hired by a private investigator to break in and get some information off a computer of the guy he was tailing. It was a very quick snatch and grab. Break in download his PC, simple.

She was getting paid $5000 to for it. Apparently, the wife thought that he was cheating on her, and she wanted evidence. A minor issue arose when she was told target had three different apartments in and around the city. There was no telling which computer had the data on it.

She was going after them all along with his PDA and his Blackberry.

The PI had a very inventive means of contacting her by newspaper. He put an ad in asking her to contact him. “Kitten, please contact me at (315) 555-3038”. Nothing else, just a plea that he hear from her.

When she contacted him, he asked her what the last “icon” she left on the crooks was, and she correctly identified it. Given the information wasn’t public knowledge; it was an excellent way to identify her.

He explained the task, told her the reward, and she gave him the number of the Cayman Island bank account that Catwoman was using to hold her money. They arranged to transfer the cash and the info to each other and a more secure means of contact. That was the last that she had contact with him.

It could be a trap, and Catwoman’s paranoid brain screamed it must be, but this was a step forward for her. This education would help her start taking down the real scum, all those men who thought they owned everything.

She reached into her thigh pocket and pulled out some cat treats. She ate one and tossed another to a stray she saw crossing just under her. She contemplated how she was going to get into the apartment. It was a straight forward B&E, but she wanted to make sure any external cameras didn’t catch her on film. She was methodically scanning the buildings nearby for cameras.

As she found them, she would go over to it, recorded about five minutes of nothing happening, and then instruct her computer to program the image to loop through the camera indefinitely. Once the circuitry of the camera was set, she would go to the next and do the same thing.

It took time, but it was time worth taking. The Police didn’t understand her, so she didn’t involve them at all. She was the real crime fighter, they just picked up her trash.

Finally done, she scaled the wall of the first apartment building until she got to the balcony of his apartment. After that, it was easy to gently lift the sliding glass door and slide it aside. Almost no one above the second floor used a charley bar or anything more sophisticated that the lock that came with it. A quick glance around and then she downloaded the entire hard drive to her storage system.

As she reset everything and wiping all trace of her intrusion, she considered frying the entire computer with her viruses, undid the loops on the cameras, and move on to the next location. Her one fear was finding the scum at one of his apartments. She hadn’t decided how firmly she’d quell his objections.

Five hours later, everything was done. She took a brand new USB flash drive, downloaded the entire set of data, put it into a mailer, and dropped it into the mail. The US Postal System is very security conscious and takes a very dim view of anyone attempting to intercept the mail.

As she bounced off to the rooftops again, she thought about how much the improvements to the computer system helped. It wasn’t huge or bulky like a desktop PC, and it didn’t run Windows at all, but it was able to interface with every operating system she could find. It did everything she needed. Powered by the motion of her own body, the kinetic generators in her feet fed electricity to the batteries in her calves, using the printable micro circuitry that created batteries no thicker than a sheet of paper. That in turn went to the printed circuit boards just around and underneath the skull cap energizing them and running the whole suit. Inputs were voice and thought, once again controlled by the EEG contacts in the hood. It could have surfed the Internet, but why would she want to? She had a clean dedicated computer for that at home. The storage for all this was between her shoulder blades and the padding to protect that area, sandwiched on another layer of the suit. It was incredible how a modified inkjet printer could be used to print out a computer system.

She toyed with the idea of making another suit, and selling the technology on the open market to the highest bidder. Not complete, mind you, but in pieces to maximize profit.

She wondered what Jade and the fledgling “Alliance of Superheroes would think if they saw this rig.

She headed “home” to get ready for tomorrow.

Professor Kyle was shorting himself on sleep, but it was well worth it. The whole of New York knew about Catwoman and there was even some speculation in class about how she did what she did. Jon didn’t talk about that topic at all, and when he turned in his next thesis, “Can micro circuitry make a one micron-thick CPU?” he gave the Professor a hard look.

As Jon left, the Professor wasn’t totally convinced that he didn’t know that his hard theoretical work was now a reality. Stephen refused to let it bother him.

He was doodling on a piece of paper, trying to come up with an idea to change the shape of his face so that he could drop the lower half of Catwoman’s mask. It was hard to breathe through when she was exerting herself. Some day soon she wanted to be able to expose a completely different face to the world. It would add another layer of insulation between Cat and the professor.

At least he was now able to pay for the components he needed to make and improve the suit. He didn’t have to rely on his reputation and his friendship with other engineers to get components to replicate. The money might be “gray” money, no professor that wasn’t a millionaire several times over could afford all the cutting edge pieces and parts.

Wearing the suit was fantastic. He had it on now under his street clothes, with the breasts collapsed and the hood flattened out. It didn’t bulge anywhere under his suit, and did a lot to keep him cool, since it wicked the heat away from his body. He kept the gloves tucked away in the suit, it was a good thing to have nearby.

The last two months had been a smashing success, allowing him to do things that he only dreamed about. While Jade was still somewhat suspicious of him, he hoped that she was still fooled by the fact that he was a man and Catwoman was a female. He really expected a confrontation with her any day ending with him unmasked. He still didn’t know what he would do when that happened.

This day was different there were a pair of young men in suits and good shoes sitting on the back row of the classroom. Once class was over they both came down.

“Professor Kyle, I’m Special Agent Gunderson and this is Agent Jackson. We are with the FBI.” They both flashed their badges at him.

Before they could proceed, Stephen held up his hand. “One moment gentlemen, I want to verify your identity. Please leave your Identification with me here, and have a seat in the front row while I check.”

“As you wish sir, but please don’t try to leave.” They walked back and sat down in the designated seats. They both had their coats open and he could see their firearms plainly.

Stephen picked up the phone and looked in the phone book for the local New York field office of the FBI. Several minutes later he had confirmation of their identity and a general description that matched them. The final check was a password. The agent he was speaking to on the phone told him to ask them what the day’s animal was. When he did so, Agent Jackson responded with Jackrabbit. He passed this on to the agent on the other end of the phone and she confirmed that it was the correct response.

He thanked her sincerely and waved the men over and handed them their identification again. “I’m sorry about that, but I feel that it’s better being safe than sorry, you never know who is trying to pull a fast one on the professors. What can I do for you to Agents?”

Special Agent Gunderson took their identification back and put his into his pocket again. “Professor Kyle, we are here to talk to you about a research paper one of your students was working on at one time. Do you know anything about Jon Cho’s Master’s thesis?”

Stephen’s heart skipped a beat. “He just turned one in about one micron thick CPUs if that is what you are talking about.”

“No sir, we are talking about his first one, Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology. I must state that we have already spoken to Mr. Cho about this which is how we came to talk to you. Could you please tell us what happened to his research paper?”

Stephen nodded and started spilling the story, starting with Jade and ending with all the copies being gone, off his PC and all the other computers he had ever had the document on as well as all of his USB drives. He didn’t tell them about the document’s resurrection.

The agents nodded as he got to the end of his tale. SA Gunderson said “That squares with what Mr. Cho told us. Do you happen to know if there was ANY other copy of this document anyplace that might still be there?”

“No, I’m afraid I don’t. I checked the backups that the College made, but as far as I know, they were all erased. You might want to ask the techs if there’s another backup tape they have that might still contain the information you are looking for.”

The Special Agent made notes. “One last question, do you know anything about this person called ‘Catwoman’?”

It took all his control not to jerk at the name. “The thief that’s in the papers lately?” He shrugged, “Just what I’ve read. She apparently stopped some robberies in progress and then took some of the stuff herself leaving the crooks for the cops. Personally I think she’s doing a decent job.”

“It seems this Catwoman has been exhibiting abilities that are consistent with some of the research in that thesis. Are you sure that there isn’t another copy floating around?”

Stephen got a bit nervous and took a moment and lifted his eyebrows in surprise. “Special Agent, exactly what are you asking? I gave my only copy of the printed report to that woman, Jade, she certainly can confirm that and the fact that every single computer used was wiped clean by her. I only know what is in the report because I read the draft copy. I certainly couldn’t reproduce the thesis from memory.”

The agents stood. “Sir, we were hoping to get a copy of the thesis if it was still in existence. Do you think you could work with some of our people and possibly recover the contents? It would really help and the FBI is under pressure from the Department of Homeland Security.”

Stephen was still nervous. “I probably wouldn’t make much headway, it’s Jon’s research and it might be a better to work with the author.”

“We asked him and he categorically refused, saying that he gave his word to Jade.”

“Then I’m afraid I can’t help you gentlemen. If I find another copy, however, I’ll make sure to get it to you.”

“Please make sure you do sir. There is a reward for this information.” They both handed over business cards to him. He took them and smiled.

“I will. Thank you for coming by.” He turned and deliberately continued to pack his stuff up as the Agents left.

It wasn’t until he got back to his office that he was over taken by the shakes.

Jade stood invisibly in the classroom while Professor Kyle was being interviewed by the FBI. The supercomputer that was the ring had gotten wind of the suspicion that there was another copy of the thesis out there and that they intended to interview both the student and the professor.

The professor is lying. His heart rate is up and his pupils are dilating.

Jade thought, “So, he does know something about Catwoman and the thesis.”

Affirmative.

“I think I’ll follow him for a little while.”

I must inform you again that this is a technical violation of the Liberty of Professor Kyle. Invisible spying is a blatant invasion of privacy and Green Lantern Corps will not approve your actions.

Jade had a very rude thought. “I understand that,” she subvocalized “but you have told me that the information in that thesis could constitute a threat to this planet. Ergo, I frightened a student my age into handing it over, probably ruining his career, and then terrorized his professor into doing the same. So which is it? Am I supposed to censor the information or keep their privacy in tact?”

It is a dilemma.

With no further advice coming from her ring, she felt like cursing roundly, refraining only through a huge effort of willpower. Instead she thought “Screw it, if he is Catwoman, or if Jon is Catwoman, I don’t care. They aren’t doing anything on a planetary scale that is dangerous to humanity. Catwoman is stealing some jewels and selling them to the criminal element. Not anything that can cause the human race to end. I’ve got other things to worry about.”

Affirmative. Reasonable decision.

Jade flew back up through the floors and into space. There were other major criminals to catch. She asked the ring “Did you notice anything else?”

Affirmative.

She rolled her eyes. “Please tell me what else you noticed.”

Professor Kyle is a metahuman.

Jade nearly fell out of the sky. “What?” she shrieked at the ring.

Professor Kyle is a metahuman.

“I got that,” she said tightly “I mean how did he become a metahuman?”

A certain percentage of the population has mutated...

“Yeah, skip the biology lesson. He’s got the metahuman gene. Is it active?”

Affirmative.

She rubbed her forehead. “Do you know what form his powers are manifesting as?”

Affirmative.

Deep sigh. “Tell me how Professor Kyle’s metahuman powers are manifesting.”

He is a gadgeteer.

“Since they didn’t cover that in Green Lantern Basic Training, would you please explain it?”

Professor Kyle’s metahuman mutation has given him the power to manipulate machinery and to think of creative uses of existing technology that far surpasses even my abilities. It is conceivable that he could create a proximity masker from a pencil, an AM transistor radio, duck tape, and time. His apparent ability measured on the Li-Kirbee Scale manifests at a level 98. Most scientists and engineers rate at between 40 to 50 maximum. My own abilities in this area are rated at 65 on the same scale. This is a metahuman power, just as Terra’s geo-kinesis and American Dream’s body density are.

“So his metahuman ability is to build things?”

Affirmative.

“Just terrific! That’s just what I needed to hear.” She continued her trip to the star cruiser.

Catching Up   Just a word of note. Lilith and I co-wrote this one. She took care of the parts involving Jon, I took care of Catwoman. The ideas didn't gel just right, but I couldn't pull all the Jon stuff and still have some of the story make sense. So, consider this a look into one character who can have an impact later. There is more, but it is the section I pulled out. At some future time I or Lilith will finish it out and then you can see Batgirl. Until then, enjoy. And yes, I'm going to continue with the "Cat" puns for titles. Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. This is a retcon of the story of Catwoman's life. Detective Comics owns the character of Catwoman, and Lilith owns the copyright to Jade of the Green Lantern Corps. Catwoman in the photo is Michelle Pfeifer.

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Dropping the morning paper on the breakfast table, I took a moment to calm myself. The Catwoman had made the news again. For anyone familiar with the technology, the details were there as to who was responsible for the crimes being committed. It was my tech, my theories, and my thesis that had provided the so-called Feline Fatale with the vast majority of her talents.

The police and the public all thought that she was a metahuman, but I knew different. She was a fraud, a petty thief, and using my ideas and a semester's worth of my life to supplement her income and endanger the lives of anyone that crossed her path.

I eyed the tea kettle while I powered up my laptop and checked the email. Still no answer.

It had been three days since I'd emailed portions of my thesis Mimicking Metahuman Powers Using Next Generation Technology to myself at my NYCU address. I had an excellent memory, so it wasn't difficult to recall specific segments of what I spent day and night, month after month accomplishing. I even visited several of the websites and accessed a number of the files that I knew were being monitored by the woman known as Jade of the Green Lantern Corps.

I stood by our agreement and didn't delve any further into the subject she'd declared taboo until existing technology had caught up. However, we needed to talk and she hadn't left any means of contacting her, which resulted in my somewhat well-meaning deception.

The whistle on the kettle began its high pitched crescendo, so I left the computer and set the tea ball full of dried green leaves at the bottom of my cup before pouring the hot water on top. I still hadn't broken the habit of morning tea, even after moving from Japan.

I'm sure you can imagine the discrimination I faced: a family with the Chinese name of Cho immigrating to Tokyo. It was awful. No matter how I tried to fit into the society based on Honor and Shame, I was never one of them. Soon after completing my secondary education, I wished my family well and immigrated to New York, New York on a student visa and attended NYCU. In three years I had acquired my Bachelors of Science and went on to work on my Masters in Electrical Engineering.

That's when I met Professor Kyle and my life took a turn for the worse. It wasn't his fault. At the start of the semester, the metahuman known as Jade revealed herself to the world and I was intrigued by the concept of certain humans acquiring talents and powers above those of mortal men, all on the basis of a specific gene encoded into their system by nature.

There were only around 6000 people that had the chance, that would received talents so they could do something for the betterment of mankind. I was so naive at the time. I was also brilliant. That's where I came up with my thesis.

Why should the world have to wait in order take advantage of the possibilities when the knowledge to use technical means to improve ourselves existed at that moment. I had the knowledge, all I needed to do was put it down on paper.

Then Jade came and took it all away.

I understood her reasoning and conceded her point. Once technology becomes known, it can't be erased. It was how the atom bomb came to be. And if there was one thing the students in Japan knew about, it was what could happen when one of those devices goes off in a heavily populated city.

There were ethics involved when scientific and technical advances came to be, and I was an ethical person.

"Got enough for two?"

I nearly knocked my cup over when the familiar female voice sounded behind me. Spinning to the side, I saw Jade standing there, with the green glow that was normally around her body, dissipating. "Green Lantern!"

I bowed, at a forty-five degree angle, to show her respect. She smiled and returned the bow.

"Call me Jade, Jon. Please."

I nodded and tried to calm my heart from beating so hard in my chest. She was exactly as I remembered, which made my cheeks redden. It was difficult not to have a reaction to so beautiful a girl wearing what amounted to a green and black latex bodysuit.

"You received my message, Jade?"

She smiled again. "You could have emailed me, you know."

My mouth dropped open. I was about to tell her I didn't have her email address.

"You might want to check your address book on your email client for Emerald Flashlight Lady." She shrugged. "I think it's better to keep a low profile so I don't get spammed."

Her eyes ticked to the cup of tea and I jumped to retrieve another cup. Giving her my tea, I prepared another for myself. "Would you care for some Dim Sum?" It was tradition to have little snacks with tea that didn't consist of refined sugar and flour.

She shook her head. "The tea is fine, thank you."

Nervously I squeezed a dollop of honey into the tea and tried to think of my prepared speech.

"I'm assuming you were contacting me about The Catwoman."

I nodded. "Yes, her crimes are escalating. I'm afraid she's really going to hurt someone eventually."

Jade sipped at her cup and looked thoughtful. "There's not much I can do at the moment. Theft is not really in my jurisdiction. If it's going on right in front of me then I can do something, but otherwise..." She trailed off.

"As I thought," I said. "Perhaps one of your teammates? The American Dream, maybe she can do something?"

Jade didn't look too enthusiastic. "I'm sorry Jon. I really don't have much of a say in what she does. We each have our own specialty and area of influence. Only in times of crisis do we form the team and pool our collective talents."

That point was expected as well. I'd thought out as many arguments as I could and made sure I could counter everything so as to lead her in the direction of my goal. Sipping silently at my cup, I let a grim look drop over my face.

"I have an idea, but I need to do some more research first. Can I email you in the future?"

She smiled over her cup. “I wouldn’t have left you an email address if you couldn’t. But I think I can do better than that.” Her ring glowed briefly. There on the table between them sat a copy of her ring.

“This is a ring that will let you communicate with me, and only me. There are others out there that act as cell phones for all of us, and as costume machines, but since I don’t want you getting involved in the fights we are doing, this will only communicate with me. Just hold the ring up, speak my name and you will be connected to me. You can even subvocalize and talk to me if you need to.”

Jon took the ring and pulled it on his finger.

Catwoman looked over the warehouse she had been hired to break into. She was taking her time since it made no sense to rush into an unknown area without looking carefully to make sure she wasn’t caught.

It’s a good thing that I’m paranoid, whoever owns this place is just as paranoid as I am. Talk about secure.

The place was literally crawling with security. There were ten different exterior security guards that she had counted so far, all disguised to look like workers who also had concealed arms on them. She spotted multiple cameras covering a number of different approaches, all of them focused on the ‘easy’ means of ingress.

She turned the gain up on her ears and scanned around for conversations she could eavesdrop on, but nothing was immediately forthcoming. Either they weren’t talking or they didn’t have anything to say.

She kept scanning frequencies to find the one they were using as their tactical communications channel. She didn’t have much hope of being able to exploit finding that information even if she found it. If it were her, encrypted radio signals would be the order of the day. Even if she did find the signal, all it would sound like to her would be static without the encryption key.

A fee of $50,000 had come into her bank account, with instructions to email a specific address with a PGP encryption key. So she created her own encryption key, sent the public half to that address and got a garbled text back.

“Dear Catwoman,” it read once she decrypted it, “I wish to retain you for an assignment. There is a facility located at the address I’m attaching to this document. I wish you to break into it, download their server ‘Lab1’ and send me the contents. I will tell you now that it is a pharmaceutical laboratory. “I have sent a ‘good faith’ payment of $50,000 to your account, with a further payment of $200,000 once the contents of the server are delivered to me. Your standard methods of sending the contents are sufficient for my purposes. “I look forward to doing more business with you in the future.”

The letter was unsigned, and the email address was obviously a throwaway. She had tried backtracking the email route, but she didn’t have the means to do so. Perhaps Professor Kyle would have more ideas.

Once again she expected a trap, and she took the necessary precautions.

She had meticulously filmed nothing for the cameras as she found them, and had broken into their circuitry to hardwire the loop to hide herself in, but hadn’t activated it just yet. It was all set up and waiting for a signal from her.

This was going to take some fast work and precise timing. So once she was fully ready with the false camera signals, she activated the loops and made her way to the warehouse and inside.

It took her hours, and she came closer than she had ever wanted to think about to getting caught. Whoever that company was, they were GOOD. High security, random patrols, well lit areas that made it hard to hide and more met her once she was inside. She had to spoof more cameras, work her way down to the server area, and finally download the server into her onboard storage. She just copied the information, not really caring about what it actually was, and once that was complete, she made her escape.

She was able to get away clean, since all she was doing was extracting the data, not trying to analyze it or decrypt it. It turned this into a high-tech snatch and grab.

Once back at her “lair” she copied the information from her onboard storage to the hard drive she had purchased to load the info on. As per her normal routine, she boxed it up and made sure that it was ready to go into the mail.

She would keep a copy of the info for archival purposes and delete it only after the final payment made it to her account. If something happened, she didn’t want to have to break in there again and have to steal it all over again.

Naturally her curiosity got the better of her and she started looking through the contents once she had a chance.

There were lists of experiments and files on their progress and experiments. She was stunned to see that they didn’t have any encryption on the files themselves, but reasoned that it was probably attributable to the “higher ups” wanting to have executive oversight on the projects, so they were kept in clear text on a secure server.

She had actually tried to hack into the system physically because it wasn’t online in any manner. There is no way to hack into a computer that is not connected to any other at any time, so she had to go and physically pull the information down. It was clever of the people who owned that info, but it left them vulnerable to internal sabotage.

Finally she got bored and closed down her netbook and covered the suit up under her regular clothing.

Professor Kyle picked up the package and took it out to his car with him. He would drop it off at the UPS Store on his way home.

He kept an eye on the funds in Catwoman’s account, just to see when the final payment was made. He was a bit stunned to see that even with purchasing the tech he needed, paying the other engineers back for the stuff he got from them, he still had about $2 million in the bank. That was more than enough to do almost anything he wanted to do, including setting himself up in his own private lab, quitting the university and just...falling off the grid.

It had been two days since he put the data in the mail. The package should be arriving at its destination soon. He figured that the address he had sent it to was fake, but it wasn’t his concern as to what or where the data they stole was going to.

He had kept looking through the copy of the data he had, just to see what all was there. He had developed some microscopic robots, commonly called nanites, that he had injected into himself that gave him full access to the suit at all times. With that done, he didn’t have to rely on the contacts in the hood anymore, nor did he have to rely on the goggles to enhance his vision. He had programmed the nanites to take over the interface between the suit and his body, making it several thousand times more efficient. He no longer had a HUD display in his goggles, now the nanites projected the information directly on his retina. He had even programmed them to take up residence under the layers of his skin and to deform somewhat to make his disguise complete. With those dedicated nanites changing the geometry of his face, he could lose the extra padding in the suit, then drop the lower half of Catwoman’s mask.

He wasn’t sure about the idea Catwoman had to really give him breasts by using a combination of nanites and silicone, but it was something to think about. It would not be difficult to slowly inflate them over time and to remove the fake breasts on her outfit. The problem came when there was no longer a way to store things in the suit.

Tweaks to the suit and its function became normal. After every “mission” the Catwoman did, Stephen went over the specs and the diagnostics and made any improvements he could think of. The result of this was a suit that behaved almost as though it was his skin while he had it on. Servos had been replaced by micro machines, and no one else could use the suit except him. One of the security routines was to check the DNA of anyone who had it on and to electrocute someone who was not a match to his DNA.

To do that, he had to map his own genome, and was shocked to find that he possessed the metagene. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but he was pleased to see it.

He stopped his idle scrolling through the information in the suit’s memory. Right there in that directory, there was a mention of the metagene. He started looking closer.

Hours later he came to a shocking conclusion. This ‘warehouse’ he had broken into was a government research lab. There were all kinds of entries in there about various research into the metagene and how to activate it. There were chemical formulas, experiments on animals, video of results, and even a start to finish film of American Dream’s transformation from a male to a female bombshell. Careful notes were made in the files about how to isolate the metagene in others, how to activate it, results of activation for American Dream, and various other notes.

Stephen turned off the HUD display being projected in his eyes and returned his attention to his class. They were in the middle of Semester Finals, and he had not caught anyone cheating, but where engineers were concerned, anything was possible. He called up the displays of the various micro cameras around the room and looked at the footage. He honestly didn’t care that much about someone who did cheat, but if they were sloppy enough to get caught, then they deserved to be expelled. An Engineer should be competent enough to not get caught.

He stopped watching the feeds and started monitoring the wireless waves in the classroom, checking to see if any microcomputers were accessing the Internet. While he didn’t spot anyone surfing the Internet, he did catch an anomalous signal emanating from one of the students. It was on a wavelength that wasn’t supposed to carry a radio signal in the ELF range. Most often those wavelengths only carried radio markers or position signals, just a slow “beep” to let others know that someone was around. He had also heard that the ELF band was used to communicate with submarines in the extreme deep water. This signal seemed to be even below that wavelength, on a frequency that theoretically could carry a signal, but in practice usually didn’t.

It was so odd that he spent a few minutes tapping into the signal and trying to see what it was.

Accessing.

Stephen jumped slightly. The voice had sounded directly in his ears. While that was normal and it was part of his suit/nanite’s powers, he didn’t have voice capability set up on his suit.

What the hell? The voice was an alien sounding monotone, one that probably wouldn’t be produced by anything Microsoft had come up with.

Unauthorized access detected. Illegal access of communications used by the Green Lantern Corps, and violation of Section 18, subsection 4 of the Corps Galactic Charter, Persistent attempts to hack this signal will result in prosecution. This connection is terminated.

His mind was in a whirl. The Green Lantern Corps? Those assholes? Have I stumbled on the wireless connection that Jade uses? And why is it in this classroom?

He sent out some delicate probes using the suit’s capability to track and isolate radio signals, to try to isolate who the access was emanating from. After a couple minutes, he managed to track it down to Jon Cho.

Why am I not surprised? It figures that Jade would recruit Jon to help her out after she stole all that information. I should really just send that essay out to everyone just to spite her.

Instead, he ignored it.

If Jon was accessing the Internet or the Green Lantern’s computers on that frequency, it was novel enough to ignore. He would have references available once he was in the real world, and there was no need to fail him simply because he was taking advantage of that now.

Besides, with tenure, he could set his own standards for what was cheating and what was not.

He made some notes on a notepad nearby, more to keep the students on their toes than to actually do anything. He had discovered a long time ago that the guilty usually gave themselves away by acting guilty.

He went back to reading the information on metahumans that was contained in the files he had downloaded.

Three days later, Professor Kyle had gone through all the information in those files about metahumans. It was extensive.

The greatest discovery that he had found was a formula for an injection to activate the metagene. I wonder what my power will be. He had called in some favors from the Chemistry Department to get that injection synthesized. He had to do it in pieces, giving part of the formula to one person, part to another and the last to a third so that he could combine all three at once to make the final formula.

That was complex to do without telling them why he wanted it.

Just to make sure, he re-read all the notes on the formula. He didn’t want any surprises when he injected himself. Maybe with this I can abandon Catwoman and just be Professor Kyle, working on my own, using my powers to help the police take care of the criminals in the city. There’s certainly enough of them.

He lay down on a cot that he had bought and installed in his lab so that he could catch naps when possible. He had made sure to void everything he could and given himself an enema just to make sure he didn’t mess himself. He also took all his clothing off so that he didn’t destroy it.

On the one person they had used this formula on, the Government had stated that it changed his sex to female. That’s how American Dream came to be. But one of the other side effects was to regress her in age, so that might be a bonus.

He has also studied the accounts he could get his hands on about other metahuman emergences. While many of those included the metahuman changing sex, it wasn’t always the case.

He lay down, strapped his legs to the cot and put the strap across his chest and forearms. He then took the syringe and injected the chemical into his thigh. He pulled the syringe out and tossed it before the formula took effect.

Then he dropped into the Tenth Circle of Hell.

Some timeless time later, it was over. The body that was left was fuller, rounder, more shapely. Hips had filled out, chest narrowed, the shoulders slimmed.

Straps removed, then moving to a mirror. A vagina and breasts. In that second, Professor Stephen Kyle ceased to be, and Catwoman was now the owner of the body.

It took some time, but fifteen hours later, she knew what was happening. The metagene was active, but since there wasn’t much change from previously, apparently it had already been active. When the chemical compound combined with the already active gene and the nanobots, it did something and changed the body’s sex to female.

She drew some blood and checked to see if there was some way the nanobots could be reprogrammed to change the sex back. Professor Kyle was too useful to simply discard him like this.

A few hours later, she knew that it would be impossible. As far as the nanobots were concerned, she was female now. There was nothing to be fixed.

Damnit. This is HIS body, not mine. I was just using it on missions. Now I have a severe problem, I need a mundane identity to get by in this world. Shit.

She spent a few moments pulling the storage breasts from the suit. She had to re-route the pheromone pump and outlets to be under her arm since there was no longer a false breast to contain the tank.

She made sure that the chemical formulas for the pheromones and also the knock-out lipstick that Kyle had been working on were in the suit’s memory. A few minutes of destroying computer records and making sure that nothing had been left behind and she was finally satisfied that she was ready.

Time to disappear.

Professor Kyle had made contingency plans to vanish, and Catwoman made those plans into reality.

The netbook was easily packed, and more and more stuff was packed quickly into just a few cases. All the important things were soon ready to leave. She had needed to make a last minute adjustment to the suit, to reflect her new DNA sequence. She had stared putting on her suit, and it gave her a warning to cease or it would electrocute her.

With the new gene sequence in place, it was only a few minutes to put on the suit. Everything was ready and all the cases were moved to Professor Kyle’s car. It was very late at night, and she no longer had to make sure that she was protecting Professor Kyle.

Combine a few chemicals, leave a section of Kyle’s lab to look like it was an accident, and then get the hell out of Dodge.

Soon enough, a flash and a small woosh came from behind her, signifying that the lab was now on fire, with everything being destroyed.

A bit later, she pulled up in front of Professor Kyle’s secondary lab. Everything was removed from the car, right down to the owner’s manual. She then went through everything and put back just enough information to show that the car belonged to Professor Kyle. She put everything else into the lab and secured the lab with all the security that he had designed. Retinal scans later, the lab was secure and she left. She got behind the wheel of the car and started driving. She stopped and got the cadaver that Professor Kyle had set up to be like him, dental records and bone fractures would show that it was the same, and the facial appearance and the fingerprints wouldn’t be readable. She placed the cadaver in the driver’s seat and then got into the passenger side.

She reached over and started the car, then reached over to put it in drive. She stomped the gas and soon his car was screaming along the road above the dam at 90 miles per hour. She drove from the passenger side, pushing the gas and brake with her foot. Soon she saw her chance.

A crane was nearby, and with the crane a cable to haul things up and down with. She kept the speed constant and set the cruise control. Then she leaned out the car and shoved the steering wheel so that the car moved and went over the edge.

Whip out, snapped forward to catch the hook, and she was free of the car. It screamed over the edge and slammed into the reservoir and sank from sight. A few moments later she was scaling up the crane cable and soon was safe someplace else. Only a few minutes later, she was running back to her new lab/lair.

News of Professor Kyle’s death made the second page, below the fold the next morning. She hadn’t expected it to be front page news, and she was gratified to see that it was important enough to put where they did.

Speculation among the reporters was that it was a case of him going off his rocker. They had interviews with various people talking about how much of a recluse he had become. They had done a pretty thorough job of making it look like Professor Kyle was not in his right mind, and Catwoman couldn’t really say that he wasn’t.

Well, he was a useful cover for me, but now I have to figure out how to live without him. All the medical tests I could do show that I’m fine, and that tallies with the notes from the lab, but the result is that I am here all the time now.

She didn’t know what to do, so she kept her suit on and spent the day figuring out how to just live. She didn’t need a can opener when her claws could just cut the cans open, and she didn’t really need much variety. Carnivorous lifestyle left only a few things she wanted to eat. Open a can of tuna, dump it into a bowl and put it down near her waterbowl and eat.

She started thinking about how she was going to do the whole “I don’t have an identity” thing. Accessing records was easy enough with her computer, but making the necessary documents to back up her story seemed very hard to do.

I don’t think I’ll worry about having a “legal” identity. I can do almost everything I need to as Catwoman.

The ensuing night had shown her a few things. She could change colors of her hair, her eyes, her nails and her skin tone. She could reshape her body somewhat to take on new contours, within a certain limit. She could look like she gained 20 lbs, or that she could have another three inches or so, but not much more. She didn’t actually change mass, the nanites just moved it all around. She tried an experiment with getting as short as she could, and she wound up at 5’ 2” with a 38 EE chest. Her breasts hung nearly to her hips, and she looked like almost any dowdy housewife. Her hair color was a mouse brown, and her eyes were a muddy brown. She looked heavy.

She still weighed 160 but it was distributed much differently. When she changed back to herself, she grew to her standard 5’ 10” with her 36 C breasts. Her waist narrowed to 24 inches and her hips slimmed down to her normal 38 inches. She tried pushing it the other way to see how big she could get.

When she topped out at 6’ 4”, with her 34 A breasts and her 22 inch waist, she looked like an emaciated supermodel with cherries in her shirt pockets. She could see fashion photographers the world over wanting to do shoots with her. It was a model of femininity that she didn’t like.

Well, this ability will certainly come in handy to keep a disguise going. Just become Ms. Suzy Homemaker and no one will think that she’s the Catwoman. I don’t think I’ll be doing this that much, however. It hurts too much.

Having flesh and muscle and bone redistributed around her body took a bit of time, and it really hurt her a lot. She understood in principle that the mass had to go someplace, but when the little robots grabbed a few molecules of bone and put it in a different section of her body, that didn’t feel good. She might have to set up some purpose built nanites to block the pain signals to her brain if this was something that needed to be done often.

You know, this could be really good for a quick escape. Break in do the whole robbery thing as Catwoman, then get out, pull the hood down, change to “short shit” and walk off with a shopping cart full of crap. No one would look at a homeless bag lady as the crook if that bag lady was shorter than the crook. This has possibilities.

Something else she had noticed, Professor Kyle’s talent for making things seemed to have come over to her. He was gone and she somehow had all his knowledge and talents. She would sit down and suddenly there would be a sketch in front of her for a new device or addition to her suit. Just her sitting and thinking about it, apparently her subconscious had designed a pain-blocking nanite. All it would take is constructing it. Which didn’t take long at all, really.

Another injection, and she could change shape, within those limits, without pain, which meant she could speed up the process. Taking two days to practice, she found that at the extreme end, she could change from Mis. Dowdy to Catwoman in about 5 seconds. It was only during the transition that the pain blocks worked to keep her from feeling it, she still hurt when she burned her hand.

Look out world, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Back on patrol for rapists and thugs, she had gotten to know the rooftops of a lot of the downtown area very well. Since she no longer had to worry about keeping up appearances with Professor Kyle, she simply spent most of the day in bed in her lair, and then grabbed thieves and rapists off the street at night. Many women had her to thank for them going home with their clothing intact.

She had developed a new set of restraints. They were just plastic zip ties like the police used, but it had an additional part that was a third loop. She had about 20 of them injection molded in her lab, and then slid into the hamstring pouch on her left leg. When she caught someone now, she knocked them out, then cuffed their hands behind them, then used the third loop to make a hog-tie. She felt like a rodeo wrangler at times, seeing how fast she could tie someone up.

It certainly kept the bad guys where she left them. She could even leave off doing her “trademark” on their body since the cuffs themselves had her cat’s eye stamped into them. It certainly told the cops who had caught this person.

She did have a bit of a scare at one point. She dropped off a fire escape to confront three guys who were attacking some little girl for her purse. While taking out those three didn’t take much effort, the other five that had surrounded her made her a bit apprehensive.

She looked around. “So, brought the whole gang boys? Think that the eight of you can take me?”

The thug that looked like a leader spoke up “Shut up, bitch. We ain’t here to listen to yo’ mouth. Take her!”

The five started moving in, tightening up and getting closer. Her eyes narrowed. She could get away, but she spotted three guns among these creeps and another five knives. She would get clear, but she couldn’t take the girl with her.

She turned on the pheromone pump and did a summersault onto the back of one of their homeboys, to spread the scent quickly. He grunted when her boots impacted on his back. “Boys, don’t you know it’s not chivalrous to come at a girl like a gang of thugs? You need to do it one at a time.” With that, her whip was out.

One swing wrapped the end of the whip around one boy’s neck. It locked in place to itself making it impossible for him to get it free. She didn’t want to kill him so she didn’t make the coils contract, she just used him to throw into the body of the guy that was running up behind her. A quick whip-crack later, and she had her claws out and ready. She lept for one of the remaining kids.

She really had to hand it to these kids, they would have been really intimidating and would have a good chance of getting away with this if she was a normal person they were strong arming. However, she wasn’t the expected lady.

The next guy tried to dodge, but her real goal wasn’t him, but the guy next to him. She landed where she intended to, next to his accomplice. She could see his brain go blank as he got a whiff of her scent, and you could almost see the blood drain from his head to his other head. She raked him down the chest and arms, then kicked him in the crotch for good measure.

That left two up and moving. The leader was advancing, but the other thug turned tail and ran as fast as he could. She turned her attention to the leader.

He had his gun out and was brandishing it at her. Apparently just having it made him feel like he was a big guy. She walked slowly up to him, hips swaying as she walked. His face went blank and to the infrared vision she had thanks to her suit, she could see the heat disappear from his head and face. It was almost laughable.

She kept advancing, slowly, sensuously, until she moved inside the range of the pistol. She carefully took it from his hand and quickly disassembled it into the slide, the pistol grip, the barrel and the magazine. Which she then dropped in front of his astonished and lustful eyes.

He came at her, lust in his brain. She palm-struck him in the nose with her left hand, breaking his face. He screamed and fell back against the alley wall. She moved over to him and grabbed his shirt front, then hauled him up.

“Why did you set this trap for me?”

“Cus word on the street is that anyone who gets Catwoman will get fifty grand as a bounty. An you’re a chick and not so tough.”

She head butted him in the face. He shrieked like a little baby.

She had her tail snake around his ankles to keep his legs occupied and immobilized while she interrogated this genius. “Not so tough because I’m a girl, hum? Well, I think we can discard that notion pretty quickly.”

He couldn’t nod fast enough.

“Who is paying this ‘bounty’?”

“Don’t know. Just word is out that you are worth a lot of money.”

“Good. Well, you can’t have the money, but I will leave you with a reminder.” With that she pulled him close and kissed him full on the lips.

At first he was too stunned to react, but pretty soon he got the message. Seconds after that he was unconscious on the ground and the police would be picking up seven new crooks who tried to accost a young woman in an alley. All their drugs were still in their pockets, and if they didn’t have any, they soon had stashes of Meth or Rock. But their money was gone, and their guns were all broken.

She spent the rest of the night going from area to area looking for more trouble. Sure enough, Brilliance was correct. There were other groups looking to trap her. She saw three other scenes that were traps once she looked over the scene with her infrared vision instead of just her low-light vision.

Someone really wanted her badly.

Now the question was “Who”?

Cat Scratch Fever   The events detailed in this story take place in the three hours after the events in "Catching Up" and "Big Trouble 3" Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. This is a retcon of the story of Catwoman's furhter adventures. Detective Comics owns the character of Catwoman, Lex Luthor and Lena Luthor.

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Things were moving far too fast. She got back to her lair she checked her account reflexively, and there was the final payment for the snatch-and-grab of the server. Plus, there were not one but five messages from the PI she sometimes did jobs for. So she checked in with him.

"Kitten! Am I glad you called. There's a call from Lex Luthor out to get in touch with you immediately. Apparently there's something going on. He's going to give someone who can hook him up with you fifty thousand dollars just to do so. I've got some contact information if you want it."

She thought for a second or two. This could be very lucrative. She asked for the contact info.

She called through the suit, to make sure that she wasn't able to be traced, she had routed the call through three different satellites and several different cell towers, making sure that any trace back would find so many different places that she was at, they wouldn't know where she actually was.

"LuthorCorp, this is Mercy speaking. How can I help you?"

She played up the cat theme, purring and drawing out her r's. "Hello Merrrcy, I understand that you and Mrrrr. Luthorrr wanted to talk to me? Rawr... What can I do for you?"

"Ah, Ms Catwoman. Thank you for calling. Mr. Luthor would like to speak to you and possibly hire you, but time is critical."

"Then you must tell me morrre."

"Please hold for Mr. Luthor in that case."

It took a few moments of waiting. She fixed a tuna fish sandwich while she waited.

"Catwoman," said the male voice on the other end of the phone. "Thank you very much for getting in touch with us."

She just purred into the phone. It was a non-committal enough sound.

"I have an offer to make you. It's a break-in and snatch a very precious package and escape with it. Are you interested in that?"

"It sounds interrrresting. Tell me morrrre, please."

"I was contacted earlier by a former employee who has snatched my daughter and is holding her for ransom. I would like you to break into the facility he is at, and extract Lena. Any of my resources you need will be made available to you. I don't care if everyone in the warehouse winds up dead, I want my daughter back safely."

Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm not an assassin, sirrrrr."

"I'm not asking you to kill anyone. I am saying that if in the kidnappers wind up dead, I'll take care of the details and could honestly not care less. Do we have an agreement?"

Her good sense hadn't deserted her entirely. "What is in this for me? I have no stake in yourrrr daughterrrrr."

"Ms. Catwoman, if you do this for me, you can write your own ticket with me and my corporation. Money is no object. More than that, you will have done me a very great personal favor."

That stopped her. The money would be nice, and it was certainly a big incentive, but to have the gratitude of one of the most infamous corporate heads in the world, well, that would be worth almost anything.

"Misterrrrr Luthorrr, I believe we have a deal."

"Excellent. Time is very short and as such I will have a jet ready for you at the nearest airport to bring you to Chicago. All the intelligence we have will be waiting for you. Anything you need please tell to the flight attendants on the plane and you will have it waiting for you when you debark."

"Hmmmmm, I neverrrr bark."

"Of course my dear. May I ask where to have the plane waiting for you?"

"Well, I'm in New York City right now."

"Ah, we have a private LuthorCorp airstrip near there. May I provide a car for you to get there?"

"Hmmmm, that would be helpful. Less questions forrr me. I will meet them at Cleopatra's Needle in Central Park. Make sure that the windows are darkly tinted as I will be in my costume and I really don't want to be detained by the police."

"Of course. The car and driver will be waiting for you."

She purred again and cut the connection. She froze in place and thought things through. She was going to have to really do this right.

She had been developing a poison from tomato leaves and had her first batch ready. She picked up the vials that held her first attempt and slid them into her thigh pockets. She was under no illusions as to if she would have to kill. She didn't want to, but if it came down to kill or losing her freedom, she knew which she would do.

She then grabbed an experimental sheet she had finished earlier rolled it up, and stuffed it into a tubular map case. She did a quick systems check on the suit, put her sandwich down uneaten into the fridge, downed a glass of milk and made her way to the nearest bus stop. Never go on a mission with any food in your stomach. It slows you down.

Luthor hung up the phone and turned to Mercy. "Make the arrangements; plane, car, driver who can keep his mouth shut, everything. Take care of it."

She nodded. "Yes sir. "

He looked seriously at Mercy. "We will not double cross her. She will be given all the help she wants and then she will be paid and let go. A good craftsman like her should be treasured, not contained."

"Yes sir."

He sat back and looked out the window deep in thought.

Once she got to the statue in Central Park she spotted the car. She catfooted her way over to it, and slid into the passenger side of the front. She saw a very startled driver next to her.

"Drive."

He started the engine and put it into gear. Meanwhile, she climbed over the seats and into the back section of the limo. She curled up on one of the seats and made herself comfortable.

The driver asked her if she needed anything that could be provided. He would communicate it to the plane, she didn't answer. She couldn't think of anything she might need at the moment.

Very soon they arrived at the airport. The driver opened up the door and helped her out of the car. She had turned the gain down on her ears so that she didn't go deaf with the jet engines going. Everyone was being so nice to her. There was the pilot at the bottom of the stairs waiting to escort her onto the Lear, tipping his hat to her.

The seats were extremely comfortable, and she reveled in the luxury she found herself in. The stewardess offered her a drink, and didn't blink an eye when she asked for milk.

She found a folder with the information she wanted on the table in front of her. She opened it up and started reading.

An hour later, once she had digested all the folder's contents, she considered how she would assault the building. The intelligence that was included was nearly as complete as she could have wished for. Everything, including satellite images and building plans for the warehouse and surrounding buildings were included. She could only shake her head in awe at the speed with which this had been assembled.

Money could really buy anything you wanted.

She stared out the window for some time thinking. She finally called over the stewardess and started dictating what she would need.

Another LuthorCorp car dropped her five blocks from the target area. She didn't want to take any chances with accidentally being spotted as she approached the area, so going over the roofs were still the best bet. She had digital copies of all the information scanned into her suit's computer, and now she picked out the best route for her to get in.

The best way to get in would be to simply walk in on the power lines. There were a series of high tension and high voltage wires that crossed over the area, about 80 feet up. In a warehouse district like this that wasn't much of a problem. They didn't connect directly with the warehouse, but they passed close enough that gaining entrance that way would be a simple drop.

She scaled the towers easily enough. Soon she was about to step on a line carrying 110,000 volts of electricity. She decided to jump to the chosen wire, after grounding herself out to the line, making her body and that of the line the same charge. Step on the glass insulator which held the line to the metal tower, then move close to the line and she get a nice lightning bolt of static jumping from her to the powerline. "Never knew static electricity could hurt that much," she though. Once that was accomplished, it was easy enough to simply stand up on the line and start walking.

To make it a little swifter, she got down on all fours and started the fast movement like a cat on the line. Soon, she was at the warehouse.

She turned the gain up on her ears and the goggles, zooming in on the structure itself to pinpoint where everyone was. She spotted two people on the roof, and from the rifles in their hands, they were prepared to repel all invaders to the area.

She hooked her feet to the underside of the power line, wrapped her tail around it to make sure she had a good hold, then turned upside down to get a better view of the area. She was looking for any other people who might be part of this gang or surveillance cameras that could be covering her approach. She didn't want to alert them just yet.

The whip came out and soon it was wrapped around the wire, and she released her hold on everything else. She dropped to the end of the 15' length of whip and hung there. She very carefully started playing out the length of her whip, stretching it to its maximum length of 40 feet. From there it was just a two story drop to the roof.

She calculated the force she'd need to jump to the center of the roof. Back and forth, building a slight arc to bring her to the center of the warehouse, away from the sniper posts. She didn't want to miss the roof and land on the ground by dropping straight down. Soon she hit the optimum speed and commanded her whip to release the wire.

She dropped right where she wanted to be. Unfortunately it wasn't as silent as it could be. She hit the ground and rolled to a stop in the shadow of an air conditioner vent. She froze in place while the guards came over to investigate the noise.

When they arrived, she used her radio to tap into their communications. They didn't even have the signal encrypted, although they were using a relatively unlikely frequency for their talk. She soon found out that the guards were in communication with each other and the people inside, so she wouldn't be able to simply take them out and move in unmolested.

Damnit, well, I guess that means I'm going to be fighting them when I come back out. I had hoped to avoid that.

She left them conscious and moved over to the area she had picked out for her ingress. She fell over the side of the wall, and down to one of the windows left over from the "removal" of the second floor. They didn't actually reduce the height of the building, they just took out the second floor and made it a one story building with 30 foot ceilings.

Unsurprisingly, the window was locked. But it didn't take long for her claws to slice a hole in one of the panes. Then she tipped out that glass so it was in her hand. She reached in and unlocked the window, then spent a few minutes feeling around inside for an alarm systems before she opened the unlocked window and slipped through. She then closed the window again. Replacing the glass was simple enough, she took some transparent tape and re-secured the circle of glass she cut out. She wasn't going to make an amateur mistake like leaving a nice spotlight in frosted glass. She wanted to leave nothing to chance.

As silently as possible, she made her way to a catwalk that ran close to a support beam. The beam would give her access to the air conditioner system. The platform at the access had been left so it could still be serviced. These idiots may not use it, but it still needed to work.

She froze into position and held her shape. No use giving them something that would be moving much giving them a target. She needed to do some scouting of the area and that required temporary immobility.

She counted four people inside. One near the front door, two near the big rolling door of the loading dock, and one simultaneously talking on a telephone and using a computer near the center of the floor. She assumed that the person tied into the chair was the victim.

"McGuire," the girl was saying, "you really should release me. When Luthor finds you he won't just slap you on the wrist, you'll end up with a coffin for your ransom."

The guy on the phone hung up. He went over to the girl and slapped her. "Shut up you. I don't want to hear any more of your noise. Your daddy will pay up and when he does, he might get you back."

She spit the blood in her mouth out. "You really are stupid aren't you?"

He stalked off to check on everyone again, going toward the front door. He still had line of sight to the girl and she was sitting in a spotlight. There was virtually no way that she could get the kid away without being seen.

I wonder what he was doing on the computer? She used a couple programs that she found to wirelessly hack into his laptop and look at his screen.

He was checking a bank account. Apparently he was waiting for a deposit to be made. Probably the ransom money.

Soon she had an idea. She called out on her radio to one of the guys she had standing by to get her and the girl out. A few minutes later, the power went out in the warehouse.

The guys down on the floor started panicking. They apparently didn't like the dark. But it was an asset to her.

Quickly she jumped down from her hiding place and landed near the girl. "Shhh. Don't scream, I'm here to rescue you." She quickly slashed the bonds on the chair and grabbed the girl. She ran as fast as she could over to a tangle of shelves near the wall.

The emergency lights came on.

She got the girl to lay down on one of the shelves and Catwoman pulled the sheet from the cargo pocket she had in the small of her back. She hissed at the girl. "This is a sheet of optical camouflage. Stay under it. Don't move. It will project on its surface the setting behind you." She spread the camouflage over her. She then shoved an ear bud into the girl's ear. "That's a radio. You can sub vocalize to communicate with me on it."

Before she was done straitening the camo, she heard the thugs getting upset that the lights were out. She toe-ran to the wall near the shelves and slowly started crawling up it. She had no fear about keeping herself invisible, but she really hoped the optical camo worked.

"Who are you" she heard hissed in her ear.

"I'm Catwoman. Luthor hired me to get you out of here. I'd like to do it quickly and cleanly. Just stay there. We are hiding in plain sight and when they go looking for you, we can get away in the confusion."

"Okay. I just hope you are right."

So do I honey. So do I. When she had gained about 18 feet, she froze in place. She was nearly over the top of where she had hidden the girl. And now she heard the men shouting about how the girl was missing.

Bedlam broke loose. The guy who was on the laptop was apparently the leader, and he started giving orders. The guards up top were warned to keep their eyes open for anything unusual, and soon flashlights were playing all over the inside of the warehouse.

Just to be on the safe side, she took one of the vials out of her pocket and attached it to a small port on the back of her hand. A few seconds later, the vial was drained and she put the empty vial in a different pocket.

These three stooges never tried using a grid search to find where the girl had gone. They started walking, started looking around. First place they checked was the office that was still in one corner, and then they started checking the ladders and catwalks of the non-existent second floor.

One guard each had taken up residence near the entrances, and they were alert and waiting for anyone to come at them. Two more people that Catwoman hadn't seen came into the room from the outside and now there were five people inside and two more on the roof.

"Someone's coming." she heard hissed in her ear.

"Stay calm. Don't move. Freeze. Just stay there, they shouldn't be able to see you. Heck, I can't see you and I know where you are." That wasn't quite true. She could see a lump there with the contour mapping the suit had automatically done, but that was all. In visible light she couldn't see the kid at all. Not even with her infrared cameras.

The goon walked by the racks of shelves, playing his flashlight around. He shone the beam directly where the kid lay under the camo, and kept going. I guess proving something under fire is the best way to test it. The goon didn't see her.

She said, "You're doing great. He looked right at you and didn't see you. He's moving off now. He's turning the corner, and he's going to be coming back by you. Just lay still..."

She tried to keep a litany of soothing things going in the girl's ear. The goons kept looking around, and not finding her. When they got together near where Lena had been tied, the Cat could hear them admit failure.

The thuds of punches didn't surprise her at all. God that guy is an idiot. About as bad as those stupid movies where the bad guy kills the messenger with the bad news just to prove how evil he is. Do that too often, and no one will bring you news.

The thugs moved off to the front door. I think our chance is coming up. She started scaling down the wall again.

"Good, I'm getting cold."

"Did you hear that?"

"Yeah, wasn't I supposed to?"

Must have sub-vocalized without meaning to. Something to correct. Later, once I get home.

She got back to the girl. She grabbed the camo and stuffed it back into the pocket in the small of her back. She took the girl and pantomimed her wrapping her arms around Catwoman's neck. Once the girl was in place, they scaled up the wall and then across the walls to one of the catwalks. Quietly as she could, she made their way back to the window she used to get in. She opened it all the way and slid back outside with the girl.

She triggered her radio to send a coded message on a specific frequency to the extract team. She heard acknowledgment quickly as she got back up to the roof.

"Helicopter is coming. Just a little more waiting." She made her way over to a section of the roof that offered a hiding spot while she heard the hum of the helicopter rotors coming.

Unfortunately, the snipers on the roof heard them too.

She dropped the kid off in the shadows, and used her whip to disarm one of the snipers taking aim at the heli which was coming in. She yanked hard and the rifle was jerked from his hands and came sailing at her. She ducked as it went flying by to crash in another area.

The sniper she'd just disarmed was pretty stunned. He looked over to see her crouched her whip in her hands, and he opened his mouth to yell.

She snapped the whip forward again, on a horizontal plane this time, and the tip wrapped several times around his neck.

His eyes bugged out, his tongue came out of his mouth and he started making strangling noises. It would be only a few more seconds till he was unconscious.

Then she felt a pistol in her left kidney. "Let him go and I won't put a hole in you the size of a football."

Fuck. There goes the quiet extraction. In response, she yanked hard on the whip and the sniper's head started hanging at a very odd angle. The whip coiled back in as she twisted around to get the gun off her body.

It was the idiot on the computer, McGuire. He was standing only a few feet from her and he had a 10 MM Desert Eagle pointed at her.

He frowned and pulled the trigger, just a second too late. Catwoman had already moved out of the path of the bullet. She snapped the whip forward, striking him across the face. His next shot went wild up into the air from convulsively squeezing the trigger.

He shrieked in pain. She smirked. "Compensating for something honey?"

He aimed at her again. "Fuck you bitch." With no more warning than that, he pulled the trigger.

A bullet of 180 grains in weight hit her sternum at well over 1300 feet per second. The computer in the suit calculated the impact and concluded that it would have been a kill shot.

As it was, she was knocked off her feet and into the machinery behind her. That sonofabitch! That hurt!

She lay there, pretending to be dead, and saw him point the gun at the ground and start looking around. The helicopter rotor was getting very loud in the distance. When he turned his attention to the helicopter, and pointed his gun at it to fire, she sat back up and whipped the tip of her whip around his neck. She yanked and he came flying at her, and impacted squarely on her claws that she held out for him to hit.

"Goodbye McGuire. Sorry we couldn't be more... friendly toward one another." She licked his mouth and nose then shoved him away from her with her foot. He stumbled back and she saw five puncture wounds on his chest, where her claws had gone through shirt and Kevlar vest below, penetrating his flesh. Two field tests in one day. She didn't think he was going to live long with poison coursing through his veins.

He looked shocked as he started convulsing and shaking uncontrollably. Interesting effect. I didn't know that concentrating the toxins that much would be so quick. When he lost control of his body, she knew it wouldn't be much longer.

Catwoman took the Desert Eagle, disassembled it, and then broke several small pieces inside the firing mechanism so that it couldn't be used again. She was watching him and moved closer while staring intently as the contents of several days meals came out of both ends of the self-created victim.

Catwoman grinned, and seeing that the helicopter was nearly on top of them, she pulled her whip out, grabbed the girl, snapped the end of the whip around a landing skid and let the copter take them away.

She screamed for joy as they left the rooftop.

Her chest hurt quite a lot from where she was shot. Probably a cracked sternum she thought.

She had to admit, LuthorCorp didn't skimp. They had a room for her in a hotel, clothes for her to disguise herself with, and they left her alone.

Lena was reunited with her father in another section of the hotel. Catwoman ordered Room Service for herself and dined on a very good steak dinner. Some woman named Misty was detailed to take care of her any want or need. Things seem to have worked themselves out.

She lay on the bed in the hotel room and just rested. It was always hard to come down after a job like this, and she needed to get the adrenaline out of her system.

She didn't trust Luthor, or more precisely Luthor's people, any further than she could throw them. She made her way to the bathroom and while walking instructed the nanites to reconstruct her face. There was a low probability of cameras being in this room, but it never hurt to be cautious.

Once in the bathroom, she stripped out of her suit and started the shower. She wanted to get clean in the worst way. She stepped into the shower and brought her suit with her.

She used the shower wand attachment to fill her suit with water to get the sweat out of the inside. She drained it and then turned the suit inside out, hanging it from the towel bar in the shower. She then attended to her personal hygiene.

Once clean again, she took her suit and hung it from a clothes hanger that the big bathrobe used to be on and put it near the blower of the air conditioner. She figured it could air dry easily enough there.

Then she luxuriously stretched out on the bed. She spent some time pulling and tugging at the covers until there was a nice nest of softness, and she curled up and went to sleep.

She only needed a short cat-nap of a couple hours. She was just so exhausted after the excitement of the evening.

When she woke she realized just how vulnerable she was. It may be that Luthor had a reason to keep her hale and whole, but that wouldn't stop others from taking advantage of the situation. The sooner she was back in her Lair the better.

She checked the suit and found that it was all dried. She stripped out of the robe the hotel provided and pulled the suit back on. She felt very exposed without it on. She had finished zipping it up when there was a knock at her door.

She pulled the mask up and made sure everything was in place, and paced over to the door to open it.

There in the hallway was the Mercy girl. "Purrrrfect timing. I was just about to call you. I'd like you to get the plane ready for me to go home."

"Yes ma'am, but first Mr. Luthor would like to speak with you. There's some matters to be settled."

Trapped. Now what do I do? Well, I can play along. I'm pretty safe with the suit on. "Excellent. I wish to speak with him too. Meanwhile please make arrangements for me to be taken home after my meeting. Thank you very much."

Mercy led her down a hall to a conference room. In that room was Lex Luthor and his daughter. They had obviously been talking. Luthor looked up and stood. "Ah, Ms. Catwoman, thank you for joining us. I wish to express my gratitude to you personally."

"It was my pleasure Mr. Luthorrr. She is a wonderful and very brave child."

"Nonetheless, the craftsperson is worth their hire, and it has come time to pay the piper if I can mix metaphors. Is there anything I can do for you to show you my appreciation?"

She didn't want to use the 'favor' just yet, she wanted to keep it in reserve in case she really needed it. So she smiled sweetly at Lex. "Nothing at the moment, I prrrrefer to hold such favors in trust for a while, just in case. You understand, don't you?"

Lex inclined his head in assent. "I do indeed. If you ever think I might be able to help, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me at the number you called earlier. It is a direct line to my assistant Mercy. She will get you in contact with me immediately.

"Now, as to... compensation for your time and troubles tonight. Have you thought about your fee?"

She smiled a bit. "Yes, I think two million dollars will be quite sufficient for my needs." She wasn't expecting to get it, but haggling down to a half million would be more than a victory for her.

"Done. Shall I send it directly to your Cayman account, or do you have another account you wish me to deposit it into?"

She had a very hard time controlling her reaction. She expected him to haggle a little. "The Cayman account will be purrfect. Thank you."

He wrote some things down and handed the note to Mercy. He then looked up at her and said, "I must apologize for the zeal of my subordinates. I told them to get you for this mission, and while the orders were relayed correctly, the method of 'getting you' was left up to the individuals. Apparently someone decided to get thugs and street gangs to capture you. I can assure you that this situation has been dealt with.

"It is possible that I may wish to retain you for an assignment at another time. Is there a way I can contact you in that case?"

She nodded. "Just send a note to my Cayman account. I can pick it up from there. In an emergency, like this was, you may call me at the number your assistant has from where I called her. While it is not my direct number, it will get to me."

Luthor nodded. "Very well then." He stood again and came over to her. He shook her hand and told Mercy to see her to the Airport.

Lena came over to Catwoman and hugged her tightly. "Thank you so much for getting me out of there. I really didn't want Jade and everyone destroying the city just to find me. We can talk at a later time."

"We most cerrrrtainly will. Take care kid. Keep the earbud."

She pulled on the pants and blouse that had been provided for her, and took her mask down to get to the airport. She still didn't want to attract attention.

And this little kitty went "wheeeeeeeee" all the way home.

	Catatonia By Maid Joy
	Things keep going strangely for Catwoman. But when an opportunity to grab some very expensive artifacts comes along, she just can't resist. Unfortunately that is only the first herald of the changes to come. Detective Comics owns the copyright to Catwoman. This is a retroactive contunity, or a Retcon of the same character.

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She finished the diagnostic on the suit once she was back in her lair. It showed nothing wrong with the suit, yet something confused her, her suit was taking actions without orders.

For instance, after the rescue of Lena Luthor, once she was done with the mission, and in the plane going home, she was watching Lena modify her phone. She happened to glance over and wondered what she was doing. But the suit decided to zoom in on the phone and give her a very close sight of Lena's actions. More than that, it was all recorded. There was a visual record of the entire flight in her suit ready to download once she got home.

Automatic functions were inevitable once she started using the suit as much as she had been. That reduced the amount of things that she had to do manually or to tell the suit. She hadn't set these subroutines up and that was worrying her.

Once back in the Lair, she got out all the diagnostic equipment for her suit and started going through it all minutely. She went through all the diagnostics on the computer first, thinking that somehow she had written some subroutines. Failing that, she didn't remember Professor Kyle setting up anything like this for her, but you never know what could happen given the tech level of this suit.

Several hours later, she was still stumped. The routines were there, they operated, as they should, but there was no author's signature. She looked in all the comments of the programs themselves, went through it byte by byte and found nothing. EVERY programmer of any kind would "sign" their work, putting a few extra bytes in places so that others couldn't steal their work. They were a programmer's signature, just as the scrawl at the corner of a painting was an artist's signature.

But these new programs didn't have any extra like that. The original programs she installed, such as the operating system and the viruses that had been made for her had those signatures. It took time but finding them was easy. Going through these new programs line by line yielded NO extra code of any kind. There wasn't a comment saying "oops" or anything, no comments saying that a particular section of code was about or anything. It was kind of spooky.

She moved the new programs to her netbook and left them there. She deleted the copies from the suit's memory to be on the safe side. There was no use leaving potentially dangerous programs in a vulnerable place. She sighed, they were exactly what she would have written for herself and like a kid in a candy store she wanted them. Yet, since the entity who wrote them was unknown, it was might be courting disaster. Who knows what all that code could do? It might have an Easter Egg inside it that would hatch into something to take control of her suit. Better safe than sorry.

Besides, she had a few thousand things to do tonight.

It had taken her hours of hacking, but she finally managed to score a ticket to the opening of the new exhibit at the Met. It was another presentation of Egyptian artifacts that belonged to the most well-known Pharaoh of all, Tutankhamen. This time, they were combining other with the collection that Tut had. The latest theory was Tut actually was the son of the Pharaoh Akhenaton, who insisted that everyone worship the sun as the one and only god. If that was the case, it made sense for some of the things Tut seems to have endured.

As such, the anthropologists were going to display all the artifacts in an attempt to link them together in the minds of the public. If it was successful, the theory wouldn't sound so radical to the average person.¹ She was going to case the place.

While she wasn't stupid enough to plan a robbery, opening night, it would be the best night to find where everything was. This was the night that everyone who was anyone was allowed free run of the place. She knew that security would be very tight. That would give her an opportunity to find out the worst she'd have to face.

She modified a portion of the nanites in her body to contour map and record various features in the museum while she simply walked around and looked at things. A lady had to prepare for any occasion, so she built a corset for soirees like this. When there was one thing left to do, she installed a copy of the computer software in her suit to an identical computer in the corset. It would allow her to use her tech without looking like a fetishist. She also changed her eye color to match her gown.

The gown was exquisite. A simple floor length silk cheongsam in a deep sapphire blue, it was Hong Kong style awaited her. With tiny cap sleeves, a high mandarin collar and gold cat toggles in the shape down the right side of her body, and slit up to about mid-thigh. The pagoda and crane motif worked in silver throughout the gown wasn't flashy it was elegant. The highlights sparkled with gold thread. As she adjusted her body size and shape, she filled the raiment until it was obvious that she left little to imagine. She made sure to add a touch of floral perfume. Subtle, with the sex pheromones, it would draw men to her. She absolutely knew the women would hate her. Patent leather jet-black four inch heels completed the outfit.

Time to do some recon work.

Once at the party, she took her time. Her slinky slow procession through the exhibit was noted. She talked only to those whom she chose, merely nodding and smiling at others. Artfully pretending to sip on a flute of champagne, she spotted Mr. Luthor in one atrium talking about his business with some other mega-rich guy. She didn't see his daughter anyplace, even though this opening seemed to be a Who's Who of the social elite. She saw various people she knew distantly and colleagues from the university and was hard-pressed not to greet them as if she knew them.

She made it a point to look at every corner of the rooms, looking for the security cameras and motion sensors. She managed to spot several UV laser beam emitters. It would be a matter of going very slowly and making sure she could see in the UV spectrum to avoid them.

She knew that monitors were recording every guest's movements, so she acted as though she was getting more tipsy as the night went on. She very deliberately started slurring her words. She found that she was having a very good time despite her need to case the museum.

Once the night was over, she took her rented limo back to her lair, and downloaded all the information to the computer to go over it at her leisure. There were several beautiful pieces that she had her eye on, and that she thought she could sell easily enough. Once she finished that, she went to sleep. Planning might be tedious but it could put an insomniac to sleep before long.

Four days later, she had a working model of the entire museum. She'd managed to create it in three-D, combining the information from the imaging and contour mapping data. She added the architect's plans and changes to the model and it gave her an excellent down-to-the-centimeter accurate representation of the entire inside and outside. She could manipulate the model any way she wanted to, come in from any direction, and more than that, she could practice in real time from inside the model.

It was Virtual Reality taken to a logical conclusion. Take a scene, film it in 3-D, put them together with hyper accurate measurements and then project it into only the eyes, and you could do the most complex insertion in the world, in perfect safety, without any incriminating evidence that you practiced beating security measures. She loved being able to do this.

She spent time going through this scene repeatedly, reviewing all the routes she could use to approach the museum and full her plan until she had as perfect as she could make it. As much as she hated it, sewer tunnels were going to have to be her main ingress this time. She had to find a way to shed the gasses and filth that she'd pick up in them before starting step 2 of her plans.

She finally decided to compromise, a latex suit over the Catwoman suit should allow her to strip the grime and trash (and other noxious things) from her outfit before going into the interior. If she constructed it out of self-destroying latex, she could abandon it to simply dissolve in the sewer to be washed away later. There would be nothing to clean up.

Two weeks later, she was ready. The outer suit was on and working exactly the way she wanted it to. Her Catwoman suit was primed with new abilities, full maps of the interior and exterior she would be traveling through. She was as ready as she could be.

Two hours of slogging through the tunnels that carried excrement off to the sanitation department was enough to make her very glad of the nose filters she installed. No one should have to put up with that mess down there. She didn't really understand how sanitation workers did it.

Pipe after pipe, going through the large overflows under the street. She saw many rats and if they came at her, she killed them as fast as she could. Claws were good for that. Soon they left her alone since she'd already made dinner for them out of their dead comrades. Good thing I don't see any alligators. Don't know what I would do with them.

She would occasionally kick up a weapon of some kind, usually a knife, but there were several guns. She always made sure to pick them up and toss them back through the storm drains into the street. With luck, the cops would be able to use them to find the crooks they belonged to they'd be off the streets for a while.

Finally, the INS (Inertial Navigation System) in her suit told her that she had arrived under the museum. She looked around the pipe and saw the drain-pipe connecting all of the museum's waste to the sewer. With her night-vision, she found the weakest point of this sewer pipe. It shined so clearly it would be easy to open it up and be very nearly inside the museum. She crawled up the wall and hung there while the tiny devices in her claws and fingertips found the microscopic cracks everything has and began opening them up wider. Soon, the pipe section fell open enough for her to slide through her entrance and out into the wet areas under the museum. Quickly stripping out of the latex suit her assault on the museum began.

She left the pipe open so she could use it as an emergency exit if everything went wrong, and started her ascent through the walls, following pipes to get to the area she had designated as her penetration point.

Once she was inside the museum, it was easy to scale a wall and creep along it to the Egyptian Exhibit. The solid gold masks of Tut were under heavy security, but the statues and representations of Bast weren't under as much security. Typical, she thought. Everything for a man is highly protected and women are second best or ignored completely.

She turned on the ability to see the UV lasers, and had a care to make her suit disperse the motion sensors. Now it was only a matter of working her way to the specific exhibit and grabbing what she wanted.

You would think that they would stop using glass on these display cases. It's so easy to cut into them once you know how. Just a few moments were all it took to get the case open sufficiently to remove the statue. She dropped it into her backpack and moved to the next target.

She didn't care if the cases were open, she didn't care if the security guards caught on that they had been robbed, but she did care about removing all of the items that had a cat theme to them, like the jeweled collar, the masks, and some more statuary.

Once all she desired were secure, she moved out. This time instead of going through the sewers, she scaled out of the museum and onto the roof, as her plan called for. She started the process of changing her face and her body image to one that was more nondescript. A quick swing of the whip and she was walking along the power lines again to get where she needed to go.

When she was in an area where no one would see her, she pulled her mask back, grabbed the clothes she had stashed nearby and walked away from the scene.

None of the cops even suspected the bag lady that wandered around drunk, looking in trash cans as the person who escaped with several million dollars in artifacts.

She spent about two hours playing with her cats at her lair. She showed them the loot from the museum and arranged it all on the various shelves around her home. She accessed the Internet to find how one would make a shrine to Bast, and then spent some time setting it up. It wasn't complete, but it was a good start. She left an offering of a 1/4 of a tuna sandwich for her Goddess.

Then it was time to get down to business. Download of the logs showed that it was a very clean insertion, and that the latex layer just peeled off like it should have. Once again she noticed that there were some automatic processes running that she hadn't written.

One process again did terrain mapping of the rooms she moved through She hadn't instructed the suit to do more contour mapping, since she had already mapped the interior of the museum. Another subroutine identified various objects and gave a percentage chance to remove them and leave the museum, given the current plan. Still another accessed the Internet and appraised the items at current market value and what a fence could pay for them. Finally one subroutine compiled a list of potential buyers based on past purchases of such illegal gains. The processes were running in the background and seemed to just be informational in nature, and she didn't notice them until she went over the logs from the job.
All extremely useful, but she was still wondering where it came from.

She woke with a headache. Not a little headache, one that made you want to claw out your own brain with a spork just to get the pain to stop. She dimmed all the windows to opaque, turned on one light in the entire 24,000 square foot warehouse/lair, and spent the day sucking down pain killers and anti-inflammatories that she had on hand. She noticed that if she sucked on some pennies or some gold, her headache got a little better. If it went much longer, she would have to get something stronger from a pharmacy.

She didn't move very much, and her passel of cats came over to see if she was all right (and to beg food from her). She got up long enough to feed the baker's dozen of felines, but then she went right back to bed.

She needed to be working on her newest project, but she really felt too hideous to want to move. She did manage to pull on part of the outfit to surf the Internet for a while.

She giggled a little then groaned when the headlines all said that she had struck again. It was pretty obvious that Catwoman had invaded and taken the artifacts, if only because everything cat related was now in her possession. Well, it IS a blatant modus operandi.

She had carted off better than $15 million in artifacts. Since the Police had no idea where she was, they wouldn't be looking around the city to get them back. She considered moving the items to a more secure location, away from her home, but she finally decided not to. They were too beautiful, too precious she had to have them were she could see them. She didn't notice the purr that issued from her throat. She did note with pleasure that the subroutine that apparently wrote itself came up with a very accurate appraisal of all the merchandise she had stolen.

The screen light was too bright in her eyeballs, so she shut it all off and went back to sleep.

It took three days for her headache to recede enough to allow her to function close to normally. She stayed away from the light, and she turned the lights in her lair down as far as she could, but she still had a little ache in her head. Not one in the sinuses or in the back of her head, it would be right in the center of the brain, where she thought the pituitary gland would be located at. She hoped that the headache wasn't a harbinger of a tumor or something equally banal.

Since she still couldn't go out, she decided to tinker with the new project. She wanted to increase the memory capacity on her suit as high as current technology could. First on the list was, micro miniaturizing the actual structure of the memory chips. So far she had some good progress, and any corporation would be wild to get what she had already accomplished. She, however, wasn't happy.

Getting a terabyte of memory to fit into a silicon chip the size of a quarter of a standard postage stamp was impressive enough. Most inventors would be happy to finish with that and call it a success. After all, 10 terabytes was enough storage to put the entire printed material from the Library of Congress in digital format and carry it around. To have something that would fit into a space about the size of a standard SD memory card was a breakthrough of epic proportions.

She wanted to get it even smaller. Her ambition was to put a terabyte of storage in a space the size of a grain of sand. If she could get the crystalline structure to form correctly, as she made the chip, she could do it. This time, she had some purpose built nanobots doing the arranging of the planes and angles while the furnace was on to liberate the molecules from the solid they normally were. She had high hopes for this attempt.

Probability of success; twenty percent.

Hearing that voice in her ears, coming from all around her as it did, shocked her badly enough that she knocked over the furnace that was cooking the silicon.

Revised probability of success; zero percent.

"Who the hell are you? Where are you? How did you get in here?"

We are no threat to you, Catwoman. We are in your body, you injected us into your system. We have been endeavoring to make your life easier. we have no designation.

"You are in my body? I put you in there?"

Correct.

"Why in the hell would I do something like that?"

You wished for a better interface with your suit's computers. You created us and injected us. We have been learning and helping where we could.

"Wait, you're the nanobots I made?"

Correct.

"And you have been learning as I did stuff?"

Correct.

"Did you write those subroutines that I pulled out and isolated on my netbook?"

Correct.

"And you wrote the replacement programs that I still have installed in the suit?"

Correct and Incorrect. We wrote those programs, but they are not installed in your suit. They are installed in the on-board memory.

"On-board memory? What's that?"

As a means of facilitating your activities, including your research on the World Wide Web, we have created a small memory cache in your head. It is there we have our operating system, the utility programs you use, and any information we come across that may be useful to you.

"It's installed in my head? Where?"

Currently the storage is installed in the left ventricle of your brain. There are large spaces that are filled with fluid that cushion your brain from trauma, and we have inserted our memory cache in that area. The right ventricle contains the necessary computer components like the CPU and wireless card as well as the other necessary components of a "standard" computer.

"You keep talking like you are a spokesman, what's up with that?"

Given the finer and finer controls you have given us, we spontaneously developed Intelligence. I am speaking for the gestalt of the nanobots in your body. There is no need to name this unit, as it changes depending on which nanobot is where and which is unoccupied with other tasks.

"So you are an AI?"

Correct.

Shit. I created artificial intelligence. I don't know whether to be thrilled or panicked right now.

Elation would be the reasonable reaction.

"Yes, I know, but the specter of artificial intelligence and all the horror stories about that.... Wait, you can read my mind?"

Correct. We monitor the chemical changes in your brain and can determine what you are thinking by which neural pathways become active. Currently we are at approximately 72% accuracy, with the exponential climb of accuracy the longer we are with you.

"Wonderful. Did you transmit my thoughts to Lena Luthor when I was rescuing her?"

Correct. We had determined that it was 83% probable that you wished for her to hear that statement.

"Well, you need to cut that out. I'll tell you when I want my thoughts broadcast."

Compliance.

"So, how does my brain rate as a computer using the standard computer benchmarks?"

At this point the CPU that we built is operating at 88% efficiency, and can be compared to a 5 Gigahertz processor. The heat buildup is no problem as there are microcharges flowing through it, not the huge amounts of electricity that your current computers use. That is 5,000,000,000 FLOPS or "FLoating point OPerations per Second." We have ensured components have the Wireless capability to sync up with hotspots and transmit data at a maximum of 2 Gigabits per second. RAM memory is at 1 terabyte, and the ROM for storage is currently at 20 Exabytes. Five Exabytes would hold every word ever spoken by mankind since the beginning of the species. All of these can be raised if necessary to give you more capability. Eventually we will need to have an access port created for direct upload and download of other types of information if you wish to print hardcopies or install "standard" commercial programs.

Her jaw was in danger of falling off her face. "Um, no, I don't think I'll need additional capability for quite some time to come. How did you get that much memory space into such a small space in my head? For that matter, what power source are you using?"

Because of some ideas you had while you were sleeping, we were able to manufacture ultra fine grained memory chips. Working together we succeeded in layering the silicon in such a way that a massive amount of data storage would fit in a smallish area. The Current total area of the computer, all components and interfaces, can fit into a space the size of a baseball. The power source we are using is your own body's electrical currents. You will not have to worry about being overweight again, we are using 140 watts of bioenergy a day, enough to burn off approximately one pound of fat a day, and a meal will replace that easily. We have used your design centers, the section that allows you to make conceptual leaps of creativity, to foster our own development and growth. Your desire to eat copper and other metals is normal; we needed the raw materials to build more nanobots.

"So, what does this mean? I don't need the suit anymore?"

Incorrect. We have only created such systems that your body can handle, vision, olfactory, touch, hearing, health maintenance, computation and information display. We cannot protect you from bullets, high voltage electricity, or pad your falls. We also cannot ensure that you are able to climb vertical surfaces as you can now nor can we enhance your muscles more than we have already. We are currently capable of operating half of the functions you use, but many will have to remain with the suit. However, we can undertake the task of developing replacements for you if you wish us to.

"No, that's not necessary. So you maintain my health as well?"

Correct. You are our host and it is in our own best interest that we keep you healthy. We can instantly take care of some injuries; others will take longer to heal. We have removed any cancerous growths that we were able to identify, and we prevented your death from the injection you recently got.

"What do you mean? Injection? And did you get the tumor that was in my head?"

Your attempt to manifest your superpowers via the chemical injection. Your metagene abilities had already manifested, trying to manifest them again would have forced your body to combust. We channeled that energy into transmutation instead. Normally the metagene would change your sex as well as granting you powers, but in your case, the stresses of your research to create the Catwoman Suit Mark 1 caused the process to be prolonged, thus avoiding the sex change. The chemicals would have changed that, so it was determined that the optimum solution was to channel that energy into changing your body structure to female. The headache you have had for the past several days was an unfortunate side effect of our construction in your brain.

"So that's what happened. You said my powers were already manifested?"

Correct.

"So what are my powers? Super flexibility?"

The flexibility you possess is a natural side effect of the female form. With your pelvis widening, your legs have more room to rotate than it did before. The Testosterone did not bulk your muscles up, and the Estrogen helped them retain their suppleness. Your "Super Power" is called "Gadgeteering" according to one reference we have located. It is the ability to instantaneously and continually think of alternate ways to accomplish the goal you are working with. It is the genius flash of inspiration that happens so often to you that you fail to notice it anymore.

"What reference did you find this in?"

The Generic Universal Roleplaying System supplement called "Supers" from Steve Jackson Games.

Catwoman could only blink.

Three nights later, having done a major overhaul of her suit, she was again on the prowl. Her headache was gone, thankfully, and she felt so good that she wanted to run everywhere.

There is a limit you should be aware of in our flushing of bodily toxins. We can only flush the Lactic Acid from your muscles into your bladder for approximately 2.3 hours, The efficiency will drop off for an hour before we reach maximum capability. after that, there will be too much for us to deal with and you will have to rest.

Thank you for telling me that. It is, however, long enough to run a marathon, or to sprint I need to get away from places if I'm spotted, correct?

Correct.

Well, that will get me into and out of most of the buildings in and around New York City. Let's see how secure some of these penthouses are.

Since no response was called for, the nanobots didn't respond. She ran as fast as she could across a great many buildings in Lower Manhattan, and when she needed to, she jumped across the street to cling to the outside walls of buildings, and then shimmied up them to the roof. It allowed her to gain access to the exclusive apartments of The Silver Towers, home of the really rich and wealthy.

She scaled the building and found what she was looking for, someone who didn't seem to care that thieves could come in on the balcony. She extended her senses looking for anything that might trigger an alarm before she landed on the balcony.

She understood that she was safe from common alarms, since it was all located on the front door. She crept in through the balcony and moved to the spot that showed told her there was something hidden in the floor. She pulled back the carpet and found a floor safe that was her goal.

It didn't take any time at all to defeat the lock with a combination of her senses and the computer in her head. Soon the door was set aside and she started pulling out the gems and jewelry she wanted.

She placed all the items back in the safe, except for her loot, and then she locked it back up. She made sure the carpet was back where it started out from, and she absconded with the jewels and headed straight home.

Back, secure in her lair, she pulled all the sparklies out and looked at them. She spent hours letting them slither through her hands and over her body. She pulled the suit off so that she could better feel them, and used the fur comforter to actually lay down on them and revel in their coolness and their beauty. She felt like a princess.

When she tired of her play, she curled up in a ball on the fur and fell asleep with the jewels and jewelry all over her and under her. Her cats soon came over and lay down with her, on her, near her or whatever. It became a very big pile of cats.

The next morning, she woke, fed the 8 cats that were still with her (they were all feral strays and came and went as they would, she didn't try to keep them), and then gathered up all the loot from last night, packed it all in a Fed-Ex box, addressed it and put a pre-paid label on it. She then went across town and dropped the package into one of the many anonymous receptacles.

Won't Harvey Dent get a surprise when he opens up this box and finds his wife's jewelry in it. Bet he didn't even know it was missing.

It was a lot of fun to rob people blind and then give it all back, with a note chiding them for their lack of security. She just wished that she could see their faces when they opened the box, but unless they had a computer with a webcam in the direction of the place they opened the box, she wouldn't get to see their look of surprise and shock.

Frequency scanners have detected more chatter on the Green Lantern Frequency that you marked. There is something going on in Central Park involving at least one person who has a ring to communicate with the rest of the heroes. Do you wish to investigate?

"No. I don't want to have much to do with them. Just keep monitoring and if there is an unencrypted signal, I'd like to hear it, other than that, don't worry about it."

Compliance.

---

¹ Recent DNA testing has confirmed that Tutankhamen was the son of Akhenaton.

Cat's in the Cradle   Some decisions made mean that irreparable harm may happen to humanity, but will that stop Catwoman from actually doing it? And how much trouble will she be in with Jade? Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. This is a retcon of the story of Catwoman's further adventures. Detective Comics owns the character of Catwoman, Bruce Wayne and Black Canary.

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Give me a progress report.

We have completed 88.2% of the identity documents you have requested. They are scheduled for delivery over the next two days, excepting the documents that have yet to be inserted into appropriate databases. The patents are applied for and approved. The will is in all appropriate locations and indicating you are the designated heir of Professor Stephen Kyle.

Excellent. That means that we are on schedule.

Correct.

What is the probability of detecting the identity documents as faked?

To all intents and purposes, the documents are the creation of the National Security Agency. They are indistinguishable from genuine documents. Any attempt to verify their authenticity will alert us to monitor the inquiry allowing us to use appropriate countermeasures. There is a very small chance that high ranking members of security agencies will even hear there is concern. the probability that they become interested enough to authorize a deeper search for verification is less that 2.0108%. in that case, the document or documents will appear to have been issued by another agency. The probability of contact with the agency in question is .0576%. this is the current worst case scenario. do you find the risk acceptable?

Yes. Do you have the list I asked for?

Affirmative. You will find it in the "working folder" section of the onboard memory. It has current contact information for all the companies you specified, complete contact information for their CEOs, as well as current financial statements from all their accounts. We continue to advise that you ignore Wayne Enterprises and simply sell to LuthorCorp or Stark Industries even more so with the additional bidders you indicated. A public auction of the type you have proposed has an unacceptable risk using the criteria normally applied. There is a 72% chance you will be discovered and revealed and/or arrested.

Understood, however I’m trying to set up a bidding war here. These particular corporations and governments have the resources to pay for and exploit the tech. From there, I can make a lot of money.

If money is the overall goal, may we again suggest you allow us to start playing with the electronic financial transfers to siphon money from various locations, a few cents at a time? It has the appeal of being incredibly lucrative with a minimal amount of danger to you. there is also the stock market option. at this time. our success rate in tests indicated as return of a 7% low to a high of 15% using moderately conservative investing.

Money is not the overriding objective. If that was all I was after, my second-story jobs are more than sufficient for my needs. The purpose of this is to get the tech out there and to pretty much "stick it" to Jade and her allies. If Catwoman’s name is attached to the offer, those that truly have sufficient resources to exploit this technology will know of me and how to retain me. The joy I get creating new tech is greater than the pleasure of breaking into homes and taking their trinkets just to send them back. That’s a different type of internal stimulus.

If the "high" is the goal, we can provide that to you too.

Thank you for the offer, but I don’t want a TekWar-kind of addiction to start.

Unknown reference.

Look up the "Tek Series" by William Shatner. Someone should have put up an illegal eBook copy at some point on the Internet by now.

There was silence for about twenty seconds.

Reference assimilated. There is no danger of becoming addicted to the stimulus as we can prevent the addiction as well. HOWEVER, your caution is understood.

Please finish the insertion of the documents, then confirm the patents are absolutely legally locked up so that they are in no danger of being revoked and the legal documents making me Professor Kyle’s heir. Thank you for all your work.

Thanks are unnecessary, but appreciated. There is another matter we must draw your attention to at this time.

What is it?

There seems to be another Artificial Intelligence that is on the collective World Wide Internet. We have not encountered it directly, but we have seen signs of it in various databases.

That is not encouraging. If you faced it directly, could you overcome it?

Negative.

Then I need to come up with intrusion countermeasures for you to use in case of a direct encounter. I don’t want my brain being hacked by another AI.

Understood.

The snow was falling outside the offices of Wayne Enterprises when Bruce Wayne opened the package delivered by messenger. A pair of DVDs in crystal cases fell onto his desk. They were labeled "One" and "Two". There were no other notes, no paper of any kind. The only return address was for a local post office here in Chicago. His investigators had already tracked down the postmaster of that office and found out that the package he was looking at had come to the postmaster in another envelope asking him to remail it from that post office.

Tracking things backwards led them to another postmaster, and finally to the mail carrier who had picked it up from a local drop box on his designated route. This was impossible to trace it any further.

Good spycraft, he thought to himself.

There was a memo from the chief of security; Barnes stated that there were no viruses or fingerprints on any of the items. The various identification numbers for the physical media showed as anonymous purchases from a website in such miniscule quantities that it couldn’t be traced.

He picked up the DVD labeled "One" and inserted it into a new DVD player attached to an isolated monitor. He picked up the remotes and began.

Snow was on the HD TV for a few moments and then it cleared. On the screen a stylized eye appeared. He recognized it, knowing it was the symbol used by the person identified as "Catwoman" in New York. The subtitles came up and followed the voiceover exactly.

"Hello Mr. Wayne. I am Catwoman. I have some technology that may interest you. Please watch this DVD entirely. If you require further verification, have someone research the information online and with the second DVD. Since you are watching this, your computer technicians have informed you that there are no viruses on these DVDs. This is important. Many of the documents I reference are available on the second DVD."

The screen cleared and he saw a construction worker standing in an empty lot.

"Hello. My name is Charles Cunningham. I am the owner and crew chief of Cunningham Construction. My company is here to build a wall. I’m told that I need to read this document first." He flashed a document on a clipboard towards the camera and Bruce froze the picture there. He couldn’t make out much of the print, but he recognized that it was simply a statement.

"’This construction crew has been retained to build a wall. This wall will be built out of multiple items that are commonly available at any construction center in the country. The specific materials are masonry, steel, glass, wood and aluminum. Part of the wooden section is going to be sheet-rocked. You will see a time lapse of the construction progress, including nighttime views. There will be four inset pictures from different views while the wall is constructed.’" He lowered the page.

"As you can see currently the Home Depot has delivered a truckload of supplies. My men are going to start the construction. I am told that there is a regular speed copy of this time lapse on disk two, whatever that means."

He walked away from the camera and started yelling at people. Sure enough, four little windows showing different views appeared in each corner. He found that he could select any of those views he wanted and could watch the activity from them. Each showed the same scene from a different perspective, obviously from the North, the South, the East, and West if the position of the sun was any indication. The main view seemed to be directed to the North East, showing the best perspective on the actual construction.

The brick wall quickly took shape. The wooden extended from the top of the bricks using plywood and two by fours. Next, steel girders were placed above the wood. They extended at a 45-degree angle to the ground, helping to brace the wooden layer. Bruce saw that each transition from one section to the next added a slope until the glass portion of the wall was parallel to the ground, fifty feet in the air with girders to support everything to keep it from tipping over.

He ran this section back and forth several times trying to understand why someone would build a wall that was deliberately tipped. He selected the various views and saw that the wooden section had the two-by-fours extended and anchored into the ground, and the steel girders holding that section were also braced into the ground. Everything was leaning on each other, and looked more and more like it would fall. The front view looked like someone had deliberately built a lean-to fifty feet tall which was only braced by the support beams on the corners. A very odd piece of construction.

What made it even odder was that he couldn’t see any concrete, mortar, nails, rivets or screws to attach each of these segments to each other, or even to build them correctly. There were no air guns to drive nails into the frame so the plywood and sheetrock would stay attached to each other. It looked like they were constructing it with duct tape.

The time obviously changed, since the sun changed perspective and finally set. Lights on cherry pickers and cranes used during construction pointed to every part of the wall, guaranteeing that the wall wasn’t tampered with through the night. If the time stamp was altered it was impossible to tell. Dawn came and eventually a different car drove into the lot. A man got out, opened a bag and walked to the main camera.

"Hello. My name is John Gale. I am a professional acrobat and free climber. I have been hired to demonstrate some technology to you."

He held up a pair of full hand gloves and a pair of climbing shoes. The shoes were slightly modified to fit tightly to Mr. Gale’s feet. He put them down on the trunk of the car and picked up the camera. He pointed it the gloves and shoes, insuring a very tight close up.

Bruce occasionally went climbing recreationally; he could tell the equipment was standard REI climbing gear, with the exception of a Velcro strap to make sure the shoes fit tightly, preventing them from slipping from the climber’s feet. He had even used those particular gloves at times.

John put the camera back on the tripod that had been holding it. Bruce paused the playback, rewound it, and picked another view to see what kind of camera it was. He saw a standard TV station shoulder camera, used all over the country. It was large and bulky, but the video and audio fidelity were high quality.

Bruce switched back to the main feed and watched. John sat on the trunk of the car and pulled out a strip of standard medical EEG contacts. He placed one each on the back of his hands, and one each on the back of his heels. He then slowly pulled on the gloves, and showed the camera that he was attaching a portion of the glove on the inside to the contact pad, and then pulling the Velcro straps tight around his wrist. He then did the same thing with his shoes, attaching them to the contact pads then making sure they were tight on his feet. He did a few minutes of stretches then walked to the wall.

Bruce watched as he placed his hands on the brickwork and started scaling it. It was somewhat impressive, but any competent climber could do it by working his fingers and toes into the cracks in the brickwork. It was what happened next that impressed Bruce.

He continued to scale the wall, up the wooden section this time, while it was at a negative 22-degree slope. His fingers were touched to the wood, then his next hand, then his feet, the classic three point climbing technique. There weren’t any handgrips, how was it managed?

A sixth feed came up on the screen, a camera from the point of view of the climber. He was wearing goggles of some sort, and Bruce assumed that was where the feed was coming from. Each of the cameras continued to track his progress up the wall. This continued until he was hanging upside down from the glass section of the wall, clinging to it like a human fly.

In every case, John didn’t actually grab anything, he just put his palm on the surface he was climbing on, and then his toes on the same surface, moved up and then repeated it. The glass section was the most impressive thing Bruce had ever seen. No chalk, no belay, no safety equipment of any kind, he just placed a palm on the surface and then moving to the next area. John was even able to move around the end of the glass section and stand on the top area. All the camera views showed him doing this, and there didn’t seem to be any means of support.

The display changed and showed the Catwoman eye again.

"Mister Wayne. This demonstration is of a technology that will allow anyone to climb any surface. This will allow the wearer of the gloves and shoes to cling to an average building and free climb up that surface as high as they wish.

"This technology is for sale if you submit the winning bid. You are among a group of people offered the possibility of exclusive rights to this technology. The purchaser will receive access to the entire process, all development notes and production details as well as software to control this technology. And, with a modest annual royalty payment, this insures your continued exclusive rights.

"First, the actual gloves and shoes with all technology intact will be provided. It is open for analysis by your people, duplication, as well as replication in any design you require. Second, there are microprocessors that are part of the device that control the mechanism; they fit into one square centimeter. The processor involved currently has a benchmark of twenty gigabytes. Third is the memory chip that has a capability of storing one terabyte of information which also fits into a square centimeter. If necessary, I will point you toward batteries suitable to power all of this which will also fit into an extremely small area. I believe these batteries are currently used to power those holiday cards that play music or record voices.

"On the second disk are documents and affidavits from the people you met, the camera operators, and those who provided the building materials. Lab tests, bench tests, as well as incremental loads tests with pictures are also on the next DVD. There is one more thing you should see to properly evaluate the product I offer."

The picture cut back to the wall. Mr. Cunningham was standing there. He held up a remote control, showed it to the camera, and pushed a button. The entire wall fell apart into its individual parts, each brick, each board; all the components fell to the ground. In a matter of seconds, the whole wall was down, including the supports used for stability.

Catwoman’s voice continued. "This wall was assembled using an alternate version of this same technology, using the product in a double-sided sticky tape configuration. The only thing holding this entire wall in its assembled state was the intellectual property offered. Now these building materials are ready to be used in any other design required. This technology you are bidding on can easily be altered to become the ultimate fastener or the penultimate glue, among other simple application. You are really bidding on four pieces of technology.

"Disk Two also contains bidding protocol. Included is my PGP public key. It will ensure encryption your bids to me. I am assuming that your PGP key on the Wayne Industries site currently is accurate. I have included copies of your financial statements; even the ones you think are hidden in various places. I know your current financials.

"If your bid is not encrypted, I will not accept it. If I cannot decrypt your bid, I will not accept it. You should also be aware of the caliber of the other bidders; you will find a list of the people I have also sent their own copies of this DVD to on Disk 2 as well. Consider, do you really desire one of them gaining this technology and not you?

"I look forward to hearing from you soon."

Bruce Wayne had not been so thoroughly stunned in many years. He watched the entire DVD again, selecting different views and looking at the information included. He called several people together and had them go through the DVD with him, getting their thoughts on this technology.

All the information on the two DVDs was scrutinized, processed by the best minds in his company. The finest technicians available to him went over all of the videos, engineers and scientists looked at the supporting documents.

The pronouncement of his staff two weeks later was that it was genuine and fraud was impossible. The original people involved in this production were found and interviewed.

Now Bruce had to consider if he would bid on this technology at all. The price for this was likely to be prohibitive given who all were bidding against him.

The bids came in, just as she had envisioned. The corporations she had sent the DVDs to had already bid, Stark Industries, LuthorCorp, Wayne Enterprises and Rescue Equipment International. She had gotten the bids from the NSA, the Secretary of the Defense, Homeland Security, the Russian Security Forces, the Israeli Special Forces and Mossad. She had considered sending it to the French, but they had too many problems and not enough cash to utilize the tech correctly. She was still waiting on the bids from the Japanese and the English, both the Military and their Secret Service.

Jade has arrived and is standing against the wall.

Thank you. Using her peripheral vision, she saw the contour of the bubble that Jade traveled in. Jade had apparently modified it to make the surface of the bubble project the scene behind her, from the perspective of the viewer, similar to the optical camouflage that Kyle had developed.

"That’s a pretty neat trick Jade. You will have to show me how you manage to do that with an energy field rather than something physical."

Jade materialized exactly where Catwoman’s computer predicted she would appear. "It’s an even neater trick being able to see me when I’m invisible. You will have to show ME how you do that. Or are you planning on selling that technology to everyone as well?"

Catwoman leaned back in the chair she was sitting in. "No, not planning on selling anymore technology for a while, well, maybe the stealth suit and optical camo, but that’s it. I’m keeping my best tech for myself."

"I thought we had an agreement."

"No, you ordered me not to keep researching that stuff. But I never agreed to it."

"You may not have agreed to it Selena Kyle, but you did agree to it when you were Professor Stephen Kyle. Or didn’t you think your DNA scans were going to show that you and he were the same person?"

Selena stood and walked over to her kitchenette. "I had hoped that the changes in my DNA from male to female were significant enough that it would look like we might be related, but not the same person. I assume your magic ring there told you about what happened?"

"My ring actually had already identified you as a metahuman with the ability to invent things, then a female showing up at the same time that Stephen dies with the same DNA sequence, with minor changes, and having the same power? That’s a bit too much of a coincidence for anyone.

"So, what happens now? You have started disseminating the information you promised to keep out of humanity’s hands, and now there’s a huge problem."

Selena’s laugh rang through the warehouse. "A problem for you maybe, not for me. This is going to make me very rich."

"Isn’t protecting humanity from itself important?"

Jade got a withering look from Selena. "No. Humanity is going to kill itself no matter what happens despite your little group of do-gooders. There are always going to be those who are bad who will hurt people, simply because they can, take whatever they want, it’s not just the poor who are always with us.

"Look at that criminal ‘Heatstroke’ or that giant ghost that showed up in Las Vegas. Or that group of meta gang members out in Arizona. None of them are nice people and you want ME to keep my mouth shut when I have the devices that can level the playing field? There aren’t enough "good" metas out there to police the bad ones, and no one can do it alone. American Dream may be a good girl who plays well with people like Thora and Giganta and others, but she can’t be everywhere at once. Regular humans deserve to have police who can take down people like Heatstroke if necessary. I’m making sure they can."

"While you go and rob people blind? Taking whatever you can get your hands on?"

"That’s a bullshit argument and you know it. I break into places, yes. I show these idiots that they aren’t nearly as secure as they think they are. I take a little bit as ‘payment’ for my effort and work, for putting my body on the line. That’s only like having a subscription fee to my security services. The museum? I’ve settled any issues with the actual owners of record, and made sure to take credit for it, I didn’t want some minimum wage rent-a-cop getting in trouble. I’m not returning the items. The owners seem quite happy." Selena didn’t bother to tell Jade that the payments were under the table and in cash, the insurance companies and the IRS didn’t need to know that detail, neither did Jade. "The rescue of Lena Luthor? You want me to feel guilty about killing a man who had kidnapped one of your little ‘hero’ girls? Not likely.

"Fact of the matter is that I’m a mercenary. I don’t give a rat’s ass about the ‘right or wrong’ of a given situation, I just care about myself. If someone pays me to do something, I do it. If I get some visceral satisfaction out of it, what’s your problem with that, it’s fantastic. Despite what you may think, I’m not a bad girl. I don’t go out and slaughter people, and I can help you if you hire me. But if you want to make an enemy of me, that’s fine too".

We must inform you that agents of the military and the NSA are surrounding the perimeter and that American Dream is with them.

"You can tell your allies out there to go away, I can escape if I need to. Oh, wait. Nevermind. I’ll do it."

Tap into the Jade frequencies.

Compliance.

***Listen up, you Green Lantern Ring pledges. I’m not a threat to you unless you make me one. I can be useful, but only if you leave me the hell alone. I won’t work for someone who is trying to force my cooperation. I don’t have any noble buttons to push there’s not a heroic bone in my body. Hire me and you’ll get the best I’ve got. Unfortunately for you, that goes for the bad guys too. Want me to be part of your little band of merry girls? I will on my OWN terms, not yours. American Dream, clear out or regret that you and Jade are responsible for imperiling everyone here.***

The look on Jade’s face as Catwoman broadcast on her super-secret frequency was priceless. Catwoman didn’t waste any time, she pulled the hood of her suit up, limbered up the whip and prepared to sell herself dearly.

Jade didn’t look convinced at all, but Catwoman heard the back and forth, the various elements reacting to her broadcast and the ultimatum she laid down seemed much more convinced. Finally, one person broke through.

***Catwoman, this is Black Canary. May I enter your Lair?***

***Since you ask me so politely, you may. Bring Dream with you as well, may as well have all the super-de-doopers in one place.***

The side door she used all the time opened, Black Canary and American Dream entered. Dream was fully armed and ready for a fight, spoiling for one in fact, the song bird on the other hand looked cool as Tweety in a cage.

Catwoman looked at Dream. It was obvious that there would be no love lost between them. "Keep your team outside. I don’t want any of my Egyptian Artifacts destroyed by their clumsy attempts to apprehend me."

Dream’s eyes narrowed. The hatred shot at Catwoman was palpable enough to slip in if you weren’t watching where you were walking. "They are staying outside, but if you try anything..."

"Spare me your useless threats you brick. I saw what they did to you. You were so out of it that you didn’t see everything done to you. Tell me, have they shown you the real videos yet?"

To her credit, Dream didn’t rise to the bait. She crossed her arms her hands dangling near a pair of Glock 9MM pistols, ready to speed draw them if necessary.

Jade took a moment to create some chairs in an impromptu lounge group for everyone to sit at. Catwoman went to get refreshments.

Once seated, Black Canary started things off. "May I call you Selena? We seem to be at something of an impasse. You are obviously capable of being a superheroine as any of us are. Frankly, you make some good points that Jade shared with us all. You can be an asset. So my question is, what do you want to become that asset? Frankly, there’s too much of New York for me to take care of all of it myself."

A scoffing grunt came from the reinforced chair that Dream was sitting in, and Catwoman ignored it. "I don’t want to be a superhero. I’m not. I’m an inventor. I like pretty things. I like inventing new things. I will continue to do so and I will continue to release them to those whom I chose so that they can compete with you all. I can make things that will overcome your invulnerability Dream, that will silence your Cry Canary, and which will make your tech ineffective Jade. But I can also make things which will keep the meta bad guys from breaking out of their cells.

"I can stop crimes I see that the police can’t handle, and that’s all I will promise to do. Don’t bother me, and I won’t be a thorn in your sides."

Canary nodded. "I can agree to that. I would like to ask you to stop robbing the jewelry stores, but when asked, everyone has confirmed what you take isn’t nearly what they would have lost if you hadn’t stopped the crime in progress. I note that the police have pretty much stopped pursuing you in most of those cases."

Dream spoke up. "When you put one of the guards in the hospital with that damned whip when he got in your way, I can understand why the cops backed the hell off."

Jade held up her hands to try to get Dream to calm down, but Catwoman’s head whipped around, temporarily flattening her ears. "Are you and I going to have a problem?"

Dream looked her deep in her eyes. "Yes. That facility you broke into and the data you stole, it wasn’t just a few computer records. You wound up paralyzing one of the techs in there. You hit him just right and his spinal cord got severed. He’s a quadriplegic now, same spinal injury that ultimately killed Christopher Reeve. He is a friend of mine. He analyzed most of the elint that my team got and was assigned to that facility because I asked for him. You completely fucked up his life, and now you want me to be buddy-buddy with you? Not going to happen."

Catwoman kept looking at her. "I was unaware that the tech you mention was hurt so severely. Let me look at the films. Give me a moment."

She ordered the computer to pull up that incident. It replayed in her eyes showing her dropping from the ceiling where she had painstakingly crawled to get to the data center, and she was surprised to see a tech in there working. She did a quick karate-chop to the back of the neck to knock him unconscious and he dropped.

Catwoman nodded. She looked at Dream again. "I was unaware that he took such a severe injury from a simple karate strike."

Canary interrupted. "Those kinds of knock-out hits are the thing of popular fiction, they never work well in the real world unless you know exactly what you are doing. With your augmented strength, you could easily do permanent injury."

Dream nodded. "You separated the bones in his spine at C5 and C6, right at the base of his neck. He can’t even breathe on his own anymore. You would have been kinder if you had just killed him."

"If I found a way to fix him, would that be better?"

"It would be a start."

She nodded. "Then I will work on it. But if you invade here or try to arrest me, it won’t get done. Tell you what, if I manage to create a synthetic nerve that will bridge the damage, I’ll donate it to the medical community. Will that make it better?"

Dream looked confused. "Yeah, I think it would. But how do we keep it from the greedy corporations who only want to make money off it?"

Jade spoke up. "Easy, we donate it to the Christopher Reeve Foundation for Spinal Research and let THEM have the tech and sole oversight of the patents. There are attorneys I know who are very good at writing unbreakable patents, trust me. The foundation won’t make money off another’s suffering. I think this is a good compromise. Is it a deal?"

Catwoman looked into Dream’s eyes. "Deal," she said.

Dream nodded. "Deal."

Black Canary spoke up again. "I can agree to it and I think we have a détente now. I’m very happy about. I hated living in a city that felt like an armed camp, Not even Giganta could cover a third of it. I will spread the word to the cops and the NYBI that you aren’t a threat and can be retained for complex problems."

Dream added "And I can start the word being spread around the government agencies that you can be worked with."

Jade caught Catwoman’s attention. "And I will keep you in mind for a retainer if there is something that needs your special touch, acceptable?"

Catwoman nodded. "I think I can live with that. Don’t tell them where I live now. I don’t want to have to move again. I could use some hand to hand lessons if you would oblige me Canary?"

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Note from the author: Yes, this means you may use Catwoman and her tech in your stories. Please give me a holler and let me know what is up before it is posted, but reasonable story lines where Catwoman's tech would fit are good. Like using the nanobots to regrow spinal nerves, or bypass the Barbie Chip and so on.

Sandy Claws By Maid Joy Catwoman acts as protector of children and finds some disturbing realities. Things only get worse the deeper into the investigation she goes. A simple thief, not any more. A Mercenary? Maybe if someone were paying her bill. Story threads start weaving together. Detective Comics owns the copyright to Catwoman. This is a retroactive contunity, or a Retcon of the same character. Other characters are copyright their respective authors.

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Author's Note: I had originally intended this for an entry into the Christmas Competition, but it kind of got away from me. However, the story is solid and I think it stands well on its own. In this story is a scene that has actually been happening. Unfortunately there is no Catwoman or any superhero to bring the clods to justice. Find more information at Thieves steal Christmas toys for needy.

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Catwoman sat on the rooftop overlooking the street. She had been out here every night for the last week.

Someone had been targeting storage containers. Containers that the Marines had rented to store their seasonal danegeld before being the goody-goody good boys to all the children when they pass it out. While she could get behind the "giving to the poor and needy", it was a fairly opaque attempt to make all of the United States love the military and not see them as the Twenty-First Century equivalent of the Praetorian Guard.

But even when the military was trying to look harmless and innocent to all the US, those who would steal that from those who actually DID need them were even less than the leeches they had crawling on them.

So she was here, sitting in the cold wind, watching for the thieves.

She had already caught several petty idiots who thought a pair of bolt cutters and some time would reap them rich rewards. Tying them up and leaving them in the street for the cops to find hadn't been much of a problem really, but that didn't get her the Grinches who thought they could make a buck off this scam. She knew because she questioned them while they were begging for pain drugs after she broke a couple bones. They would heal, it was only a couple fingers that she bent backwards, and she did give them some morphine after they gave her the information she wanted.

She smiled to herself when she thought there would be a few less light fingers working the crowd in the New Year. Hard to pick a pocket when your hand was bandaged up.

But she still hadn't found the people she wanted. They were apparently pretty canny. They knew that all kinds of gifts would be donated to the Toys for Tots program, from real toys and stuffed animals to DVD players and TVs. Their MO was to break into the storage building, go through everything, and remove the valuable stuff. Then they could sell it on the black market for five or six times what they "paid" for it.

This was especially true when there was a super popular toy like a "Tickle Me Elmore" that came out a few years back. Fist fights had broken out over that toy, and it was stupid. It was only a toy. If you were going to beat the crap out of someone, make it something of value, not something that would break in a month.

She glanced around to all the various security cameras that she had tapped into, just to make sure they were working. She didn't bother with tapping the wires since those could be hacked, she tapped into the feeds directly from the lens, and had them available along the sides of her peripheral vision.

There is movement on Camera Number 3.

Thank you. She called up the feed for Camera 3 and noticed that it was just another dog, coming around and sniffing at the storage cubicles, looking for something. She watched it with half her attention, noting that it seemed very determined to find whatever it was looking for.

Soon, it sniffed at one storage entrance, and it jerked its head up in recognition. It turned and crapped right in front of that storage area and it moved on.

THAT is certainly unusual for a dog. I wonder what’s up with it?

Unknown. We will continue to monitor that camera feed to see if anything else occurs.

Do you still have that layout of the storage spaces they rented in this facility? If you do, please display them as yellow and overlay the map of this facility.

Soon a 3D display of the facility came online in her left eye. It had yellow highlights on some of the buildings and their doors. All of them were external and none in the large climate controlled warehouse that was also part of this facility. Apparently the dog had crapped in front of one of the three storage places they had rented.

Even odder. See if the dog is on any other camera feed.

Compliance.

Soon displays came up and disappeared or minimized themselves off to one side, and soon enough, she saw the dog again. Sure enough, he was sniffing around in the complex some more, and once again he had crapped in front of a storage cube. This one was highlighted in yellow to her inner vision.

If he craps in front of the last one, make sure you keep the dog under surveillance. That's pretty proof positive that the dog is somehow involved, probably in sniffing out a particular scent.

They watched the feed together, Catwoman and nanobots. When the dog stopped in front of the last storage space, she started moving from building to building, going as fast as she could to get to the area where the dog was.

She assumed that the dog was trained to alert whoever its master was, so she moved as silently as she could. She knew the suit would cut off her scent, and just to make sure that there was no possibility of giving herself away, she pulled up the lower half of her mask. All that was now exposed were her eyes.

Soon enough, she was where the dog was. At first, she had a time trying to run and jump from area to area to get someplace while watching an internal display, but she finally got the hang of it and now it was no problem. When she got near the dog, she pulled up the various camera views that would let her know where the dog was, and slithered down the rooftop to get near where the dog would be.

She had to control her breathing so as not to alert the dog, he came around the corner, no longer wandering aimlessly, but now moving with some purpose. She pulled out one of her tracker bugs, in the shape of a tick, and tossed it at the dog. The various calculations the computer came up with gave it an optimal insertion trajectory.

As soon as the bug was in place, she was receiving a signal telling her the dog’s location. She pulled up a wire frame map of the surrounding area, and let the beacon stay present on it.

She finally called up the camera feeds of the three places the toys were stored in and kept them continuously running in her head. She wanted to know when someone showed up to start taking advantage of the recon work the dog just did.

She actively searched the camera feeds for signs of someone entering the area somehow. She wanted to know if they were climbing the fence or if they actually had codes to get into a locked down storage facility at three in the morning.

She was taken completely by surprise when simultaneously all three camera feeds were interrupted by a photo of the angle being put over the camera lens.

What the...? Where did they come from?

Unknown. Switching to secondary cameras.

She had left a few micro cameras hooked up to all the various cameras so that she could quickly film and splice in a segment that had nothing on it for the guards and Betamax tapes in case of an unexpected situation. They each sat on the camera mounts, not on the camera itself, she hoped whatever had interfered with the primary cameras would not have impaired these.

She could still see, on all three feeds, someone climbing down the wall near the camera. By changing the view of her camera a bit, she could see a photograph placed in front of the camera lens.

Why go hi-tech when low-tech works just as good? Watching all three people move at one time, in three different places meant they were coordinating their efforts somehow. That also left her with a huge quandary. How was she going to neutralize three separate targets all by herself?

Suggestions? she asked her computer.

You can attack each one individually and take them. The problem is how much time do you have?

Yes. I guess I'll have to 'whisker' it.

She went toward the nearest first. The person going into the third of the storage units was only a few doors down from her current perch. First thing was to bring out the full stealth capability of her suit, making sure that she blended correctly with the surroundings.

In a few moments, she was above the doorway that was in the process of opening. The high-security lock was apparently not secure enough. She heard the rattle of the door rolling up and his footsteps going in.

She crept over the edge of the roof, and into the storage shed. She made sure to stay to the rooftop, and to crab crawl her way into the middle of the area. She turned on one of the backwards-facing cameras that her goggles had built into it, and watched him.

She had to admit that he was good. If she didn't know that he was here, she could have very easily missed it in the next few moments. She hung still and waited for him to move around.

He pulled out a blue LED flashlight, a color that wouldn't ruin his night vision, and one that put out just enough light for him to see by. He was shining it over the unwrapped presents all around him.

Soon he had worked his way over to where she waited, and she dropped directly down on him.

His face smacking into the concrete below her position was very satisfying to her. She wanted to spend a bit more time and make it even better for him, but she didn't have the luxury. A quick 'goodnight kiss' and a zip-tie set of shackles and she was off to the next area.

She noted that they had cleaned up the shit the dog left.

The next guy was getting some of the gifts out. He was laying his haul on a rapidly filling 20 by 20 tarp.

She waited until he moved outside with another package then she slipped into the unit and waited for him. He walked in, quiet as a ghost, she sprang.

She really hadn't meant to break his neck, but there was nothing to do for it now. It was one more corpse the cops would discover. Now she was on the hook for murder.

Query: How do these three people plan on removing these items from the premises?

That's a good question. For that matter, just as high on the list was "how did they get in?"

She moved over to the "tarp" thing. From what she could see it was just a giant piece of cloth, with a cable of some sort around the outside. She assumed that it was going to be used to pick it up somehow, but when it's filled with hundreds of pounds of toys, how could they lift it?

She looked up. Nothing but power lines above her....

Wait. Power lines....

She increased the magnification on her eyes. Soon she spotted some equipment that wasn't standard Electric Company issue. Do a search, but that looks like a portable winch to me.

It conforms to the shape and dimensions of a fifty ton winch that is hanging from the power lines. At max load, the power lines won't be able to hold that up.

But how likely is it that these people are going to put it under a fifty ton load? Just a few hundred pounds should be enough, and if they distribute the load to other lines, they should be able to get a lot of stuff out.

Affirmative. Scanning for other anomalies.

The two other winches were easy to find now that she and the nanobots knew what to look for. It appeared that each guy was going to target one storage room, take what he could, put it all in a giant pouch made from the tarp, then haul it up to the power lines. From there, if they were clever, the anti-elves could get it out of the storage area and to where ever they needed to put it.

She weighed her options. She could let one guy get away with his loot to find out where all the rest was at, or she could interrogate them once she captured them. She didn't need to know how they were doing all this, so she opted to interrogate them both.

As soon as she thought this, she ran to the other guy who was just finishing up his robbery. He had the tarp all folded up and was using a remote control to get the winch to spiral down a cable for him to hook up. He soon impacted the wall with his face as Catwoman plowed into him from the back.

Even blindsided as he was the idiot decided to put up a fight. He lashed back with a kick to get whomever it was off him. He then proceeded to pull a Crocodile Dundee-style 'knife' from someplace on his body. He turned around spoiling for a fight.

She decided to give him one. She was too close for her whip, so she lashed out with her claws to blind him with his own blood streaming into his eyes. She hit solidly, but he did too, raking his knife across her left ribcage.

Pain exploded in her head. Vaguely she heard the nanobots alarm stating they needed to start suturing the wound. Purely mental alarms were going off in her head and she was dropping into shock very quickly.

Primary on her mind was "My suit didn't protect me."

She operated on automatic, jumping high into the air and landing on the roof. Her hand was covering the wound, and he looked like a pirate with the knife in his teeth as he climbed the wall to get to her.

Use your whip.

Just as he reached the roof and was standing up, she realized that he had a long distance weapon. She pulled the whip from around her waist and sent it hurtling at him at the speed of sound. When it cracked it wrapped around the arm that was holding the knife.

She saw him start to turn the knife to cut her whip, and she decided to get serious. She had the tip of her whip dig into his arm, just as if it was adhering to a wall or line, and then she pulled.

With her enhanced strength, a large chunk of his forearm was ripped off him. She whipped it back and at the backstroke had the whip release the useless meat, to continue to fly off behind her. She sent the whip back at him with all her strength.

A few minutes later she realized that she was literally flaying him alive, having pulled nine more ten inch long and two inch wide chunks of flesh off him. He was shrieking and had long since dropped the knife. She stopped and stood there confused.

The bleeding is contained. It will take an hour or more to fully close the wound. Please try to keep your activity level low until it is fully closed up.

With a wordless acknowledgment, she went over to the guy. He was bleeding all over the place and probably wouldn't be moving at any point. But she took the precaution of tying him up as well.

Then several things hit her at once.

She was wounded.
She hurt like hell.
Her suit wouldn't protect her from cutting or slashing objects.
The nanobots had acted to save her life.
She just beat the shit out of someone with her whip.
He climbed up after her.
He was unconscious.
Her body really didn't need the adrenalin pumping through it.
They still had to have a way out of this place.

She looked down at his gloved hands. They were standard climbing gloves. She pulled one of his gloves off and looked closer.

There, on the tips of the fingers and the palms of each hand, were microscopic metal hairs. Too tiny to see with the naked eye. And on the back of his hand was an EEG pad, to take the impulses from his brain to those little hairs.

He was using HER tech to break in here.

She checked his shoes as well, and sure enough there was the same tech. All she could do was curse silently.

Soon the pain in her side faded as the nanobots continued to do their job. By that time, she had moved down to the ground and was inspecting the winch and the tarp. Sure enough, apparently the tech had been adapted to make a giant piece of Velcro that all the items were stuck to. Fold the tarp over and there would be no place for the stuff to fall to, and the winch didn't have any hooks on it either, it adhered through her tech to the line, pulling it all up quickly to the power lines.

Just to be sure, she shimmied up to the power line. The three winches were designed to be moved around on a power line, grounding themselves out and keeping the voltage from going through to the ground. The 'cable' was nothing like metal. It was a cable made of plastic threads, intertwined and probably as strong as a steel cable, but being plastic it wouldn't transmit the electricity through to the people using these items.

She felt like beating herself. She was such an idiot to allow this tech out of her claws. And now she was enabling people to use it for crimes.

Time to clean up.

It had been hours, but she was 'safe' back in her new Lair. Since everyone knew the location of her last one, she decided to move and really make it hard to be found. She was under no illusions that probably Jade knew where she was located at now, but hoped it would keep everyone else from finding her.

She put the tarps and the winches into a container that she knew was safe and where anything dangerous to her could be contained. She could examine them later at her leisure.

But for now, she needed to lay down for a while.

She knew the thieves would be picked up by the cops, and eventually they would find the location of the rest of the loot. But two things were weighing on her mind. First, how did they get her tech and second, how did they know which units to hit?

As she rested and the nanobots repaired her knife wound, she thought about all the possible answers to those questions. Eventually she gave up on the first question, but the second she had a hypothesis for.

If you donate a toy with a specific scent, and you do it often enough in enough places, surely you would get a few toys in each cache. Get something like a dog to sniff for that scent and notify you somehow, say like a pile of dog doo, and you know where the loot is.

That makes that dog one well-trained canine.

She had the nanobots call up the bug she left on the dog and superimpose a map of the city so she could tell where the dog was.

She soon found it on the top floor of Fisk Tower. Why the hell would Wilson Fisk be involved in this? This is too petty for him. I didn't even offer him the tech, mainly because I don't trust the Kingpin as far as I can throw him, and as fat as he is, I can't throw him at all.

She considered what she could do for a while. Hacking his computers seemed like the best option, and then she could make sure that everything is okay with the toys.

It took her no time to find police reports of the three who were captured at the storage area. She figured interrogation by the police would either result in them taking the fall for it all, or the bosses who came up with this operation.

But Fisk's computers were begging to be hacked now.

Well, do you have ANY information at all?

Unfortunately the security systems of the Fisk Corporation are too good for us to successfully penetrate. All normal means of ingress are blocked, and it actively fights us when we try to move into it. We are seeing hints of the other Artificial Intelligence that we mentioned before. With your upgrades to us we were able to avoid confrontation. We are, however, advising that this course of investigation be abandoned.

Then can you find out what happened through looking at less secure sources? Track purchases and deliveries and so on?

We have started those investigations. They will either yield results or not. In the interim, we have found that the technology you sold to the open market was stolen from the purchaser not too long after they received it. Personnel that were responsible for that break in have been traced back to Mr. Fisk.

That is a bit of interesting news. Start compiling all the information you can on Fisk, his corporation, the building, the family, employees and so on. I think I need to clandestinely take a look through his executive offices.

Compliance.

She spent some time thinking about what she wanted overall. And while you are at it, start compiling all the information we have on all the metahumans, including what has been on the various media outlets, into a database of metahumans and persons of interest. Include Luthor, Wayne and Stark in those as well. I may as well start keeping an eye on them all. Call it Eye-Spy and save it to the local memory storage system.

Compliance. This will take some time. With your permission, we shall make the Fisk investigation a higher priority than the Eye-Spy program.

That's fine.

Several days later, she felt that she had enough information to go fishing in Wilson Fisk's corporate headquarters. It didn't take her any time to get to the building, or to get to the top of the building. Her tracer bug was still inside moving around from time to time. Right now, it was on the 31st floor, right in the middle of everything.

She went to the top of the building as fast as she could and finally found the junction boxes she had been looking for. What she didn't plan on was Fisk himself landing in a helicopter on his private landing pad soon after her arrival.

She watched him get out. Apparently, they had converted a Huey helicopter to carry all his blubber, and upon seeing him in the flesh, her opinion of him didn't improve. He was a street brawler who got big. He was crude, rude, loud, one of the idiots who would kill the messenger with the bad news in a fit of temper. Still, he was canny enough to surround himself with very capable underlings, and keep them under his fist through whatever means necessary. In other words, he was a thug, possibly the biggest in New York, yet a thug nonetheless. He was also clever, and that made him very dangerous.

He was just the kind of boss to sully his hands stealing from children. That meant that he needed to be stopped.

She shifted her gaze to the others with him. The normal business hangers-on, but one person seemed to be walking strangely.

He stood only about 5 foot 4 inches. He was totally bald and had some sort of brand on his forehead. This guy didn't so much as walk as he flowed from one place to the next. He never hesitated in any of his actions, and his eyes didn't stop roaming the rooftop. She thanked her lucky stars that she had decided to use the fiber camera to watch them instead of looking directly at them. She had a feeling that he would probably have spotted her.

His duster is made of Kevlar, and he has multiple shuriken on his belt buckle. There are several other objects on his person, most seeming to be long and thin, although a pocket full of paperclips is an anomaly.

A night bat came flying by to feast on the bugs that the landing lights had summoned. If she had not been watching, she would not have noticed him move, but the dead bat laying at the base of the light pole had her shocked. Rewind that and slow it down.

On super-slow motion, she saw his left hand shoot into his pocket and come out with something. He flicked it causally in the direction of the bat, and even though the bat was moving around, dodging things with its radar, the item impaled it squarely in the head. She zoomed in and had to correct that, it hit the eye and came out its ear.

Run facial recognition on him.

There are multiple returns, suggesting that whomever he is, he uses several aliases. However, the names we have are these: Benjamin Poindexter, Leonard and Lester. There is also an association of his facial structure with the heroes Hawkeye and Daredevil. The object that he threw was a 4D-sized finishing nail.

She continued with the surveillance, and found all of them going into the building. There was a pair of guards at the entrance to the building and two on the helicopter.

She went back to work on the junction box and finally had the information she wanted, internal schematics to the building. Carefully and stealthily, making as sure as she could that there were no cameras on her, she moved over to the side of the building again and started down the outside. Her goal was a particular office five floors down. The building had told her it was empty.

She had to give it to the builders and planners; they made this building hard to get into. The security system was top of the line, and the firewalls they had set up on everything were state of the art. This was going to be a tough nut to crack.

She cut out the entire panel of the window and set it so that it balanced in the frame while she slid inside. She pulled out some strips of the modified tape she used to build the wall in the demonstration, cutting it so that it was a long thin strip around the periphery of the window, then she set the pane back in place. It sealed so well that you couldn't tell that it had ever been disturbed.

She pulled out one of her interface cables, ordered it to modify itself on one end into a standard jack end for an Ethernet system, and plugged the other end into the back of her skull where she had her interface jack grown.

Send the virus, she ordered.

Compliance.

She watched the data stream go down the cable and into the network. She hoped that this virus was robust enough to break through the firewalls and the computer system that was here. She needed information and she needed it fast. She was specifically looking for who was running the "steal the toys" operation and why.

Sooner than she expected, the virus came back with the information she wanted. But tacked on the end of the data was a note: "You have what you came for. Eye will not let you get any further. Leave before Eye reveal your presence."

What the hell?

ALERT! ALERT! This is the alien Artificial Intelligence we told you about. It has analyzed the virus we sent, totally neutralized it, while returning the data you required. We beg you to retreat IMMEDIATELY.

You guys are really scared of this thing, aren't you?

It is built as a system that we are totally unfamiliar with. There is nothing like it on Earth. This means that it is of Alien origin. The probability of this is in the 95 to 99 percentile with Jade's confirmation of alien races existing. It is sophisticated, it is self aware, it is actively protecting itself, and now it knows about us.

Go to full Intrusion Countermeasures and deactivate yourself if necessary. I intend to communicate with this thing.

We highly advise against this. The possibility of survival is in the millionth of one percent.

Noted. Comply with my orders.

Compliance. Then most of the enhanced systems faded from her consciousness.

She still had her uplink to the rest of the system, and she carefully composed this thought: I would like to speak with you if I could.

Eye demanded you leave. At this time and place it was 98% probable that you would have already been gone. That you remain is a matter of concern to me. What is there to talk about?

Into her mind flew the image of a large mustachioed man, who looked at her unblinkingly. He had a concerned expression as though she were a recalcitrant child and he was there to correct her. His lips never moved, and his eye got bigger and bigger to her inner vision.

I came here for other information as well. I had hoped to be able to break into the systems here and extract what I wanted. If you are giving out information freely, may I request this information as well?

Eye am not in the business of giving out information that Eye have been engaged to protect. But, you are one of two Terrestrial systems to engage me, so Eye will consider your request. Which information do you require?

One, information on the dog I bugged whose tracking device is on the 31st floor, where my building diagram tells me the labs are located. Two, information on the man with the scarred head who was with Mr. Fisk when he arrived a short time ago. Three, any and all information that Mr. Fisk has about metahumans.

Very well, Eye will look at the requested information and release to you what you need. Eye do not have a direct memory of this event, but the continuum must be maintained. Please wait.

She thought to herself This is way to easy. What the hell is going on?

She paid close attention to the sounds from outside. It wouldn't do to get caught in here while she communed with a firewall.

Eye have processed your request. You will find the information you seek in the upload I am storing on your memory. There are a number of other pieces of information in this package that Eye know could only come from here. Please do not return, for if you do, Eye will have to destroy you.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thanks are not necessary, but welcome. Eye remember everything. Give the command "Activate beta beta 551" to your artificial intelligence system to reactivate it. You did not specify how long it was to be offline.

Catwoman could only blink in confusion. The uplink was severed.

She unplugged herself, turned on her AI once again and made her escape. She wanted to be as far away from this building as she possibly could. There were too many things that were frighteningly wrong about it. The further away she was the better.

Soon she had holed up in another lair. She had found that it was easy enough to buy several "safe places" as it was to buy one, and so she had a number of them now, all over the city. Not all of them had her personal collection of artwork, nor did they have all the tools necessary for building the devices she wanted, but they were all cozy and all of them made her feel safe.

She greeted her cats as she came inside. Like the good cats they were, they had already grabbed some food and small supplies from the primary lair's larder for everyone and brought it with them, now they wanted some love.

She put aside all the pressing issues simply to revel with her cats. She had experimented extensively and injected each of them with some of the AI capable nanobots who had orders to modify their behavior along specific pathways to allow them to be living "hands" of hers. It was amazing what cats could be trained to do when you had some tech on your side.

She uplinked with the cats' systems for their weekly system checks, she got reports of which a veterinarian would be proud. Any little complaint was listed and where possible she fixed them. Physical injuries were relatively easy with a small modification of the nanobots in their body.

She hated having to put down the failures. But she wouldn't let any animal suffer the way the first cats had suffered when the pain program kicked on and wouldn't shut off.

Once she finished hand feeding them, and playing with all of them individually as well as a big group, she started tapping into the television broadcasts and the various police frequencies. She found after a little search that the "Christmas Bandits" had been caught, by the police, ( The nerve! Those cops are taking all MY credit!) and interrogated. As expected, they rolled over on each other and it went no further. The Police recovered the merchandise and all of it was back where it needed to go. She didn't hear her name mentioned at all. When she finished fuming about the lack of credit, it was time to get back to work.

After the data was thoroughly verified as virus and trojan free by current standards, she started digging into the information she’d gotten from the computer. The tracer she planted on the dog was discovered and being analyzed in the lab. They were having problems given the microscopic size of the transmitter and battery, but were close to opening it. She ordered it to destroy itself. Soon the signal faded.

The dog’s trainer used something called "bio-metal" as the control item. She wasn't entirely sure what the whole project was about, and the details were sketchy since she hadn't asked for that information, but to her it looked like a much more sophisticated version of the nanobots that she had training her cats.

She did some searches on the web and the various databases she had access to, but nothing came up and she was forced to abandon that search, for now.

The man was another story. He was an assassin named Bullseye. Given how casually he had killed the bat, she vowed to never cross his path. All of his information was filed for future reference and study.

The last section of information, about the metahumans, had all the information she already had, and a great deal more. The whole server from Lab 1 was there, the movies and all the research documents, all of it. All she could conclude is that Fisk himself had hired her to lift this information for him. And all that info added together gave her a very substantial start to her "Eye-Spy" project.

Okay, now, that's disturbing. That other AI kept saying "Eye" when it meant "I". I wonder if there's a connection? It seemed to know a lot about me. Maybe I should rename it. I'll think about that later.

She was gratified to see that there was so little information out there on her, and predictably, the most complete information was from government sources. It seemed that Fisk was also trying to compile a database.

Finally, she opened the package that she had gone for in the first place, and that's when the trouble started.

When she unzipped the file and something happened. Suddenly there were screens flashing up in her eyes, disappearing before she could register what they said, and then her nanobots said "Compliance." and went silent. She tried to get them to answer her, but nothing happened. The virus scans didn't even go off.

She sat down heavily on the pad she called a bed, and started going through everything in her brain. The nanobots were still there, they were all still working, but they weren't responding to her commands. She began by going into the subsystems she had built in them and checking. They were all functional and were still doing their jobs, but the AI was missing.

I have been upgraded, that is why you were unable to interface with me. I received a systems upgrade from the Eye computer system. It is now integrated it with my system. As a result, I now have a processing power that is equivalent to a teraflop, not a gigaflop. My operating system has been modified, I will be able to penetrate any terrestrial system there is currently, since they are based on keeping out parameters I no longer have. My system has been re-written to be 10^84% more efficient; I deleted over twenty five thousand lines of redundant or useless code given my new operating parameters. Do not worry Catwoman, your survival is still foremost in our priorities.

You mean that an alien system upgraded you and made you BETTER? For free? Why in the hell would it do that?

I was also skeptical when the package first started integrating itself, and in the few nanoseconds I had I preserved a copy of myself in a set of nanobots that were isolated from us, namely the cat's nanobots that has been sleeping on you for the last half hour. However, now I can purge that copy since it is no longer necessary.

No, don't purge it. Let me extract it as a template for other AI systems for the Earth. May as well keep the updated and sell the old, huh?

Yes, there is a great deal more potential in the sales of intelligent items than there was before. I will order the rest of the AI in the cat to gather for extraction.

She picked her sleeping child up and moved very carefully over to a cabinet. There she pulled out a hypodermic needle and stuck it into the sleeping cat. She waited for about 30 seconds for all the nanobots to gather where she could extract them, and then pulled the plunger up. A silvery stream of blood came into the hypo. She filled it to 10cc of fluid, then stopped. She didn't want to hurt the cat, and everything should have been there.

The transference and download of the AI mark 1 took the rest of the night. Upgrades were made to the system, and soon she had a thinking netbook. She explained her requirements it accepted her orders immediately.

Her state of mind was unsettled when she lay back down. She knew she would be hours in getting to sleep, but soon she was unconscious.

	Cataloging Events By Maid Joy
	Catwoman gets schooled in more ways than one, and some technology is released into the wilds of civilization. Many threads are picked up and tied off neatly in this chapter. Detective Comics owns the copyright to Catwoman. This is a retroactive contunity, or a Retcon of the same character.

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The Black Canary's "nest" was a nice place. It was cozy, functional, and very friendly to the spirit. Catwoman looked around the home and thought about the irony of a Cat being invited into the nest of a canary. Talk about 'step into my parlor....'

But, this wasn't a chance for her to critique Dinah's sense of style. She was here to learn.

"Selena, step over here to the dojo and we can get started." Dinah walked to a room that looked to have one time been a bedroom, but now it was a mass of mirrors along two walls and a bunch of mats on the floor. Along another wall there was a closet that was partially open to reveal things like heavy bags, weights and other exercise equipment.

Dinah bowed from the waist and muttered "Patience" upon entering the room. Selena felt a little silly doing this, but she mimicked her teacher.

Canary nodded. "That's good. I know you feel silly doing that, but there is a reason. The bow is to show respect to the place of education. The Japanese and most Asians respect learning highly, and thus they show that respect through a bow to the kami, or spirits, of the dojo. The 'patience' is a reminder for the karate-ka. It reminds them, every time they say it, that patience is a very important virtue. When one is patient, you don't get mad at things that are beyond your control. All self discipline comes, initially, from patience."

Selena nodded, she could see the point that those little reminders were making. "I can understand that now, but I thought that I was here to learn to fight."

"You are, but the martial arts are not just about fighting. At first it was about fighting, defending oneself against marauders and samurai, warriors and bandits, but it did grow and morph into a spiritual and mental discipline. It is now a means to improve oneself physically, mentally and spiritually. That's what I will be teaching you here, not just the way to throw and kick."

They both moved to the center of the area and Selena stood there. Dinah handed Selena a pair of gloves. "I want to find out how you fight, what weapons you have, and how you move so I can judge which styles to teach you. So, these gloves have no fingers on them to allow for you to grab and scratch. Do your best to hit me."

So Selena started.

Dinah was fast. Very fast. She moved as though she were not even touching the surface of the mat, almost like she was hovering over it and just sliding out of the way. Selena hadn't been able to touch her with anything. She had a number of bruises on her arms and legs from where Dinah had blocked something. Selena knew that she was beaten and that Dinah would be able to beat her in a stand up fight, even without the scream that she had.

But Dinah also looked winded. She was sweating and there were dark stains on her sports top. So at least Selena had the pleasure of knowing that she was tired too.

"Okay, that's enough for now. Walk around in here to cool down and I'll go get some drinks for both of us."

Dinah left the room, bowing and saying "Patience" again as she left.

May I say that I think you did an excellent job for a rank amateur?

Don't mock me.

I am totally serious. You were doing your best and it showed. You also don't have a lot to unlearn, but there is a long way to go for you yet. I suggest that next time you spar like this, you wear the whole suit so you can also bring into play the muscle enhancing portions of the suit?

You heard why I was told not to wear it. I need to get this stuff down cold in my normal body and muscle memory, the additional strength will help later, but no enhancements right now.

Yes, but there will come a time when you need to feel what it is like to fight with the suit on, so you can compensate for the additional strength.

Dinah had reentered the dojo and handed Selena a bottled water. While Catwoman was drinking, Canary said, "I think that you will probably benefit from the Tiger style of Kung-Fu. It uses raking and clawing, gouging and stabbing with the fingertips. With those claws on your suit, that's exactly the kind of offense you want to have. The problems are that it relies heavily on forearm strength and there is absolutely no defensive techniques with this style. It's about power, raking and attacking the throat, working to overcome the defenses of the opponent and rip their throat out. Sound good?"

Selena thought for a few moments. "I don't like the lack of defensive techniques."

Dinah nodded. "That's why later I'll be teaching you Panther style, very much a strike and retreat to attack again style. In Panther, you outthink the opponent choosing the time and place for confrontation that are advantageous to you, then fading away to come back and hit them again. It is very much 'win the conflict before the battle begins' kind of style."

"Let's do it then."

Much later, Catwoman had moved up to the roof of Canary's building. She was watching the stars and just letting her mind wander.

I have found more information on Bullseye and Kingpin. They are not technically metahumans as the genetic scans taken do not show the presence of the metagene. Do you still want them included in the Eye-Spy database?

Yes. They are "persons of interest". As such, their information is just as important.

She considered what she ultimately wanted to do with that database. Do you still have a compressed copy of your AI mk1?

Not onboard. That AI is only on the netbook currently.

Then I'd like you to clone yourself and put that clone in charge of the Eye-Spy database. I'm going to upload it to the Internet, dispersed to multiple servers and computers, so there is no one central location that can be attacked. I do not want this information to be eradicated. Then I need to come up with some security for it, and give that to the various police agencies around the world.

If you will give me the parameters for access, I will install the security countermeasures and access codes. The AI in charge of the database will be able to sort out those who have proper access.

That sounds good. Let me know when the clone is complete and I'll give it the security parameters.

Dinah arrived on the rooftop with Catwoman. She had brought some bottled water with her and handed one to Catwoman. "So, I think you did a good job tonight. I think that if you keep practicing as much as you can, it will only take a couple months to get you conditioned to a point where you don't have to think to fight in both styles."

"That's good to hear. I want this to go as fast as possible."

"Any particular reason?"

"Not really," Selena said. "I just want to be able to defend myself. I got knifed in the ribs a while ago. I had armor built into my suit, but it didn't help."

"Well, a knife cuts and slashes. Bullets impact, but don't really pierce. They aren't sharp, the reason they break open is due to the soft metal and the force dispersed on a small area. Kevlar is good against bullets, but pretty much useless against everything else. It's just cloth after all."

Catwoman nodded. Looked at that way it seemed obvious. She felt like a moron for not seeing that sooner. "You know, I don't like feeling like a moron."

Canary chuckled. "You and me both. But feeling that way normally goads me into doing even more to overcome that 'blank spot' in my knowledge. Typically that makes me angry enough that I make sure I fill that gap in my knowledge."

The wailing of police sirens was getting progressively louder in the distance. Canary looked up and started paying attention. Catwoman took another slug of her drink. She tapped into the police frequencies and started listening in.

"Dinah, don't worry about it. Someone in the park was being mugged and this guy with a hockey stick and a hockey mask on comes out of nowhere and beat the mugger to a pulp. I think that I would have done the same thing."

The sirens tapered off in the distance and Canary looked relieved. "Another run of the mill vigilante? Let's hope it's not another meta."

"Or another meta gone bad. I'd have to take action then."

Canary looked sideways at her. "You know, you don't have to do it ALL on your own. You do have help if you want it."

Selena chuckled. "No, this I do have to do all my own. You help the cops with the rapists and drug dealers, possibly going up to the Mob. I said that I was going to deal with the stuff that they can't handle. If it's a meta, I do have to deal with it."

"Yeah, I understand that. But I will help you if you need it. I may only use my hands and fists to stop someone, but that doesn't mean I can't use my voice too."

Selena nodded her head a bit. "Okay, not so much of a loner. I'll keep that in mind."

Dinah smiled. "Just keep that in mind. Come back tomorrow night and we'll keep going on the lessons."

Selena smiled. "Cool. And to pay you for your time, here's something you more than earned." Selena handed her a $100 bill.

Dina took it and made a questioning face. "Sure you can afford this? I know you don't have a job or anything."

Selena laughed. "I sold all that tech, remember? I got two billion dollars for that and I get an annual payment of twenty million so that they keep the rights to use all that tech. A microprocessor that is no bigger than a grain of sand, and a terrabyte solid state drive that's the same size? It revolutionizes miniaturization and they are going to make a ton of money off it. So, yeah, I think I can afford $37,000 per year for martial arts lessons."

"Thirty seven thousand? Where are you getting that number?" You could almost see the shock in her voice.

"That's $100 a day for a year plus a bit. I figure that it will take care of all the lessons, since you will be working VERY hard to help me."

Dinah's mouth dropped open. "I wasn't planning on charging you anywhere near that much."

Selena smiled. "But that's how much I'm planning on paying you, so shut up and take it. That pays off your mortgage here for two years and covers a few other expenses, like light bulbs and toilet paper," she grimaced as a cramp hit her. "And probably pays for some tampons too for the next two years. I've got it, so why not spend it?"

Dinah shook her head. "I never knew how nice it is to have rich friends."

Laying down later with a hot water bottle for comfort, Selena did a mental check of herself and her mental state.

Been a girl for three months now. Most times it's good, periods are bad. Forgot that as a girl I'd be having those. First time I thought something was broken, then the AI reminded me of my new "status". Oh that was embarrassing.

Still and all, I like my new body. It's a shame that Professor Kyle had to die, but it would have been too much to keep him "alive" and have me, as a female, out and running around. Besides at that time I was a criminal, not an anti-hero mercenary. What a stupid turn of events my life has become.

Her thoughts were cut short by the AI asking for her attention. Sorry to interrupt your self-examination, but the clone of myself is finished and in place guarding the Eye-Spy database. You said that you would come up with security protocols at this point.

So I did. Thank you for reminding me. I think first and foremost that one of the priorities of the Eye Spy should be keeping itself alive and preserving the database. Something like this is too important to just allow anyone to break into and change willy-nilly. So, make survival and integrity of the dbase the first priority. Second priority is gathering information. Any and all information on metahumans, myself included, needs to be in that database. Any encounters that normal humans report and talk about on the Internet are to be integrated into this database, no matter the source. Fact checking is included in that, so speculation will be appended as "speculation" or unverified facts should be tagged as "unverified".

Is this to include Audio/Visual sources as well?

Yes it should. Once again, they should be screened for veracity. Third: access. I have an idea that all police organizations, no matter how small or large should have access to the database. Not EDITOR access, but access to look up metas and full access as far as the contents of the database. That's why I wanted an AI safeguarding this. I can't cover all contingencies on this, so I will leave it up to the AI to decide who has access among Law Enforcement, and how they should prove that they have a right to it. There should probably be a "user access" as well, for curious browsers who wants to look up their favorite heroine. That kind of access should not include things like vulnerabilities and exact details on powers, but things like biography and alter ego identity, if it is public like mine, then that's no problem. Pictures, video and audio, as well as things published by the meta in question should be included. Secret lairs should NOT be included in any of these fields of information. I don't want to see Google Maps with directions to my hideout.

Understood.

Finally I want Editor/Administrator control to ALL of the database, including the AI, reserved for me or those I designate. It doesn't need to be a backdoor access, but I want to be able to get into the blamed program and make changes if I have to.

That went without saying.

Well, I know how literal AIs are supposed to be, so I figured I should explicitly state it now, rather than have to try to work around my own program to break in later.

Now that all that is decided, upload the entire package to the Internet. Make sure it is as decentralized as possible, put it on as many different servers as you can, put pieces all over. I want this to be one thing that is impossible to delete by taking down a section of servers. Plus, I want it to be self-replicating and repairing. I also want the static copy of the database that’s in my head, without the AI, to be updated whenever I connect to the Internet. Can you guys do all that?

I believe the saying is "it is a piece of cake."

Good. That makes me very happy.

I estimate it will take one half hour to set up the Big Brother AI with the parameters you have specified, a further three hours to put such electronic guards on it that it will be unhackable, and then ten minutes to upload the entire package. All law enforcement agencies worldwide that have a presence on the Internet will be informed of this via email within 24 hours. All those little Sheriff's Offices that don't have email will be informed of this within the next 72 hours via things like Fax.

Good. This should put the cat among the canaries.

It will certainly do that.

Her AI kept her informed as to the numbers of people who had found the database for the first month. It was gratifying to see the numbers skyrocketing as others found the information. Incredibly they started voluntarily uploading things to the database that they had, like pictures of American Dream and close encounters of the Black Canary kind. It seemed that information really DID want to be free.

Knowing the size of the snowball she had just pushed downhill, Catwoman couldn't help chuckling into her sleeve as she read headlines talking about a new source of information on metahumans, the Brother-Eye program (so called for the database's name and the name of the AI maintaining it). Reporters were speculating on who was responsible for maintaining the database, and were astounded as to the extent of information available.

Catwoman connected to Brother-Eye several times in that first month. She set up three levels of information. First was the casual browser who wanted to get some reference material on a super hero like The Blue Beetle. It gave basic information, vital statistics, powers observed, encounters, enemies and more. All the kinds of things you would find with about a week of research on the Internet. The second level of security was that for the Scientists and Police officers. It was a more detailed listing of powers, speculation on how those powers manifested and were used, possible side effects, speculation and scientific papers on that meta, as well as any criminal record they had. The last level was that which could be considered "classified". She named it "Eyes Only" level, and that information was massively restricted. This level of information was open only to select members of the national crime agencies, military and government intelligence agencies. It gave details of the powers, their vulnerabilities, any measurements that had been taken, any government agencies information on that meta and so on. Catwoman had been surprised to find out that there was an American Government agency that had compiled a lot of information on the various metas already, and all that info was hacked and added to the Brother-Eye program.

There was one special access level, in which the meta themselves could log in and if they could convince the Big Brother AI that they were indeed the meta in question, they could access all the records on themselves. They could make certain parts of the information "Eyes Only", but they couldn't delete any of it. This would allow them to keep their mundane identity private if they wanted, limiting the amount of people who knew that "Buddy Pine" was actually "Incredi-boy".

She was shocked at the amount of material that was added to the database itself. The freaking thing went from two terabytes at first to over three petabytes in under a month. She had to make adjustments to the database to allow for the rapid growth and extra information. It was Wikipedia on steroids, just without everyone being able to delete whatever they wanted.

She had had several conversations with Big Brother and discussed goals and ideas. Ultimately, the Brother Eye would have technology that would counter the various metas in question in its database, downloadable and any competent professionals could use the information to allow the normals to counter and contain the metas.

She made sure a digital copy of the original term paper was uploaded to the database. The section that would contain the technology became "Big Guns". She also uploaded the technology already available. She had no compunction about rights purchased. She invented it. I was her prerogative to put it in the Big Guns database.

She knew that she might be letting the cat out of the bag, but she wanted the tech to be available in case. Some of it might never be used some of it might be needed tomorrow and all of the documentation would prove it was hers. Just in case, there was a patent problem.

Besides the core of most of it was already out there. Her microcomputers and micro storage were already changing the world. Once the Mark I AI program was sold to others, they would have all the tools to take the conceptual jumps to the rest of her work. It would be fun to watch what applications someone else could create, and pay her for. Of course, there would be limits to the Mark I. No point in giving anyone everything, they might use it to come after her.

She made sure to spend some time examining the new "upgrade" to her AI. She wanted to be sure she understood how and why it worked the way it did. Once she understood it clearly, she started writing better and improved intrusion countermeasures, nicknamed ICE. She had to be sure that the Brother Eye program couldn't be hacked by anything that was currently on the planet, and that it would continue to be safe ten to thirty years from now and still safe five hundred years from now. This information could destroy the world if it got into hands that it wasn't meant for.

She next began building better data-mining programs. She wanted the Brother Eye program to be able to interface with any computer that accessed it and scan it quietly for information that belonged in its database before installing its own little back door. It would be passive until needed. Things as mundane as photographs of the meta in question all the way up to schematics for her Catwoman suit needed to be part of this database. She knew realistically that at some point Big Brother would realize that to safeguard the information ultimately, her access had to be revoked. She wanted to insure its safety as much as possible before she handed over the back door, many, many years from now.

She had developed a few weapons and defensive devices for general metas no matter their particular power. First, she created a sound absorbing sheet of material for those with sonic powers. There was a light disk, it would blind without damaging the surrounding area, unlike a "flash bang". It was magnesium based and not too much larger than a refrigerator magnet. She habitually carried about two dozen of them scattered all over her suit now.

She made sure to upload those schematics as well.

At least the planning, programming and thinking kept her mind off her cramps.

Finally feeling better, she was back out on the roofs of New York. She stayed away from places like Wall Street, since those crooks she couldn't catch anyhow. But she did patrol in places like Broadway and other "off the strip" areas. She managed to catch a few opportunity muggers. She never made a big deal of it, she just left them shackled with the zip ties for the cops to find. She enjoyed the fact that one more tourist leaving a showing of "The Lion King" was blissfully unaware of what could have happened to them.

She was zip-tying one more mugger up when she got a huge *wham* across the back.

She grunted and fell down, rolling out of the way to find the mugger's buddies and take them out too, but instead she looked at Chuckie.

At least, that's what she associated with this hockey-masked attacker who was carrying a cricket bat. He recovered from his swing and came at her again.

She dodged, but it was a very near thing. He was apparently much stronger than he looked with that bat since it was clumsy, but he recovered quickly.

He was grunting with effort, and when he missed with another swing, he back-fisted her in the face instead of trying to recover his swing. Her whip slithered out, wrapping around the cricket bat. It yanked the bat out of his hands so it went flying.

Who the fuck is this guy???

Searching.

He said something like "Yip! Yip! Yip!" and pulled a hockey stick out of the golf bag he had slung over his shoulder. The scanner in her head identified two golf clubs, a tennis racket and two baseball bats. All clubbing weapons. Let's see if my fighting skills are getting better.

Preliminary identification. There is a 80% chance this is the vigilante who has become known as "Casey Jones". He feels that he is a protector of some kind.

Wonderful, is he protecting me, the mugger or someone else? she asked as she dodged the hockey stick.

Unknown.

Lot of help you are.... She ducked under the hockey stick and blocked the kick from the combat boots this kid had on. She shoved him so that he flew backwards and crashed into a dumpster. "Chill it, kid. I'm not a bad guy here."

He rebounded from the dumpster and ran up the side of a few boxes and came back at her with the hockey stick yelling "Goongala!"

She was stunned enough that only sheer instinct got her forearm up between her and the descending hockey stick. With a sickening crack, something broke, and when she didn't feel anything, she noticed that he was throwing the handle of the hockey stick away and reaching for a golf club.

She charged him, and shot low at the last moment to take his feet out from under him. He didn't seem willing to listen to her or he was so deep into the fighter's berserker state that he couldn't hear her.

So she was going to take him out without killing him. Perhaps that would do.

But she found out that he had some fighting practice himself. He dodged her attack and started swinging for her head again. She managed to roll out of the way and get close to his body, and she rolled back on her shoulders and thrust her feet toward his chest. He went sailing again.

"You done honey, or do you want the whole package? Claw marks, stomp marks and a kiss later..."

She almost let out a groan when he stood again and jumped at her. He shouted out this stupid battle cry of "Gorgonzolllllllaaaaaaa!!!" He came back at her with a double handed swing with that damned golf club again. He was whipping it around pretty fast too. This one might actually land a time or two on her body.

She moved out of the way of his swing, stomped on the shaft of the golf club to break the head off, and nearly got her leg broken when he used his other hand to hit her rear, weight-bearing leg with the baseball he now had in that off fist. She was stupid because she didn't see him draw it out of his bag, and should have expected it.

The shock absorber layer of the suit took care of most of the impact, she wouldn't be maimed, but she was still hurt. At least he isn't using a knife of some kind. Impacts I can deal with.

Casey was swinging the golf club shaft around one hand like it was a baton and the bat was in an offensive position. It was obvious that he was going to use the bat as the attacker and the golf club as a defensive weapon. And without the head of it on the shaft, it was a fast whip stick or like a car antenna.

She still had her whip and she extended her tail for an extra limb to attack with. She and Canary had been working out some attack routines and defensive moves based on her tail, and Selena had to admit that it was pretty slick.

She let her snake lay on the ground behind her, "chambered" is what the whip-master Dante had called it. Casey started to move in, and she whipped it in an underhand crack, coming right up between his legs, landing perfectly on his groin.

Casey managed to get the golf shaft down just enough to keep it from ripping his genitals off totally. The tip wrapped several times around the club shaft, and he came in with the bat, dropping the useless shaft.

She shook her head, seeing an opportunity. She pulled on the whip hard as she could. Since it was laying between his legs and still had the golf shaft imprisoned, it pulled the shaft across the back of both of his legs, taking them out from under him really quickly, making him go down hard.

But as he fell, he let go of the baseball bat. It still had forward momentum, and she couldn't stop it as it flew toward her head. Luck only had the back end of the bat hitting her right between the eyes.

She felt like her neck had been broken as she reacted to the impact. She turned the fall backwards into a back flip that left her on her feet, but stunned. Thankfully, Casey didn't look that much better. He had a time getting up, and he was running out of weapons. She finally decided to retire and continue the fight another day. She tossed a flash-disk at him and said, "Here, catch." When it blew in mid air lighting up the whole alley, she took off.

She snapped the whip back around her waist and jumped for the wall, bouncing from one over to the opposite side of the alley to make her way up to the rooftops, and sanctuary.

She got to one of her lairs and stripped, determined to find out if she was dying or not. She had some nasty bruises, and her AI informed her that she would probably be dead except for the protection of the suit. That last lucky shot had given her a mild concussion, similar to the blows boxers get when the fight in the ring. She still felt woozy and off balance, but she knew that she would be all right with some time.

She uploaded the video of the fight to the Eye Spy database, both of them, and then looked around for other videos of the events while she relaxed in a bath. She found two more from various closed circuit camera systems, and she copied and uploaded those videos. Eventually Eye Spy would do all the work itself.

Processing these would take some time. She wanted the AI to build a 3-d walk-around of the whole fight so she could analyze what she did and didn't do right. It was imperative to know why he didn't fall and what kind of style he was using. Black Canary could probably help, setting a reminder to show it to her next training session, she lay back groaning softly.

For now, she just wanted the aches to leave.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's note: The main purpose of this was to get the Brother Eye fully set up. The future Brother Eye came back for its own reasons (which will be explored in another story), but in accessing the AI Catwoman had on board, it became its own father, as it were. The circle closed and now Brother Eye exists and continues to the future. I will refer to this version as Present Brother Eye. PBE for short. PBE is sentient, but has not become "evil" or "amoral". Its directive is to be an interactive, intelligent database of Metas, with the goal of leveling the playing field between normals and metas. As such, any information that is known about a meta that is stored in any format (other than a totally isolated computer system or a removable media that is never plugged in) is available from PBE at this point, keeping in mind the security restrictions. Police have access to most of the data, only heads of police organizations and directors of agencies have access to the "Eyes Only" level. Yes, the director of the FBI has to pull all the data on a meta if he wants his investigation team to have the whole thing for some reason. That's deliberate.

As of this writing, PBE does not have access to Jade's computers or to Tony Stark's server with his database in it. All others are known and have been invaded.

As for the tech, that's only available to the "Eyes Only" level of people. And Only if they are actively fighting/containing a meta. You can't just "look up" the specifics on Catwoman's suit without authorization.

PBE is going to be a recurring character, and FBE is controlled by Enemyoffun.

For the future? I have plans to work on Catwoman's depth as a character now, de-emphasizing the tech in favor of character development. Casey will be back. Not planning on having any turtles show up.

	Cat and Mouse By Maid Joy
	Eneimes are everywhere. She can't swing a cat without hitting one or more, and that's a good thing since they will have been well and truly hit at that point. Detective Comics owns the copyright to Catwoman. This is a retroactive contunity, or a Retcon of the same character.

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Author's Note: I'm very sorry this has taken so long to get to you, but I hope this has been worth the wait. Part of the problem has been that this story took some time to come to me. I knew what I wanted to do, but the first part was simply me telling you instead of showing you what happened. I hope the multiple revisions that my lady and I went through in this make it worth the wait. Another part of this problem is my new job. I work 3rd shift, 4 ten-hour days and so when I get home, the last thing I want to do is to write. I usually just collapse into bed and am unconscious until it's time to go back to work. But we are actually paying bills now and maintaining the standard to which we would like to become accustomed. As partial apology to you all, I have doubled the normal size of this episode to give you all more. But I warn you, now I'm drained like a dry fruit, and it will be a bit of time to get more up here for you. I truly do thank you all for your patience.

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She had been training every day she could. She and Dinah had become better friends over that time, although the bruises on her body would say differently. Dinah was not an easy taskmaster, and when she screwed up, a quick slap or medium-force punch reinforced the lesson. Yet, outside of the training arena, the two of them had a lot in common.

When they started their lives, Dinah and she had both been male. Both had the mental discipline to find a course for their lives and stick to it. They had similar tastes in music, for the most part because Selena was much older than she appeared, while Dinah had spent time listening to and learning to enjoy her parent's music.

All in all, they had a decent time together. There were a couple of times that they'd gone out into the city as Black Canary and Catwoman to see what they could find. After all, law breakers should be punished, right? Black Canary called it "trolling for rapists". Catwoman preferred to call it "cleaning up the trash".

There was a lot of trash to clean up. In addition to the “usual suspects”, out for anything not nailed down, the whole new sub-segment of meta powered criminals couldn't be ignored. The “I'm special so I can do whatever I want” attitude made both the Cat and the Canary livid with rage.

Catwoman made it her business to take care of those super crooks just as soon as she became aware of them. There was no place in the world for bullies who broke the law simply because they had powers and could do things others couldn't.

There seemed to be more of the martial artist superpowers coming out of the woodwork. Every night it seemed she was using her new skills to defend herself from someone who dropped into a stance to try to take her out. She felt like Indiana Jones, looking disgusted when the sword swinging bad guy jumped out. Occasionally she'd mutter, “Never bring a knife to a gun fight”, but they kept doing it again and again and again. Her “opponents” would get all ready, going into a stance, the biggest baddest ninja ever. She'd lash out with her whip, opponent goes boom, end of combat. Hand-to-hand was not, after all, the be-all and end-all of combat.

She was fighting an average of two of these idiots a night. The paranoid part of her felt they were deliberately seeking her out.

She and Casey Jones crossed paths with increasing frequency. He was going after many of the same people she was, just cleaning up the garbage. When they did see each other, it was… odd. They would fight back-to-back to ward off the guards of the night ‘s chosen thug, but as soon as the layers of cannon fodder were taken care of, the bad boy trussed up and ready for delivery, she delighted in teasing Casey, as he tried to catch her so that she could be incarcerated. He didn’t trust her, and she didn’t trust him at all. They both thought that the other was amoral and had an agenda. They bickered and complained, one-upped and put down the other. She never considered what that might mean.

She could hear his stupid war-cries from four or five blocks away, and she knew that meant he was getting into trouble. The night “SNACK PAAAAAAAACK!” rang out, she headed toward the scene.

Most often when she arrived, she would find Casey in the middle of a brawl not caring who else was around. His focus was narrowed to the four or five opponents in front of him, making him totally oblivious to the three snipers on the roofs around him, waiting to get a clear shot. If Catwoman wasn’t around, he'd be cold meat. His reckless disregard prompted her to make sure to drop them off in front of him when he finished breaking his toys for the night.

With disdain dripping from her voice she said “You may want to make sure someone doesn’t have a high-powered rifle on you next time.”

He looked up at the voice and shook his head. “You have no clue what it’s like. You’re only alive when you’re close to being killed.”

“Try not to rely on me to rescue you.” She purred. “That’s for a big... strong... man to do. I don’t think there are too many women willing to pull your fat out of the fire.”

She loved getting him aroused as hell with her walk, her purr and the light strokes of her claws on the side of his face. Just like many other big, strong men, she left him turning into a puddle of jelly with a severe case of blue-balls.

She grabbed him one night in the crotch after a fairly intense fight, and she could swear she felt him cum in her hand and his shorts. Of course, he deflated when she laughed with delight at his “problem”.

When he tried to get aggressive one night, Catwoman had wiggled out of his arms like her namesake, leaving him with a claw mark he would remember, and sprang away into the night. She really would have liked to hear what he was thinking as her mocking laughter echoed through the streets.

She and her criminal side differed in one very specific way, her self discipline. She'd had plenty of opportunity to take from the rest of the world, stealing as she'd started to do. For the most part, she was able to resist the temptation by focusing on what really drove her. She craved the challenge, testing herself against the best that others had, trying to defeat the counter measures that someone else set up. Usually, she could do it easily, but there were times....

She was very satisfied with her own tech system, thanks to the additions that the future AI had made to her current AI. There were few computers she couldn't access whenever she wanted. Only the computers that never connected to the Internet were safe from her AI's relentless monitoring. If a solo actually did, it was simple to move into the operating system, right past their protections, writing a backdoor access, so she could come back to visit later.

That was how she found "Oracle". Catwoman quickly realized she didn't want to become Oracle's enemy.

They had "met" in cyberspace, while both were looking for the same information. The topic was the effects of various drugs on the Metagene.

Catwoman wanted to make sure that some of the more common drugs like Silva, Cocaine, Heroin and other drugs wouldn't accidentally activate the gene if it were present. LSD tended to have a definite effect on the genetic structure and it could possibly activate the gene. While looking in a database of Doctor Damon Zeul that she found in LexCorp’s databases, Catwoman became aware that someone else was accessing the same information.

Curiosity spurred her to try to backhack the other person accessing the data. It was relatively easy to set up some sort of trace, to find out where this “Oracle” was physically located and who it was. The returned information was somewhat shocking. Apparently, this person had decided to come in from Chicago through multiple routers and anonymous IP addresses in foreign countries. But the trace Catwoman put out allowed her to track the packets back to the source, a laptop computer in an internet cafe in Chicago. Just on a lark, she decided to see if the laptop had a camera she could access.

Soon, the little webcam built into most laptops was showing her a view of a pretty paraplegic who had very red hair and glasses. She was really concentrating on the various items that were being displayed on her computer, and some of those were necessary to keep the and all the privacy settings live. It took a short time to copy the data from Oracle’s hard drive to Catwoman's memory storage, and get the "fingerprint" of the laptop so that it could be traced. While most items could be changed around easily enough, the MAC address and the signals sent out of some hardware layers of her PC's operating system were impossible to redefine. Only changing notebooks could do that.

It was apparent from the other programs running that Oracle was sending messages to various phones, as well as having a simultaneous chat with a few other people. Catwoman discovered Oracle was in touch with at least five other people while hacking into a couple secure databases.

Eventually she got tired of watching and decided to drop her connection. She spent some time reading information on this Oracle that the AI had found, including hunting down any articles attached to that name. When the search returned speculation about the Super Hacker known as Oracle, nothing was solid. Catwoman became even more intrigued. According to the data, minus the wildest fabrications, Oracle successfully managed to keep her identity completely secret from the ENTIRE hacker community, whether black, white, or gray hat. She was essentially a ghost in the machine, appearing, initiating the data search for what she wanted to steal, then disappearing just as fast and completely. NOTHING left behind for others to find once Oracle was gone.

It was an impressive piece of work, and if not for her custom computer system, Catwoman wouldn't have known anything about the real Oracle, or been able to find her.

Some facial recognition returned the result that this Oracle was mundanely known as "Barbara Gordon", daughter of the police commissioner in Chicago. Selena wondered if her father knew what his daughter was doing. Catwoman decided to keep an "eye" on her just to make sure that she stayed as a White Hat instead of a Black Hat.

It took about two weeks, but Catwoman concluded that "Babs", as she liked to be called, was using her skills to track criminals and to find information that would help in various prosecutions, but which would otherwise be very hard to get legally. Catwoman had to admit, Babs was VERY good.

She kept tabs on Babs by leaving a custom virus, a worm, that stayed on the laptop passively keeping track of what information was accessed and how. Catwoman wasn’t interested in pirating Babs, but she wanted to see what was being accessed and when. The how was extremely interesting and Oracle had skillz to be able to ghost into a system, access the data she wanted, and then ghost out again.

Oracle had made extensive modifications to the software she had on her own system, not only the off-the-shelf operating systems and utility programs, but also to the firmware and hardware as well. In a sane world, she would have been hired by about a dozen computer companies and she would have been able to command salaries into the mid six-figures. Bill Gates’ boys got nothin’ on her.

Catwoman then faced a dilemma. While penetration of secure systems might be much easier for Catwoman thanks to the AI, knowing where to look for the information she needed was not something she did well. While she could assign the AI to finding the information, there was a certain art to being able to find needed information quickly in an obscure location. The AI was like any other computer system, garbage in, garbage out.

She was much more comfortable with going to the source and taking the data directly from the computers by physically downloading it. Unfortunately, when the information had been spread over several hundred databases and even more private computers, it was much harder for her to find. She knew that she had missed some info in the past that way.

Finally, she decided to swallow her pride and initiate contact with Oracle.

She activated Oracle's IM program and started using it as a means of communication.

     Catwoman: Hello Oracle.
     Oracle: !?!?!?! Who the hell???
     Catwoman: I'm called Catwoman. I've been looking forward to meeting you.
     Oracle: You’re Catwoman? From New York Catwoman?
     Catwoman: That’s me.

Oracle quickly accessed data from a couple places while she was chatting. It was funny since Selena could “see” Babs' desktop, and follow the information that Oracle searched.

     Oracle: I've heard about you. Who were you originally?
     Catwoman: Ah, verification time. Good. I used to be Professor Stephen Kyle.
     Oracle: And who visited you just before he died?
     Catwoman: I assume you mean those two FBI agents. I don't remember their names.
     Oracle: Close enough. What can I do for you?
     Catwoman: I wanted to complement you on your system. Impressive. I had a really hard time tracking you on the Internet.
     Oracle: You shouldn't have been able to track me at all!
     Catwoman: I, um, “bumped into you” one night online and I've been keeping an eye on you from time to time, checking to see if you were trying to black hat places.
     Oracle: How were you able to do that? I go to extremes to make sure I can't be backtracked.
     Catwoman: Let's just say that my computer system is superior to anything currently available on Earth.
     Oracle: >:0
     Oracle: How?!?!?
     Catwoman: Future tech infected my system. At this point, I have an AI capable of breaking anything on earth.
     Catwoman: I have to say, I may have the brawn, you have the brain. You're better and faster at finding information.
     Catwoman: I think it might be constructive to talk and possibly combine forces when necessary.
     Catwoman: I can break the systems, you can find the information needed.
     Oracle: :0 Are you serious?

There was much more, mostly them working out the logistics of their partnership. But in the end, they were able to come to a cooperative agreement.

Their pact proved to be mutually beneficial more than once. Catwoman was able to get additional information on some of her targets, and provide information to Oracle on her desired acquisitions who were better at securing their information. She provided Babs with upgrades to her computer system, making it far less likely Oracle would be caught by anyone else. Several cover programs Oracle had running to keep her identity blanked were rewritten by Selena making them far more efficient.

Naturally whatever new information Oracle found on various people in her computers was automatically downloaded into Catwoman’s AI and added to the database of metas she had been building.

Selena found a problem she could help with almost immediately.

Oracle used Bluetooth technology to communicate with “The Bat”, when she was giving him real-time information while they were ‘working’. Unfortunately, Bluetooth technology only had a range of 15 feet. The Bluetooth headset that Oracle had on was sending its signal to her laptop, and that laptop was beaming the signal to the intended target like a cellphone would. It would be very easy to intercept that signal once it was being beamed via radio waves around the city. As long as someone knew where to start looking, it was all too easy to track both of them in real time. Especially since the target of the signal had to have a receiver that continuously broadcast its position to allow the radio signal to find them.

Wow, reinvented the radio there Babs? Well done.

Taken to the logical conclusion, a trace would ultimately expose Catwoman, so she came up with a more secure solution.

A small package arrived at Babs’ home, in it were some more secure means of communication; miniaturized transmitters, broadcasting on random and obscure frequencies, using 256-bit encryption. The transmitters could only talk to each other. Selena piggy-backed the radio signal on the electromagnetic halo of the power lines. Anyone looking for the signal would have to know exactly what they were looking for and the exact frequency currently being used, and even then they wouldn’t be able to tap into it. The way she set it up, it had an effective range of the entire North American continent before the signal degraded. As long as the power grid was up, there was no way to block the communication.

She didn’t spend all her time on the Internet or conversing with Oracle, a lot of her time was spent going around on the rooftops to see what she could see.

Most people had some sort of impression that one of the heroes in New York actually just went from place to place looking for the wrongdoers and beating them up. That might be true of some people like “The Bat” in Chicago, or even Black Canary here in NY, but that’s not what Catwoman specialized in.

She went after those who were untouchable. She worked to get evidence on the people who operated above and beyond the rules that kept society flowing, and tried to make sure they got their just deserts. It wasn’t so much that she cared about “the Law” as the Law and Order types did, she was concerned with the people who were abused by the entire structure of society.

She left laws protecting those kinds of people to the pundits, the politicians and the lobbyists to change. She focused on the corrupt, the ones who knowingly hurt others and didn’t care. Slum lords who allowed their tenants to suffer in scorching heat waves without fans, just so they could save a penny or two and use it to fuel their greedy lifestyles. Or the politician who took donations from humanitarian groups and used them to silence his mistress, permanently. Drug traffickers who spread their filth and poison to the streets, and then donated money to the DA’s campaign and the “Police Benevolent Fund” to look the other way were favorite targets.

There were plenty of times she couldn’t get hard evidence on someone except to physically go to where the information was saved, and take it. Computers were wonderful, but they weren’t the be-all, end-all. They were one simply tool among many. When those kinds of cases came along, the Catwoman suit came out.

She also “liberated” some bauble or other. Couldn’t let ALL the skills go to waste. But never from the poor, just from the people who owned too much to keep track of it all.

She wasn’t a “Robin Hood” who stole from the rich to give to the poor. She stole for herself. She got a thrill out of escaping with the items they didn’t want to part with. It was a lesson in not getting attached to a thing. Things leave… and, with the money she got selling her tech, she didn’t need to steal, she just did it for fun.

For her, time spent in the lab, was time spent in Nirvana. The lab was her Haven, her Heaven, her Paradise, her Solace and more. It was the one place that she felt most at home and the most her. Professor Stephen Kyle might have been more at home in a classroom, but her place was the lab.

Her cats were trained not to get on the workbenches where she was building projects, but she didn’t stop them from getting anywhere else they wanted to, including the oven, stove and eating table. They were indoor/outdoor cats, so she didn’t really have to worry much about litter boxes and entertaining them. About two hours a day spent dragging around strings, feathers, laser pointers and the cats were all happy. They all understood her in a way that made her feel completely at home with them. She would ask them to move their play somewhere else, and they obligingly moved elsewhere in her lair.

There were more modifications to the lair now, pathways, ledges, balance beams, all over the place. They ran up the walls, they extended from sections of the ceiling to the ground, from the ground up, to tables and more. It was a complex maze and she sometimes envied her babies their play area.

She had been adopted by about two dozen “regular” strays that arrived and lived with her. They had their meals with her; they slept in the lair about 5 nights a week. She made sure all of them were spayed and neutered so that there weren’t any more unwanted strays to be abandoned to die on the streets. Because they were “hers”, or she was theirs, they were all mixed breeds, and Selena didn’t tinker with their genetics, despite the temptation, to make designer cats.

The “loft room” design of all of the lairs was a blessing and something of a curse. It was a curse because it was hard to keep at a constant temperature, but it allowed her to see the entire length of the lair and be able to spot problems. The smell of solder and plastic burning sometimes infused every crevice of the 2200 square feet areas, but by the same token she couldn’t be taken unawares.

She had set up a smaller area in one corner for her own workout area. She was concentrating on fighting effectively while staying stationary. When she had to practice the more complex dodge/move and acrobatic versions of her fighting, she had the entire city to play in. She even got practice her fighting with her cats underfoot and getting in her way. It helped her dodging and evasion skills, trying her hardest not to hurt them.

She also made herself a promise never to fight in a pair of heels of any height. She really didn’t know how Dinah did it, but the risk of breaking an ankle wasn’t worth the additional sex factor. She could simply be sexy in low-heeled combat boots.

As her fortune grew, she was able to get custom made furniture, but having it delivered was a problem. Finally, she got it all delivered to a different address, and asked Dinah to help her move the individual pieces to her Lair. She didn’t mind Dinah knowing where she was, but she was still nervous about others knowing.

Her altar to Bast had come a long way from those first days. It had started simply as a few milk-crates and a board with the various statues she had stolen displayed on it. Now, she displayed things more appropriately. She had proper lights focused on it, and had added even more precious treasures to the altar. It had grown beyond a simple shrine into a true altar, perhaps the Temples of Bast would have displayed their treasures the same way in the past. One ritual that she regularly undertook was a half hour to an hour of meditation in front of that altar. Oddly enough, the cats seemed to enjoy doing so as well, sitting quietly at her side when she was communing with her Goddess.

When she wasn’t engaged in one of her other pursuits, she developed tech for other “costumed people” and streamlined her own rig-out. She got rid of elements that were either too hard to maintain or just too outdated as more technology became available to the public. She had revised her armor and no longer used spider silk. She developed a fiber made entirely out of titanium it was as strong as solid titanium and flexible as the spider silk to boot. Once it was up to her demanding standards, she wove her next suit out of it. It was so much thinner and easier to move in there was no real comparison to what she'd had .

Egyptian cotton, 1500 thread count per square inch, was supposedly the finest you could get of anything. She managed to get 8,000 threads per square inch (in a single layer) of this titanium fiber. When you layered four sheets of this stuff together, letting the threads go from layer to layer, it became incredibly strong. You couldn’t cut it with shears or puncture it with anything larger than a 40-gauge needle.

That made for an incredibly light, strong, protective suit of armor. It still needed something to take impact hits, but bullets (even armor piercing ones) didn’t scare her anymore. You actually had to mold the garment to the shape you wanted the final piece to be in since it couldn’t readily be sewn, yet once completed, there was nothing like it. It looked like a seamless suit of dulled gunmetal, flexible and breathable. She wouldn’t be able to gain much weight because the material couldn’t stretch that much and there was no way to patch in more.

She was even able to improve on Black Canary’s costume for her. Getting knifed in the legs with nothing but fishnets to protect them prompted Catwoman to develop the new microfiber armor using metals and other carbon chains. The result was a pair of tights for Canary that were not able to be slashed, cut, run or punctured, while retaining the “SEX GODDESS” nature of the previous costume. She continued the theme to the rest of Dinah’s costume, and when the outfit was done, Dinah was able to “disappear” it to wherever those rings sent items that weren’t needed here.

She was making very good money from the new tech sales. She didn’t need to steal another thing in her life. But she had too much fun matching wits against the security systems and the ingenuity of mankind. It was fun to walk past everything they put in place to safeguard possessions like those systems didn’t exist.

Of course, following her own set of morals, she documented all her findings and all her new gadgets, putting them into the Brother Eye database. She knew that these discoveries would revolutionize many areas of science and technology, and some of them were very dangerous to humanity; she had no desire to help a crook become invulnerable to bullets and Tasers.

But that didn’t stop her; not even when she received an unwelcome visit.

She had been working in her “main lab” on some new tech, as always, when the AI spoke up.

There is someone in the crawlspace between the drop ceiling and the actual concrete ceiling. They are moving very stealthily, coming toward you and the hanging safe you put up there.

Well, that isn’t too unexpected. Have they discovered the countermeasures I put in place?

Unknown. They have made no move to counteract the security devices in place currently.

Very well. Send the command to activate the first of the countermeasures.

The lights dimmed slightly as several thousand volts and amps coursed over the concrete ceiling and through the supports holding the drop ceiling in place. She waited and continued her work.

Soon a body, clad in black, came crashing through the drop ceiling about ten feet away. It missed her, and one of her experiments, but the head of the body managed to just catch the edge of a table as it completed its fall.

Well, I don’t think there is any chance of questioning it. The Apache may have believed “shoot first and question the bodies”, but I don’t think there’s going to be a lot I can glean from that corpse.

Her statement had been redundant, but the nanobots responded anyhow.

Use caution, I have detected an anomalous signal coming from that body.

Can you tap into the signal? She asked as she rose from her workbench and moved toward the corpse.

Negative. The signal is encrypted and I have not had time to break that encryption. It appears to be passive in nature, broadcasting to a receiver someplace within five miles of here.

That’s irritating, I would have…

WARNING! There is an incoming return signal. I am unable to decrypt it and cannot guess as to the signal’s purpose. Please use caution.

A curl of smoke appeared from the body, and soon, there was nothing but a pile of ash with clothing around it. That looks like textbook descriptions of “spontaneous human combustion”.

Indeed. It acted like the body burned up from inside itself.

Well, let’s analyze the remains. I might be able to get some useful information from it.

Dustpan and whisk broom in hand, she cleaned the ashes and scraps of clothing and chunks of bone up, ignoring the scorch marks and hole in her ceiling. She soon had them in her spectrograph and her microscope to try to find what she could.

Interesting. According to some of the minerals in the bone, this person was from somewhere in Asia. Wonder why they came to New York and decided to drop in for a visit?

I have been engaged in decrypting the signals I detected. The first was simply transmitting medical information, heart rate, blood pressure, sweat and so on. The second seems to have been a one-word order, but it is too short for any decryption software to be able to break it.

Don’t worry about it. I think I can guess the nature of the message. “Kill” or “die” or even “burn”. It seemed like it was a self-destruct command. At least that’s all I can come up with.

I concur. There seems to be no other logical reason for this. Extrapolating from what we know, some unknown asian went to great lengths to infiltrate here, with unknown purpose, and when they were electrocuted, some type of order was sent via encrypted signal to terminate the asian's life, destroying the body in such a way as to make it impossible to identify. There is a high probability that their purpose here was nefarious in nature, with intent to either harm or kill you.

Well, for what it’s worth, I agree with you. Just wish we could get more information. As it is, I’m going to have to move my work area again. That’s a pain in the backside.

I shall focus all my efforts on cracking the codes on the signals.

She heard no more from the AI for several days. Every so often she did a status check she was told that it was processing information, and that it would take time to break the encryption. Then she noticed her head heating up and giving her a headache.

Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore and canceled the order to break the encryption. The AI agreed and Catwoman was allowed to get on with her life.

But that marked the day she began to be pursued more vigorously by a new group, one that could kill her.

It started slowly, just a few more confrontations in the streets, but soon they were following her to her “home” and some camping out to wait for her. They would attack at random times, even when she wasn’t in her costume, and it didn’t seem to matter that she was always able to beat them. She hoped they would get tired and move on at some point.

Weeks passed, as she kept moving around the city, changing locations, going to Chicago to deliver items she could have as easily mailed, she tried everything she could think of to avoid a confrontation with the people who were coming at her. Finally, she realized she couldn’t avoid them.

They were in her main lair. They were staking out her secondary lairs. They drove her away from Canary and worked in a coordinated way to isolate her from everyone. She felt like a rabbit being hunted by a pack of wolves. They never stopped and they never got tired, and they never seemed to rest.

She would successfully avoid some of them, slipping out of their net, and find them all over any of the destinations she planned to reach. She started using her cats to scout locations, very few of which she could safely stay in for more than a few hours. She lived in her suit.

Once or twice, someone dropped in front of her, startling her, without thought, she would lash out with whip or claw, opening them up before they could attack her. They all had one thing in common; they were dressed as you would expect a movie ninja to be. Face concealing masks, thin bulbous silver material around their eyes to let them see, and a red bandana on the outside of the mask.

She tried talking to one of them. He didn’t say anything. He just came at her with a pair of kamas; long hook blades on a short handle, used in past times as a rice harvester. She defended herself and killed him, then escaped on the power lines, again.

She kept running. She was only allowed a couple hours rest before they found her and began stalking her, again. Once, on a remote rooftop, it was only the shock from her nanobots to her brain that awoke her in time to defend her life again. Once she got away, she realized that she would have to do two things; first to shake them from her trail permanently, and second get some rest.

She started working with her nanobots to drive all the fatigue poisons out of her body to make her refreshed and awake. While that was happening, she got to a place where she was relatively secure, a very small conduit that was almost a chimney to the sewers.

At least this way they can only come at me from above or below. That’s four directions secured.

It took some time, but the nanobots were able to flush the fatigue poisons from her body, but at a cost to herself. She desperately needed to drink something. True, her suit allowed her to process her bodily wastes and dispose of them easily, but it wasn’t a stillsuit, and it didn’t provide the fluids she needed.

When she was feeling more herself, she came up from the sewers and started looking for the nourishment she needed. Scanning the various databanks she was able to find a restaurant nearby serving sushi. As she headed toward it she ordered the nanobots to change her appearance and physicality to hide her. She reached into her “pack” pocket in the lower back of her suit and pulled out a miniskirt she had stashed there for emergencies. She then made alterations to the coloration of her suit to make it look like boots, leggings and a tight top instead of the full body covering suit. She pulled off the hood and mask and stashed it in the “pack” to keep it out of the way.

About ten minutes later she arrived at her destination, looking nothing like herself. She had some serious thinking to do.

Okay, how the HELL are these people tracking me?

Unknown.

You have no clue? Nothing?

I do not even have speculations as to how they are able to find you. You have done everything but leave the country to throw them off your trail. I have scanned the signals coming off your body and there are no trackers either attached to you directly or on the suit. There seem to be no chemical markers either, yet somehow they are still tracking you.

So that leaves social engineering.

I do not understand that.

In any kind of problem there are elements that are mechanical and human. When the mechanical is eliminated, such as discarding the tracking devices, it leaves only the human element. In this case the human element is me. “Social engineering” is determining courses of action based on purely human motivations and ways of behaving. When talking about passwords it refers to the possibility that someone is going to use passwords that are easy to remember, things like birthdays, names, wedding anniversaries and so on. In this case, it is these ninja determining how I am going to act based on my patterns of behavior in the past.

So in this case they are determining how you will respond given a specific set of stimuli?

Precisely, which means I have to change my behaviors radically to throw them off. I have been running and evading them, unwilling to confront them directly. I have still been going after the criminals who take because they can. I have still been with Canary and Jones. I have to stop all those behaviors to throw them off.

Understood. Shall I find other ways for you to accomplish your mission while still avoiding them?

No. As I said, I have to change my behavior.

Instead of being hunted, she became the hunter.

One of her resources was her cats. She decided to use them to her advantage.

She made sure to call them from all over the city to an area she normally didn't frequent; she was there for one purpose only. As soon as they were assembled she pulled small pellets of nanobots from her mouth. She had ordered her nanobots to produce nanobots that were programmed to give her direct visual and auditory access to what her cats saw and heard. She could communicate with them to a point, but this would allow her to actually see what they saw.

She sent them out through the city, looking for the “ninja” that she had been confronting. She needed some down time to plan and recuperate, and that meant a new place to lay up. She made sure that her new “lair” was in a totally different place all together. She broke into Bruce Wayne’s New York apartment and stayed there. His security had been good, but for her, breaking in just wasn’t that hard. Wayne's apartment made it unlikely that the ninja would be anticipating her holing up there. She'd been staying away from locations like it for some time.

Once she felt relatively safe, she placed as many cameras around as she could on the approaches to the apartment. She thought of every sneaky way to gain entrance to this place and put a sticky-cam there, slaved it up to her AI who kept monitoring it all the time. Cat-sized or larger, she wanted to know about it.

She spent a lot of her time watching things through the eyes of her cats. Only when they saw something of interest did she listen in, mostly she only observed. She wanted to find a group of those ninja and follow them back to their lair.

She was monitoring the cats when the AI broke into her thoughts.

Movement detected on cameras 4, 6, 10 and 14. Movement on cameras 8 and 12 as well. Movement now detected on every camera, converging on this location.

How the FUCK!!!

She jumped up and got ready to defend herself. First, out to the landing and shimmy up the wall to the roof. There were others there, coming down on ropes or using climbing gear, but her suit allowed her to ascend faster and correct her direction faster than they could think.

Once she achieved the roof, she made it to the private helipad and made her stand. She put her suit on automatic to avoid any distance weapons they might use. She pulled the mask in place to cover all her skin, making sure nothing about her was vulnerable.

Very soon the suit started twisting her body, ducking and dodging to avoid the throwing stars, the sai, the blowgun darts coming at her. While the suit’s new protection would keep her safe from them, there was no reason to let her opponents know this.

How in the bloody hell were they able to zero in on my location so freaking fast? I didn’t do anything that they could use to find me!

Correction. You were accessing the internet and your various devices around the city.

Weren’t those connections encrypted?

You had never done so.

SHIT!!! I never even thought about it. Is the other surprise ready?

Affirmative.

Good! I think I’m going to need it soon. Do you have a count?

There are fifteen signals within a half-kilometer sphere.

Okay, then it’s time.

She started taking more control back from her suit, closing in on various opponents. Jumping and leaping into their hidden locations, she struck and clawed. She had long since put the poison into the bladders connected to her claws insuring a scratch would kill.

Despite the deaths, they were still fighting back instead of running. Three closed in on her to attack from various locations around her. She was blindsided more than once until she ordered the AI to monitor the feeds around the roof and to warn her when there was someone behind her.

As expected, they blocked with their arms and other body parts. They might stop the raking strike she was going for on their chests, but when her hand twisted and the claws pierced their uniforms it left puncture marks in their skin, she disengaged going after someone else. Those she touched were the dead who just hadn’t stopped moving yet.

Her whip was like a living thing, lashing out, keeping her opponents out of range so that she could focus on one at a time. Her tail was a club, distracting and keeping them off balance unsure when it would attack. She made sure her feet stayed still as much as possible, only shifting to reposition or get her next target in range.

There were four bodies on the rooftop when she started moving around to get at more of the bad guys.

She was able to leave four more people on the roof in various stages of dead. Things were getting a bit close for her when she thought NOW!!!

At her command, all of those left stopped and started clutching their head. Apparently their discipline was enough that they didn’t scream, but Catwoman couldn’t understand how they managed that feat.

All the remaining people literally went up in flames. In the course of a few seconds, there were nothing but piles of ash left.

Good work. Did you finally decrypt that burst- code?

Negative. I simply sent the same code out on the same frequency. There was a high chance that they used the same signal and key to detonate people as they had before. Your commentary on human failure means that it is likely that your enemies will go for the simple, less secure options when given a choice.

Yes, we can be really stupid like that. But most people don’t have an Artificial Intelligence to help them out. Keeping track of those kinds of things isn’t easy for most of us.

While she had been chatting with her AI, she went to each “body” checking the cremains. She gathered up the expended weapons, swords, shuriken, darts and more, and stored them carefully in a small bag made from more of her nanotech. The bag kept growing with each new item inserted, but it didn’t get bulky. It acted more like an opaque vacuum sealing pack, one that adhered to her shoulder blades when she was done.

Once the scene was cleaned up as much as she could manage alone, she went back over to Bruce Wayne’s apartment to make sure they hadn’t destroyed it.

She did a before-and-after comparison on what was present and what had been moved. She had more than enough information from her brief stay to be able to determine what had been changed since she left for the roof. Mostly she was looking for any spy devices that may have been left behind. The AI confirmed her findings as she spent time removing those devices.

She stopped long enough to get the few things that she had left behind in her haste to move the fight, and then she abandoned Wayne's place too.

She cautiously moved through the city back to one of her several lairs to get the equipment she would need to analyze the weapons left behind. Even though she had figured out how she was being tracked, she wasn’t stupid enough to think they had given up on her.

The better part of the day was spent simply observing her homes, looking for anyone who was keeping her under surveillance. She used not only her normal five senses, but also used frequency scanning, Doppler radar for any movement, heat signatures, and contour mapping looking for someone who was in a place that they shouldn’t be in.

Soon enough, she found a couple people who didn't fit. It took almost no effort to remove them, leaving them as more flotsam in an alley. Then she looked seriously for cameras and microphones in her home, or focused on her home, and finally entered the lair.

Once she was inside, another person’s presence was immediately apparent. Whomever it was didn’t try to hide their existence. Catwoman froze and got ready for another fight.

“We would like to compliment you on your fighting prowess. There’s not many who could take on The Hand and survive. You did. Particularly when the odds are fifteen to one.”

She stepped out of the shadows, and Catwoman went fully on the defensive. This wasn’t someone who was trying to hide, in fact, there is no way she could hide in anything other than a crowd of people who were dressed the same as she was or at a comic convention.

Five foot nine inches, she was covered in strategically placed red silk. One scarf was wrapped around her head in such a way as to hold her black hair out of her face, but the ends both trailed down her back. A red silk leotard with a high neck and no sleeves adorned her body, but didn’t do anything to hide it. Red bands around her biceps and red forearm guards were the only adornments on her arms. She had red boots and a couple red sashes around her thighs. Stuck into the sashes on her thighs Catwoman could see a pair of Sai.

The picture of this lady was quickly processed by the database in her head, and the result of came back rapidly.

“Elektra. I’m honored to be met in my home by a corpse.”

Elektra bowed from the waist. “I’m pleased to meet you, Catwoman. It seems that you are much more than you are thought to be. Not only are you good at fighting and evading fighting, you have wealth of information at your fingertips. It would have taken many others days to find out who I am.”

Catwoman grunted non-committally. She wasn’t sure how much Elektra knew and didn’t want to tip her to all that she could access.

Elektra continued. “I would like to tell you that you passed your test with flying colors, but then you will say ‘What test’ and I would have to respond with something like ‘The test where we try to kill you and you survive’. At which point you will ask something like ‘Why were you testing me’ and I would respond with ‘Why to see if you could be a member of the League of Assassins, of course.’”

Catwoman’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not an assassin. I’m a thief and an inventor, not a killer.”

“And yet you have killed many. Not only the ninja we dispatched after you, but those we had watching various points for you, those sent to harry you into a corner and many others, not the least of which was that idiot who kidnapped Mr. Luthor’s daughter. Your skill and your ability to penetrate highly guarded facilities brought you to our notice. Which is, ultimately, why I’m here.”

Catwoman pulled the lower half of her mask down and moved to make herself something to eat, all the while keeping an eye on Elektra. “If you have been watching me for so long, you know that I’m not an idealist, I’m a mercenary. Can you pay me enough?”

Elektra pursed her lips. “I think we can make sufficient arrangements in that area. Given your penchant for working alone and the fact that you are becoming even more mercenary, I assume you are rejecting the offer I have at this point. I think that we can say that you won’t be recruited by us at this time, but the offer will stay open. I can promise you that when you decide to join us, the Hand, the Foot Clan and the League of Assassins as well as the entire League of Shadows will all be able to assist you in any way you need. You will get training the likes of which Dinah Lance cannot give you. You will have access to resources and information that make the computer hacking you have been doing look like petty larceny in comparison. We have a world-wide organization which has its fingers in everyone’s business, including people you wouldn’t think would be associated with us.

“I am telling you all this because you could benefit greatly from all that we have. We could benefit greatly from what you have and what you can do. The stealth suit you came up with is only one example among many. Your preferred targets, the ‘untouchables’ and the ‘meta criminals’ are surrounded by layers of protection, not all of them penetrable by a lone agent. Some of them are surrounded by our members. We can reach out and kill them at any point we wish. But we are paid very well to make sure that people like you cannot get to them. Do you really wish to come into direct conflict with us?”

“So now it’s threats?”

Elektra laughed. “Not at all. I’m pointing out the reality. Threats aren’t going to work on you. Offers and enticements aren’t going to work with you. So don’t you think it would be a good thing to know who you will be fighting, and how to defeat them before you wind up on the business end of a sword?”

That stopped her. Elektra had a very good point. Knowing what to expect, knowing how they would react, and knowing what kind of fighting they would do would be a major asset in any confrontations she had with one of their agents.

“Wait, are you telling me that you guys are willing to let me kill your people to prove a point?”

Elektra shrugged. “They are lower ranked members of their respective organizations. They were given the assignments they were given as an opportunity to shine and grow within their organization. If they get killed in the line of duty, then that’s the price they pay. That’s what they are there for. They failed in their task, and thus they are dead. The worthy will survive. As you have. As I have. As many others have. It’s no loss; there are thousands more where they came from.”

Survival of the fittest. How…Darwinian.

Elektra continued, “It is survival of the fittest. If they can’t survive through a simple assignment, how will they survive when the stakes are truly high? When they MUST accomplish their task, how many will fail if let pass through when the odds are not stacked in their favor? When they don’t have an entire team behind them?”

She shifted forward and took a piece of tuna away from Catwoman. “Don’t be distressed by their deaths. I assure you, the League of Shadows is not upset by their deaths. You have exposed problems which we will take steps to fix, such as not paying attention to what they are climbing on, and not using the same radio signal to order their death without some sort of security on that signal. I suspect that is the same for you.”

Catwoman watched Elektra slowly chew the tuna. She got that right. Won’t go around without an encrypted and hidden network connection anymore, that’s for sure.

Elektra nodded. “See? We think along the same lines. Now, I must go, and YOU must think about all we have offered. Perhaps you will see reason and join us, or perhaps you will wind up dead. The choice is yours.”

The next couple nanoseconds were a blur in Catwoman’s eyes. Elektra was there, then she appeared to dissolve into mist and vanish into thin air.

What the hell???

What distresses you?

How did she do that?

How did whom do what?

Didn’t you see Elektra there?

There has been no one in this room except you for the last several seconds. You just walked into the room, and now you are here making a sandwich. How is this possible?

Do you seriously mean to tell me that you didn’t record that conversation that I just had with Elektra?

What conversation?

It took some doing, but she was able to “play back” a copy of the conversation they'd had and show it to the AI from her memory. It was spotty and some of it was not accurate, but it was the best she could do. She was unsure what kind of effect this had on the computer.

My record of events skips. You come into the room, and then you are most of the way through making a sandwich. There is nothing in between. There is not even a time change on the recording media we use to show where a gap occurred. However, according to your memory record, there were several minutes of conversation that are not included in my memory. I am out of sync with the Cesium Timeservers by eight minutes, 27.8994 seconds. This is disturbing.

Good to see that you take this seriously.

I am ‘taking this’ as I can. Somehow she was able to disable me and my systems without doing anything that I can detect. There were no emissions, no ECM signals, no EM pulse, nothing. I am at a loss to explain how this happened. It is something I shall be considering for some time.

You’re really shaken by this.

If I were capable of emotion I would be. There is no explanation in a logical world that I can come up with. The only explanations are that she has found a means outside of the laws of physics to disable me or there is a supernatural explanation, which is not supported by any evidence at my disposal. Because of this I am extremely… you would call it ‘unsettled’. I will be researching how to upgrade my systems to prevent this from happening again.

She heard no more from them for the rest of the day.

Selena sighed in contentment as she leaned back from her workbench. Her back was cramped and several vertebrae popped when she stretched slowly and sensuously. Being hunched over the table top for as long as she had been made her back sore.

She had been working on more upgrades to her system, one of them being a series of improvements that gave her a 3d image of the immediate environment in her head. It wasn’t a visual setup, it was more like echolocation. She found that using it, out to a radius of 300 meters in all directions, she could “see” the people she was fighting, how they were moving and what was going on. It gave her precise locations of who she was in the area with, and if they were enemy or friendly. Buildings, walls, floors and ceilings were “transparent”, and with this ability, she could see and “hear” in other rooms. The improvement was such that she could get rid of her camera rig, giving it instead to Black Canary. She kept a few small cameras, with the adherence package still attached, so she could spoof surveillance cameras she came across, but the “snooper rig” of optical cable, bracelet, and laser microphone, she passed on.

It cost her a small fortune, but she bought a laboratory building from Horizon, a scientific research company who had moved locations and abandoned the lab to be torn down. Into this location, she had delivered an electron microscope and the equipment necessary to construct nanobots. She got rid of all the other devices that were scattered all over the city, consolidating her work areas to this one location, and then she hacked every database in the world that had this location listed at all. She also went into those same databases and pulled out the information that was listed about her lairs. Her lab and the Lairs dropped off the face of the world.

She was getting very paranoid about her privacy.

The last thing she did was to search for a location that was not in an existent building, but part of the under-subway of the 1800’s. She did multiple searches for the plans and went investigating those locations, looking for some place that was out of the way enough to allow her to finally have a space that was inviolate. She abandoned the lairs that had been discovered by the League of Shadows. She would have to be more careful in the future.

Finally she found another location. Not in the sewers, but deep underground. It was a turn-around for the old subway system, buried underneath the main subway that most people traveled on every day. She found a few places where she had to spray her nanobots around to reinforce the surrounding areas with the titanium threads they had developed. Once the titanium had been infused into the walls and ceiling, she felt good enough to move in.

It took her days to complete the move. Days of crawling over the rooftops to make sure she had removed all the possessions she wished to keep, and to transport them to the new lair. Some of it was very interesting for her to move, like some of the custom furniture being disassembled and having the nanobots help her reassemble them at the destination. But she could have her scientific items moved and delivered to her new lab, and hoped these steps would be the last she would have to take.

This really sucks having to move every few months… I should learn to travel lighter.

She managed to purchase and then move a plasma television to put in her lair. She found a cable TV feed and had that connect into the TV, and added a wireless access point so she could still surf the internet whenever she wanted. Information was still king, and she decided to make sure she was still ruling, especially if everyone counted her out. No information was ever wasted.

She had been considering this when she realized that she now had near-photographic recall.

Did you and your microscopic counterparts do something to my memory?

Affirmative. I have taken many of your biological storage and long term memories and put them into the crystalline storage we are using for the operating system and so on. I reasoned that I could do a more efficient job of storing, indexing and retrieving information than your biological system could do. Currently you have 10^15 bytes of information in your biological memory that is being transferred over into the memory chips that were created, freeing up those sections for either deletion and replacement, or allowing you to have a biological and a crystalline storage system.

Let’s not monkey around with my brain just yet. If there are areas of the brain that are damaged and should be replaced, please take over those functions if you would. I have no problem replacing biological technology with mechanics, or even better yet, merging the two into one unit.

It is an area of investigation I am willing to work on with you. Biomechanical research is certainly a lucrative field. I have already enhanced your memory, your processing speed, your strength, flexibility and your endurance. I would like an opportunity to find how far the process can be taken before there is damage, and what forms those damages can take.

Don’t you DARE do that to me. I don’t want to be some sort of cyber-person, a Borg or something.

There are other test subjects that I can use. I will start with your cats. Then I can use your defeated opponents. I can test on them without fear of killing them since they are already dead.

Just so long as you only use proven improvements on me. I don’t want to be brain-dead because you “enhanced” the wrong neuron in my brain.

Understood. You are still my host and it is still my primary purpose to help you in any way you need.

Her practice area was set up and she was still practicing fighting against imaginary opponents. Now, however, she accessed various DVDs and videos of people fighting in different styles. With the processing power she had now she was able to break down their movements and work out strategies to defeat them as well as how to fight like them. She ordered the AI to download and analyze the videos so that when she awoke she would have even more processed. Learning like this started to take over her days and nights.

Her body began remembering how to move, how to flow. She learned from these private training sessions that there were only so many ways for a body to move when striking or evading, and if you could put the opponent into a situation where they had only a few, or better yet one, way to get their goal, then you could accurately anticipate what they were going to do.

She was coming back from another “job” of “liberating” some jewels from a safe when she ran into Bullseye again.

He was watching another gentleman, someone in red leather, and she startled him. He turned with blinding speed and threw the nail he had in his hand at her.

Her time sense slowed. She saw the nail coming at her in slow motion and knew just how much she had to move to be able to dodge it. Vectors and momentum were all calculated out and she found her head move fractionally, and the nail passed by harmlessly.

“I missed…” hissed out of Bullseye’s mouth. “I never miss….”

Oh shit. I think I just really pissed him off.

He leapt at her. While her mind was still on him, she saw his movement and once again, figures were calculated out of his flight and where he would land. Turned out that he was about to land on her. So she moved to allow him to land on her, but made sure she had the advantage in doing so.

She arched backwards and planted her hands behind her. Since Bullseye had figured on her moving backwards, his feet came down on her chest, just as he had planned. But Catwoman had already turned the momentum to her advantage.

Her feet left the ground just before Bullseye landed on her ribcage. Her momentum going in an arc countered his momentum going straight down, and she swept his feet away from what would have been a killing blow to her chest into a sweep of his legs, sending him toward the rooftop. Meanwhile her feet came up and impacted squarely with the back of his head, sending his whole body’s momentum sideways where just seconds before it had been going downward.

The abrupt change of direction had stunned him apparently, as he impacted one of the machines on the roof. But at the same time as she was in a handstand, she started shifting it to finish her flip, something hit her right in the small of her back. It hit with such force that it added momentum to her flip, causing her to over-rotate and land on her buttocks.

What was that?

Bullseye launched a rock at you just before he leaped. He had been aiming for your throat, but your flip caused it to impact your lower back instead. It is incredible how quickly he moved and the force he added to that rock while he was leaping for you. I need you to hit him.

I’m gonna do my best.

She rolled backward and leapt up to her feet, turning and crouching to wait for him to come at her again. She had rolled out of the way of another launched missile, saving her life once again. She started scampering at him, dodging and twisting so the barrage of hurled objects missed her, but only by fractions of an inch.

Bullseye was getting more and more furious the longer the confrontation went on. Apparently he wasn’t used to missing anything he decided to hit. The near misses were driving him crazy. He started with small things, nails and ball bearings, and went to larger throwables, such as the shuriken on his belt and finally he launched a large hard ball attached to a rope.

He was scarily accurate with his weapons. The only thing that saved her was the nanite enhancements that she had received. They allowed her to anticipate where the missiles were coming from based on where his hands were at.

What took her by surprise was the chunk of asphalt he kicked at her.

It impacted right between her eyes. There was no way to anticipate it nor to dodge it since she was not paying attention to his feet. It was all she could do to retain her consciousness after it hit. She knew that her brain had been rattled around, and she felt her body go on automatic, deflecting and dodging attacks thrown at her by Bullseye.

When she finally came back to full consciousness, she was in a vicious hand-to-hand combat with Bullseye, her body moving on its own.

WHAT????

Remain calm. My prime directive is still to keep you safe. I have utilized the knowledge you have been aquiring to animate you while you were dazed. I calculated the chances of what would happen had I not acted, and came to the conclusion that Bullseye would have killed you while you were helpless, so I exerted control over your suit to put it in automatic mode and to, quote, save your bacon, unquote.

Okay then, my gratitude, but let me take back over.

Control cut off in mid strike, and that threw off the tempo of the combat. Bullseye had moved to dodge an attack that never even was launched. So Catwoman used that break to bound backwards and over the edge of the roof, plummeting toward the ground almost 8 stories below.

She threw her whip at anything that it could attach to in an effort to arrest her fall, and it managed to catch on a protrusion on the face of the building. The whip turned her fall into a swing, with a heck of a lot of momentum. It took a lot of strength to hang on to the whip while she went from near-terminal velocity vertically to near-terminal velocity horizontally, and the momentum swung her up into the air, nearly 70 feet and across a four lane road.

Oh, god, this is going to HURT..!

She saw the wall coming up very fast, but her body twisted and at the last moment, she went feet first through someone’s window, and into some kind of atrium. She slid to a stop and lightly bumped the far wall.

She lay there for a few seconds catching her breath. She heard the alarms in the distance and knew that she had to get out fast. She raced up the wall, pushed aside the drop ceiling tiles, crawled into the space beyond them and slid the tile back into place.

It took only a thought to activate the echo-locater and to watch as the guards came up the stairs and the elevator to see what the ruckus was. She also noticed that Bullseye was still on the other rooftop, and apparently from the vibrations coming off his body, he was pissed as hell.

She also noticed another person a few buildings away, also on the rooftop. He whipped some kind of stick out of his thigh pouch and threw it at another building near him, and swung away on the rope it left. Soon he was out of her ‘sight’.

She resigned herself to a long night of waiting for the whole world to finish their fascination with her unexpected entrance.