Catwoman and Deathstroke receive their new assignments.

Main Story Twenty-Four

It was one of her favorite, no-chaos-if-you-want-to-live-here kinds of places. Sure, she had enough money to afford it from her numerous escapades, though it was expensive to the point where she couldn’t stay for more than a week at a time without burning a hole in her savings larger than she could withstand comfortably.

The setting of the hotel room was nice enough; two couches in a single room might seem ostentatious for a person who didn’t plan on having any guests in the room with her, but she loved having a little bit of the good life every now and then. And sometimes that meant sticking her feet up on the other couch across the way from her.

Both plush, white couches balanced a lounging Selina between them, dressed up in her reputable catsuit sans the mask. Her black underwear was pulled in multiple different directions by the tightened leather and lycra, not helped by the lounging position. It was not the most pleasant feeling, but she was leaving soon, so she felt that she could wait until she was finished reviewing her notes. Holding up a sheet of paper in front of her face, she re-read the letter.

Dear Ms. Kyle, the letter began. We hope that this message finds you in good health; the fate of the world may depend on it.

We are sure that you have become aware of the recent developments in Gotham City: namely, the fact that Pamela Isely, A.K.A. Poison Ivy, appears to have captured multiple members of the Batfamily, including both Batman and Robin. We have good reason to believe that Batman is still alive and being held by Ivy at an unknown location. Perhaps you know where this location may be, perhaps not.

Either way, it is in all of our best interests that Batman be rescued from Poison Ivy’s control. We do believe that you have the best chance of locating him if you have not already found him, else we would have approached the Justice League about this matter. No doubt they are already searching for him.

We are not often associated with the Justice League, the letter continued, but in this case, our interests are aligned. However, we would prefer it if the Justice League were not made aware of our involvement. Additionally, if any other Batfamily members are also searching for Batman and are not currently under Poison Ivy’s control, we would ask that you keep this assignment hidden from them, as we would not want the extra scrutiny from them. Since we cannot use any of our own operatives, we have now turned to you.

We would like to make you an offer. We want you to locate Batman and successfully rescue him from Poison Ivy. If we see that Batman is either free from Ivy’s control or in the Justice League’s custody by the end of this week, we will wire fifteen million U.S. dollars into your Dutch bank account under the name “Lena Watzcik.” The rescue of other members of the Batfamily is encouraged, but the priority is Batman, as he may be able to recover his family by himself. No bonuses will be paid for the rescue of Robin or any other Batfamily members.

Attached to this letter is a box with a ring in it. If you wish to accept our offer, please open the box. We will be notified by a signal from the box’s opening that you have taken the assignment. Otherwise, leave the box sealed and we will retrieve it tomorrow.

Selina used her free hand to examine the already-open box. It looked a lot like one that would be used by a prospective fiance to propose to a significant other. Four or five inches in length, the square parcel did not appear to have any obvious electronics in it that could transmit a signal. Perhaps if she grabbed a screwdriver, she could pry it apart and search for anything that could be used to send a signal, but right now, it wasn’t important.

The ring inside of the box contains a magic that will allow you to appear to be Poison Ivy as she was seen in the recently released video of the incident. As long as you wear the ring, you will appear to be her. Unless you know of a cure for her effects that we do not, we recommend you use the ring to pretend to be her once you find your target and command Batman to safety. How you use it is up to you.

If you are able to complete the assignment within the given time frame, we will arrange for payment. You may not keep the ring once it is over; a portion of your payment will be offered in exchange for the ring, and the rest of it will be provided once we have verified that you have not told the Batfamily or the Justice League about this assignment. Again, how you convince the Justice League of your success is up to you, but we recommend that you tell them that you managed to get through to Batman’s true self.

If you already know where to find Poison Ivy, go there immediately. If not, perhaps your mutual friend Harleen Quinzel, A.K.A. Harley Quinn, might be helpful in locating her. We have no way of locating her ourselves, so if you are unable to locate them through Quinn, you must find an alternate way of locating them.

If you fail to complete the assignment, we need you to put the ring back into the box and put the box in a place where only we may find it. If you do not, we will have **** but to take the ring from you by ****. We can track the box down at our leisure, but be warned that we can track you down as well.

Please make haste; until you complete this mission, this will be the only message you receive from us. We wish you luck.

The letter was unsigned.

Selina lowered her arm, resting her wrist against one of her lounging legs. Thinking over the letter again in her head, she knew that one of the things it said was true; she did have the best chance of finding Bruce.

Whether or not the Justice League would ever trust her for her help, she knew that if anyone could find where Ivy was hiding, it was her. The reason she hadn’t already done so was because she had already done exactly what the letter had suggested; she had tracked down Harley first. In fact, she had been planning to use Harley to get to Ivy, then beat Ivy into submission.

The ring would certainly make things easier. She liked the plan to convince Batman that she was Ivy in order to lure him away from her. It would probably be easier than what she’d originally had in mind. She had considered contacting the League for help in the beating she’d planned, but this would hopefully prevent anyone from getting hurt. Others might see her taking a job and thinking she was in this for the money, but she knew the truth.

She was going to save Bruce because she had to do it. That was all that mattered.

Still, if she had the opportunity to be paid for doing it, she wasn’t going to turn it down.

Selina picked up the ring from off of her chest and inspected it in the glimmering light. Though she had already tested it out before in the mirror, she still failed to see what made this ring so special. You’d think a magical ring would look more expensive, she thought. As it was, it appeared to be just a boring, silver circle with no inscriptions or carvings. Totally unattractive.

She slipped the ring into her pocket, then threw her legs off of the second couch. She sat upright, glancing around the hotel room.

Aside from the two couches, there were a fair few other items of furniture around the place. There was a bronze desk table close to the bedroom; though it had belonged in the bedroom, she had moved it out of there to make space. A black kitchen table stood closer to the locked front door, three chairs guarding three of its four sides. The tan carpeting was spotless, connecting her to all of it.

There was no television in here, nor was there any sign that there had ever been one. The only two electrical outlets in this room only powered the toaster and refrigerator, though she could always plug in her charger whenever she needed the outlets in here. Normally, though, she would just use the outlets in the bedroom.

Selina stood, adjusting her clothes as she stood. The gloves made it more difficult to gain enough traction, so it took her a couple of tries to shift her underwear around so that she was comfortable.

Sighing, Selina went off in search of the missing fourth chair for the kitchen table. The bedroom seemed like a reasonable place to start, since that was where she’d left it.

Sure enough, she found the missing chair sitting at the base of a bed stripped of its sheets and pillows. The bare pillows were instead wedged against the back of the chair between two of the three horizontally aligned wooden bars. Selina had set it up that way to serve two purposes. One, to make her more comfortable whenever she used it.

Two, to make the captive currently strapped to the chair more comfortable for as long as Selina decided to keep her there.

The otherwise missing pillow sheets and bed sheets were wrapped around the body and mouth of the woman sitting in the chair. Selina hadn’t wanted to use rope or tape like she would normally bring with her whenever she was tying someone down. This woman was a friend, after all. When she inevitably untied her, she didn’t want to find out that she had caused some pain to her so that she could be forgiven quickly. Grudges weren’t a good thing between two women that were practically neighbors-in-crime.

Not that it would be a long process anyway. The blonde pigtails with shades of red, black and white were famous around these- well, all- parts of Gotham. That, plus the faint remnants of white makeup around her pale face that bridged the difference between the yellow of her hair and the apricot of her skin. Of course, with the paint mostly faded after Selina had tied her up- and without the dirty dress made famous by her numerous crime sprees wearing it- perhaps only a few others might actually recognize her.

Harley Quinn snored softly, a single pillow sheet pulled tight between her red lips. Her face was tilted down, but other than that, she was leaning back in her chair in her sleep. In spite of the minimal amount of padding and the fact that her arms were dangling over the top of the chair and wound up tight behind it, she seemed snug.

Selina debated briefly. Should she just let her sleep? Harley’s natural sleep contrasted heavily with her highly unnatural predicament. Perhaps she could come back later.

No, she could not. Valuable time had already been lost waiting this long. After what Ivy had done, every second wasted would give her a further advantage. Harley’s intel- if it could even be called that- might already have gone bad while she slept.

Steeling herself, Selina reached forward and lightly rested her leather gloved hand on Harley’s shoulder. Nudging slightly, Selina whispered.

“Harley, wake up.”

In response, Harley muttered something in her sleep, too low for Selina to make anything out behind the gag. Her tucked chin rose up and Harley unconsciously tilted it over the opposite shoulder.

Frowning, Selina shook the bound woman with more strength. “Harley,” she scolded.

The other woman moaned softly, more muffled sounds escaping her mouth. They seemed like they could have been words, or they could’ve just been random gibberish. It was hard to tell.

Catwoman sighed, her whole body heaving through it by instinct. Well, Harley was probably already going to be mad at her anyway. Shaking her head softly, Selina raised her right palm, retracted the claws from her fingertips and swiped down.

Her palm came into full contact with Hrley’s left cheek, cracking audibly. Harley reacted with a gasp- with as sharp a breath as could be drawn past a bedsheet gag bisecting her mouth- and a sudden snap of her eyelids.

Her blue eyes found the floor, perhaps hazily settling on something as she came down from the shock of being smacked awake. Eventually, she blinked once, twice, three times before she began to look around herself. Her breaths came in heaves, recognizing the fact that she was indeed tied to a chair but maybe failing to notice that there was no rope, tape or cords.

Selina cleared her throat, attracting the attention of the bound woman before she could completely descend into an inescapable panic. The two criminals met eyes.

And Harley visibly relaxed, settling back into her chair. There was no indication of anger or betrayal in her eyes as Selina had expected to see. Either she was much better at masking her emotions than Selina suspected- unlikely, considering that she was such a horrible psychiatrist that she had fallen in love with her first and only patient- or she thought she was completely safe in Selina’s presence.

“Vfat’f fupf, Ki-kaa?” Harley asked.

“Hmm?” Catwoman responded.

“Fi fefv, ‘vfat’f fupf, Ki-kaa?’” Harley rolled her eyes. “Vheez, fadg fyu fu umfuda-”

“Okay, stop,” Selina interrupted, already feeling her instinctual Harley-induced headache coming. She had hoped that putting the gag in her mouth would make her less inclined to talk, but it had just made her talking a little more gibberish-ish.

Reaching one hand forward, Selina grabbed a handful of the white sheet tied between the clown’s lips and gently tugged on it. The gag slipped from her dry mouth without too much resistance, but Selina did not remove the tie from around her head, just in case she needed to put the gag back in her mouth.

Harley immediately stuck her tongue out, running it along her lips. “I said ‘What’s up, Kitty-cat?’ Jeez, can’t you understand gagspeak?”

“No, I don’t, Harls,” she replied, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. That headache was coming on really strong now. “I never took that class.”

“It’s easy!” Harley explained. “Mr. J and I use it all the time at Arkham, and even when we’re at home. I can teach you some time.”

“Sure thing.” Selina glanced at the rest of Harley’s bound figure. “Are you going to behave if I untie you?”

The other woman cocked her head. “Define ‘behave.’”

“I think I’m just going to leave you there for a few minutes,” Catwoman sighed.

Harley nonchalantly shrugged, or at least tried to shrug. She didn’t have much free range of motion. Even with only bedsheets and pillow cases to preserve the captive’s comfort, Selina knew how to bind someone so tightly that they could not move. “So what’s up, Kitty-cat?”

Selina’s eyebrows inched up an extra level. “Don’t you want me to untie you?”

She shrugged again. “I don’t mind.”

“Okay.” Selina paused. “I tied you up because I wanted your undivided attention.”

Harley looked disappointed. “Fine,” she muttered. She did as much wriggling as she could manage to sit up straight against the chair, even though she was mostly straight-backed already. “So what’s up, Kitty-cat?”

“I brought you here because I need your help,” Selina began.

“You want me to be your scratching post?” Harley asked, tilting her head to the side again.

“What? No, I-”

“Why else would you tie me up for my help?” she questioned incredulously. Her eyebrows inched up themselves. “It’s okay if you want. You don’t have to do that if you want to scratch me. Everyone could use a good scratching every now and then.”

“No! Didn’t you hear me?” Selina replied. “I said I wanted your full, undivided attention.”

“No you didn’t,” Harley accused. “You just said ‘undivided attention,’ not ‘full, undivided attention.’”

“What’s the difference? I-”

Selina bit off her next retort. This was going nowhere fast. She needed to get back on topic.

“Look,” Selina tried again, “the point is… I need your help. It’s about something real, something important. Life or **** here, Harley.”

The blonde woman pulled her lips into a tight line, nodding. “What is it?” she asked, somehow conveying a level of understanding that belied her high-pitched, ready-to-break-at-any-time voice.

“I’m sure by now that you’ve seen the news. I-”

Harley interrupted her again with yet another half-shrug. “I don’t watch too much TV. It rots your brain.”

“That’s… right,” Catwoman said. “But you’ve heard about Red, right?”

“I did!” the clown responded proudly. Her expression took on a much more sour appearance. “I heard she and everyone at Blackgate disappeared.”

“No, not that news,” Selina muttered, finally giving in to the urge and pinching the bridge of her nose. The headache didn’t recede. “The other one. The one about her and Batman? From a few weeks ago in Gotham Square?”

The other woman’s blue eyes lit up in recognition. “Oh, that one.” She huffed, pouting. “I wish she’d invited me for the party; I would’ve loved to tear apart the place with my bestie.”

The burglar paused. “The party?” Catwoman finally asked.

“Yeah,” responded Harley as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Before the Bat showed up and ruined it all. I swear that if I’d been there, I think we would’a been able to stop him together.”

I don’t… Her exasperated thought came to an abrupt abbreviation. Of all the things that Harley would be the last to learn, Selina had not expected the fact that Ivy had actually bested Batman to be one of them. Still, perhaps she shouldn’t be as surprised; Harley had also been among the last to know about her own arrest the last time she had been sent to Arkham.

“She did beat him, Harls,” Selina informed. “Didn’t you hear about it at all?”

“What’re you talking about?” she asked. She tried to move her hands, but the binds held firm. “Last I heard was Ivy breaking out of Blackgate after arriving there that day.” Harley cocked her head to the side again. “Come to think of it, what was with her being brought to Blackgate instead of Arkham?”

“She beat Batman and made him break her out of Blackgate just to keep up appearances,” the captor explained, still in disbelief that she had to say any of this at all. “How did you not know about this? Have you been in Arkham all this time?”

“Hey, don’t look at me like that!” Harley retorted. “It’s not like I’ve been living under a rock.”

“What?” Catwoman exhaled, incredulity nearly making her voice crack. “I haven’t either.”

“You haven’t?” Harley’s eyebrows shot up to her scalp. “Didn’t you say something about ‘going underground’ after we broke out of Arkham last time?”

“It’s a figure of sp-”

Selina cut herself off hard before she could go any further. Both of her gloves hands came up to cover her own nose and mouth as she blew a hissing breath into her palms. She shut her eyes, letting the fit pass before she could turn to something more violent. Should she just put the gag back in her mouth?

I’m doing this for Bruce, she reminded herself.

“Never mind that,” Selina decided, lowering her hands in half-chopping motions. “Let’s get back to Red.”

Harley looked pensive. “So she really did it, huh?”

“Yeah. I haven’t seen her or Batman in weeks.”

“Jeez,” the prisoner remarked. “I never thought she had it in her. She’s been complaining about Bats for years.”

“I know,” Selina said ruefully. Ivy had been after Batman for years in some twisted idea of love. It wasn’t that she hadn’t minded one of her friends trying to steal another one of her friends; it was just that she had never really believed she could ever best Batman. After all, he was Batman.

If she hadn’t seen the video with her own eyes, she never would have believed it. But seeing the two of them undress in the middle of Gotham Square… It was something she would never forget.

Or forgive.

“I always thought it would be like something you say you’d do, but never get around to doing,” Harley continued absently. “Like finally cleaning out that fish tank or folding your laundry.”

“The fuck?”

“Nothing,” the jester dismissed. “Just something Mr. J said the last time I saw him.” She pouted. “Right before he ate my fish and burned down our apartment.”

“Okay, putting the gag back in.” Selina reached for Harley’s collar..

“No!” Harley protested, twisting her head away from Catwoman’s reach. She sounded less like a woman afraid for her safety and more like a four-year-old who didn’t want to go to bed now.

Despite the feeble protests, Selina managed to get a handful of the bedsheet around her neck and stuff it past her lips. The newly-silenced woman refused to stay so, unleashing a series of loud grunts and moans. Selina had managed to secure it well enough that it would be difficult for Harley to dislodge the gag with only her teeth and tongue.

At the moment, Selina did not care much for her friend’s comfort. As soon as Harley stopped trying to bite down on her leather-covered finger, she might start caring again.

Ultimately, she did, releasing Catwoman’s right hand from her pearly whites. It hadn’t been particularly painful- the fabric of her glove hadn’t been torn nor did she feel any cuts in the skin underneath- but Selina still cursed and flicked her wrist a few times, giving Harley her most scolding glare.

She shrank back into her chair briefly before her eyes hardened. “Fisjoo, Kivvy.”

“If you don’t stop doing that,” Selina warned, “I’m going to grab some tape from the next room.”

“Vhoo fo fware fee, Kivvy.”

“Not just any tape: Gorilla Tape.”

The bound woman stiffened, visible terror in her eyes. Selina had only planned to use it as a threat, but the Harley-induced headache was making her honestly consider taping her mouth shut. Maybe then she’d be rid of the headache.

“That’s better,” Selina commented. “Look, the point is that I need to find Red. Do you know where she might be?”

“Fshy faw vhe-”

“Nod your head, Harls.”

She did, blonde hair bouncing in an exaggerated fashion.

“So you know where she is?” Catwoman asked,

“Eh-eh,” Harley replied, shaking her head. “Vhy voff.”

Selina rolled her eyes, trying to settle them back into their slots before they bugged out of her head. Reaching back to her captive’s chin, she ripped the gag back out of her mouth. It was damp enough for Catwoman to feel through the leather of her gloves.

“English, Harley.”

“I don’t know where she is,” the jester shouted indignantly.

“But you know how to find her?” Selina pressed.

“Sure,” Harley said, losing some of the intensity in her voice in favor of pride. “Red gave me some magic beans I can use.”

So help me, Selina thought, instinctively extending her claws and preparing to strike. What’s a few scratches among friends?

“No, really!” Harley added quickly. “She said it works like Jack and the Beanstalk. Just plant them in the ground and she’ll know where to find us.”

Considering for a moment, Catwoman retracted her claws, the sharp edges disappearing from her fingertips with a flash. “Did she give them to you in exchange for the family cow?”

“No,” the blonde woman explained. “They were just a gift for her bestie.” She pouted. “Sorry it wasn’t you, Kitty. You’re okay, right?”

“Where are these beans, Harls?” Selina asked, finally feeling like this conversation was going somewhere.

The look of concern disappeared from the mercurial woman’s face. “Why should I tell you?”

Selina cocked an eyebrow. Her right hand rose between the two of them, palm facing up toward the ceiling. The claws returned.

Harley flinched back. “Okay, you can have ‘em,” she conceded. “But why is it so important that we find her anyway? Seems to me like she’s doing pretty well for herself.”

“She’s in danger, Harley,” Selina replied. From me. “The whole world knows what she did.”

“I don’t see how that’s a problem,” Harley said. “If she’s got B-man under her thumb, I don’t think she’d need our help.”

“It’s not just that.” Selina stepped forward, standing perhaps a foot away from the seated woman, staring down upon her. “She also attacked the Watchtower.”

“The What’s Tower?”

The gag’s not in her ears. “The Watchtower. You know? That big, spaceship the Justice League lives in? Out in space?”

“Oh, that one,” Harley exclaimed, recognition flashing in her eyes.

It was soon replaced by fear. “Attacked it?” she sounded out.

“Yes,” Catwoman affirmed. “The attack didn’t work, but she killed two of them. The whole Justice League will be out for blood. We need to find her first or they might do something drastic.”

“Well, what can we do?” Harley struggled in her bonds, visibly entering hysteria. “I don’t think I’m ready to go toe-to-toe with Superman and Wonder Lady.”

“It’s not about that,” Selina said. “We need to convince her to give herself up so they don’t kill her.”

“She’d never do that,” the other woman said back. “She’s wanted to own B-man for years; she wouldn’t give him up without a fight.”

“That’s… right…” Selina returned, unsettled that Harley had managed to come up with not one, but two cohesive points in the same sentence. “But we still have to try, or else something might happen to her. And at the very least, maybe we can convince the Justice League not to kill her if we find her first.”

“I don’t know about that,” Harley said, then dropped her voice into a whisper. “What if they think we’re helping her?”

“Well, we better find her fast.” Selina stepped around Harley and stooped down behind her chair. “Go get those beans so we can get her.”

“Are you sure this just isn’t because you’re jealous of her stealing your man?” Harley asked innocently.

Selina swore she could feel a blood vessel burst behind her eye. “Don’t be ridiculous, Harls,” she retorted. She winced. Had that been a bit too forceful? “Or, at least, don’t be more ridiculous than usual.”

Whether or not Harley had picked up on that, she just wiggled her bound hands behind her back. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll help, but I’m doing this for Red.” She paused. “Plus, I’d love to see what B-man’s like nowadays. Do you think he drools over her these days?”

It broke.

“Ow!” Harley exclaimed, both of her wrists shooting back in front of her body. She clutched at her left wrist, a faint amount of crimson at the ends of her fingers.

Visually confirming the presence of Harley’s blood on her index finger’s claw, Selina retracted the sharp metal edges and lifted the pillowcase that made up the bonds. “Whoops,” she offered lowly.

“Hey,” the other woman complained. “That was on purpose.”

She dropped the ripped sheet to the floor. Housekeeping could deal with it in the morning. “Not my fault these are so sharp.” The claws went away. “Now take me to the magic beans.”

---

Something made a noise at the door downstairs.

Slade awoke quickly, silently slipping his pistol out from under his own pillow and rising to a seated position. The pillow was the only comfort he had allowed himself tonight, wanting to be ready for just this occasion. He was far from any place that one might call comfortable, so that left one of two options: someone had come here looking for a place away from the law or someone had come in search of him.

Careful to remain soundless, he pushed off his fingertips on his free hand to stand straight up, then bent down in a crouch. There weren’t any windows in this part of the warehouse, but he’d seen men foolishly believe that they hadn’t been seen right up until the moment they were shot to pieces.

The recently-awoken man was wearing his eyepatch, as he often did during his sleep. Hidden on the skin side of the eye covering was a small, reflective piece of glass, too small and well-placed to cause any damage to his person even when worn. The reason Slade wore it was so that he could reflect glimmers from behind him directly into his good eye. Even a split-second’s warning could be all the difference when it came to a gunfight.

Waving his gun around the room, he could see no sign of anyone in the room with him. Just to be sure, he looked up at the ceiling for any sign of the Bat or one of his sidekicks. They weren’t easy to spot even when he was prepared for them, but his cursory search revealed nothing out of place. Plus, he doubted any of the Bats would have made a sound at the door downstairs anyway; they would come in through a different entrance.

Unashamed of his shirtless figure- any who knew of where to find him likely already knew of the scars on his body- Slade quietly drifted over to the closed doorway separating him from the main body of the building. The mercenary decided it was unlikely that the noise he had heard had come from some random passerby, as someone like that would have made more noise by now. That meant it was someone here with a purpose.

This warehouse had been unoccupied in part because it had been close to the one Penguin had used. It had been damaged slightly by the gunfire from Cobblepot’s goons, causing the manager of the building to temporarily suspend operations here while he called in city officials for insurance and specialists for repairs. It seemed to Slade like an overreaction, but having a place to sleep for a day or two was fine by him.

The door opened soundlessly; Slade had tested the door just before going to sleep to see how exactly he could open it without making any noise. Stealth wasn’t typically his style, but the mercenary found it important to know how to use silence to his own advantage.

It was different when trying prisoner extraction, though. The fool he had tried to co-opt from Luthor’s hold had ruined any chance of stealth by fighting back.

Slipping his eyepatch off his head, he held it up next to the door, looking at the glass piece for any sign of intruders down below. Nothing of note came into view from his quick examination of the floor below. He also couldn’t hear anything down there. Could it be that the noise he had heard was from someone still outside?

Not wanting to waste any time, he hastily returned the covering back over his missing eye and stepped outside the door. Keeping his sidearm at the ready, he continued to scan his corners while descending a small set of stairs to the ground floor. The manager’s office having no windows or other ports of exit was very unfortunate considering that it provided no other avenue than the direct approach for dealing with threats.

He reached the ground floor without incident, only just now realizing that his feet were bare thanks to the cold concrete underneath him. Not having his boots would detriment his ability to run and fight, but not by much. Still, he’d best be able to deal with whoever was out there with the eleven bullets he had in his handgun, else he might be **** to deal with sore toes the next time he woke up.

Neither his eye nor his bullets found anyone waiting for him in the shadows of the dimly lit warehouse. Wary, he turned his attention to the front entrance to the warehouse, the place he was most certain from where the sound had emanated. Trying to piece together the noise he had heard while coming up from sleep was difficult, but thinking about it now, it might have been… a knock?

Moving forward with determination, Slade approached the front door with louder steps, no longer caring if the person or people outside heard him. He had learned long ago never to doubt his senses, all of them having been enhanced by his regimen and his past experiments. While other men’s senses diminished with time, his never failed him. If he thought he had heard something, it had definitely been there.

The front entrance was a metallic door with a shaded window in the upper half of it that allowed two-way vision. Even with it, he couldn’t see anyone waiting for him outside.

Slade briskly grabbed the doorknob and ripped it back toward him, opening the door with a crash. If it was damaged, perhaps the manager could get the door repaired later with all the other repairs he had commissioned.

The open doorway permitted the night air inside the warehouse. The air was still, undisturbed. Whoever had been here was already gone.

Coward, Slade decided. He poked his head outside and found a discarded, cardboard package laying at the doorstep. He kicked it lightly, trying to get a feel for what was inside.

Fortunately, it did not explode upon being touched, nor did it sound like the box was crammed full with a set of professionally-crafted detonation devices. It sounded like the package held something flat and not quite as long as the full top flap of the box.

Gritting his teeth, the ex-soldier briskly scooped the box up in his free hand and pulled it inside. He used his pistol to shove the open door back to its frame.

While it was entirely possible that he had just brought an explosive back into the warehouse with him, his intuition told him that someone trying to kill him likely wouldn’t have knocked first. Slade also doubted about the number of people on the planet that truly wanted him dead; any time he crossed someone, it was always at the behest of an employer in need of a job well done.

Still, he decided to open the package without the aid of one of his many blades, choosing instead to pick at the tape of the flap on top. The package was light enough so that he could afford to do so while still carrying it with one arm.

After a few seconds spent picking, the tape peeled off with a satisfying rip. The slightly cut-up surface of the cardboard box parted for his prying fingers, revealing the contents of the box to the dim light.

It was just a small laptop, closed and resting at the same angle at which Slade held the box. The black cover shaded the bottom flap of the box, but he saw no obvious hidden compartments. It was just cardboard, after all.

The laptop, curiously, did not have a logo or mark of origin on the face of it. Custom made. Someone had gone to the trouble of making this device just for him to use here. Not much trouble, though, he imagined. He didn’t have much technical expertise, but he had to assume that making a laptop of this sort had to have been somewhat of a hassle.

Pulling it out of the box, the mercenary visually confirmed that there was nothing else underneath. Satisfied, he tossed the box aside. With the pistol still in his right hand, he rested the bottom half of the device on top of his knuckles as he placed his other hand on the upper half to open it.

Another curious feature to the laptop: it had no keyboard. It had a screen, fortunately, else it wouldn’t be of much use. Without keys or a mouse or something of the sort, he could see no way of interacting with it or turning the screen on.

Except it did, unprompted by anything other than the opening of the laptop. The screen was all white, save for a few small, Arial characters in the center.

GOODBYE!

Starting, Slade glanced back at the door, re-aiming his pistol to the door. He hadn’t broken it- he hoped- when ripping it open, but even undamaged, he doubted it would be enough to repel an attacker. Anyone who came through that door would be shot instantly.

Yet whoever had sent the message must have known about his abilities with a firearm, so that didn’t make any sense. The only way for someone to have gotten in would have been-

When he had leaned down to grab the box, letting someone quiet enough sneak in behind him.

Slade wheeled around with his pistol raised, but felt it get knocked from his hand by a well-placed kick to his wrist. He watched it sail over to the ground a few meters away from him, well out of reach without turning his back on his new opponent.

Belatedly, the aging assassin turned back to face his attacker and just barely managed to block another kick meant for his chin, throwing his elbow up in the way with a grunt. The foot had no sock or shoe, but it had some black and brown wrapping around the ankle and center of the foot, leaving several sharp toenails uncovered. They tugged at the crook of his arm with surprising ****, bringing Slade down to one knee before it retracted and came back down towards his face from the front.

He caught this kick with both hands, securing the limb firmly this time to prevent it from slipping free from his grip and setting his base still enough so that he couldn’t be caught by surprise. He could see the person’s other foot planted on the concrete, somehow managing to find support in only standing on the inside of one foot.

Slade surmised that his attacker was female based on the shape of her legs. The clothing was leather based and mostly bronze as he followed it up to a slim waist. The brown of her top matched the brown of her pants exactly, forming a vest that exposed a fair amount of midriff and a fair amount of chest. Most of the skin above the waist was covered in tattoos, many of them fashioned after snakes. Her shoulders too bore ink, but the skin below the elbows were covered by thin, black armbands that reached over her hands and ended in claws at her fingertips.

He recognized the woman with the cropped white hair and black makeup that adorned her eyes, though to most the giveaway would be the forked tongue that shot past her compressed lips before returning back behind them: Copperhead.

“Diaz,” Slade spat, twisting her foot a bit further as he spoke. A rival assassin he often competed against on bounty contracts, her conditioning as an athlete and contortionist made it so that perhaps his grip on her ankle wasn’t causing her any discomfort. “Come to kill me to settle a score?”

“Nothing personal, Wilson,” Copperhead smirked, giving no indication that she was bothered by him holding her foot. “You just need to stop showing your face where it doesn’t belong.”

In hand-to-hand combat, Slade knew he had the edge. In fighting her up close, however, he was at a disadvantage in that he lacked his armor and weapons. A single scratch from her venom-tipped claws could spell his doom, meaning that he couldn’t engage with his bare arms. He inwardly cursed having decided not to dress before answering the door.

“Who sent you?” the kneeling mercenary demanded.

She smirked even wider. “Like I’d tell you.” She flashed her claws up between them.

Instead of striking with her claws as he expected, however, Copperhead pushed off her lone supporting foot and placed it on his right shoulder. Using the leverage from her position atop him, she wrenched her foot free and brought up five erected toes up into Slade’s chin.

He stumbled back a few paces- more annoyed by the strike than injured- and fell into his basic unarmed orthodox fighting stance. His left hand in front was open and ready to grab her if she came in close while his right hand was clenched into a loose fist. His orthodox stance would not serve him well in a protracted battle, as any attempt to wrestle her down could prove fatal. He needed to project his strength to his opponent first, then figure out a plan second.

Copperhead landed after a backward somersault on two widely spread legs and a single right hand balancing her weight down the middle. She ably slipped into an arched-back posture, sticking her forked tongue back out at him from her grounded position. Her claws audibly scratched away some paint from the floor.

Growling lowly, Slade began circling to his right, trying not to look like he was going for his lost pistol. Diaz didn’t take the bait to circle in the opposite direction; she knew he would go for it, and even if he didn’t, she could take it and either use it herself or toss it out of the warehouse. She crawled in an even circle to her left, keeping her legs spread wide as she did so she could pounce like a viper coiling its body before striking.

He came to a halt, Copperhead doing the same and flexibly sticking one leg out before herself, scratching the ground beside it. With his single eye, he lacked true depth perception, but he swore he could see some venom from her claws spreading in a small droplet around her forefinger.

Without even the barest protection of street clothes, the mercenary didn’t dare attack first. He needed to fight this battle defensively before anything else.

The other assassin struck, leaping several feet into the air and tucking her legs underneath her bottom. As she came down, she twisted in midair to flail downward in an axe kicking motion.

Slade barely managed to get his right forearm under her calf before it could make contact with his head. Then, ducking to his left, he lifted his other hand up thrusted it into the exposed skin of the small of her back.

He had intended to use her own momentum to throw her away to gain enough distance to go for the gun, but her flexibility proved again to be a bother when she tucked into a ball and swung herself by her calf around him and clung onto his back.

The mercenary sensed her bringing her claws down from above, quickly throwing both of his hands up behind his head to stop her. He did, grabbing both wrists tightly to prevent her from slashing him. Unfortunately, he was **** to surrender his back, allowing her to straddle his hips from behind.

“You’re slowing down, old man,” Copperhead mocked from above, trying to muscle her claws down onto his scalp.

Straining, Slade glared back at her, part of his head digging into her sternum. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

She had the advantage of gravity on her side and control of his back. He couldn’t hold her in place forever. In fact, he could already feel his base failing him. If he fell to his knees, it was over.

Doing something that would have gotten any other man killed, Slade purposefully pulled down her wrists towards his own chest, crossing her arms at the elbows as he did. Copperhead was completely taken by surprise by the move, falling forward over his left shoulder as he used his skull to roll her weight down. Adjusting his stance to retain his balance, Slade squeezed her crossed wrists and slammed her down.

Diaz landed on two feet, but Slade still kept control of her wrists, perhaps the only thing that kept her from falling flat. The one-eyed man attempted to pull her armbands off, digging his fingernails into her forearms to get under them. He had little time, however, before Copperhead brought her leg up- nearly folding herself in half that way- to kick at his head.

Slade blocked it with a raised left elbow, but the imbalance in the way he held her wrists allowed her to twist to her right and free her right hand. The younger assassin landed on her right shoulder, deftly turning it into a kip up that pulled Slade toward her with her free claws extended.

He was **** to give up her left wrist and fade back, calculating that he had avoided her venom by about two feet by the feel of the air as her claws passed before him. The exchange may have only caused superficial damage based on the red marks under her elbows, but the throw had served another purpose: gaining the good kind of distance.

Copperhead spun around like a ballerina dancer on one leg, though instead of throwing a high kick at him, she lunged forward again with another swipe from her right hand. To get out of reach, Slade spiraled backward on his left knee and right foot as if trying to sweep the legs of someone behind him.

His left hand scooped the gun up off the floor. It was a maneuver he had performed several times against other opponents: push him- or, in this case, her- away from the gun, slide back and recover the gun ready to fire.

He completed the third step in short order, getting the weapon up in front of his eye to aim right at her. Slade’s middle finger flicked off the safety as he secured his grip around the stock. Finding Copperhead spinning around again before him, he pulled the trigger.

The older man only managed to get the one shot off before she knocked the weapon free from his hand with another well-placed kick, but he could see it was effective. The bullet fired into her back just below the diaphragm, compressing the leather of her vest around it. Slade couldn’t tell if it penetrated her flesh, but the impact threw her out of her motion.

Diaz twisted around her back in an uncontrolled manner, limbs spreading wide without flailing before she finally hit the ground. She landed on her front with a loud grunt, the rest of her body crashing in such a way that she was left dazed on her back when it was over.

Slade quickly dashed to her downed figure. Normally, he would have gone for the gun, but he hadn’t seen where it had landed and didn’t want to risk taking his eye off her for too long. The tattooed fighter stirred and groaned slightly, sounding as if she could breathe only through agonal gasping.

Once he stood over her, he stomped down on her left wrist. Copperhead cursed back at him (after finally inhaling), but could not react in time for him to bring the knee of his same leg down onto her abdomen and grab her other wrist with both hands. Using all ten of his fingers, he easily tore the armband off, removing one of her clawed gloves from the equation.

“Pendejo,” Copperhead shouted, still struggling to breathe properly with his body weight crushing her lungs. “Get off me or I’ll-”

“Quit screwing around,” Slade snapped, throwing the glove away. He grabbed her by the chin, rearing up his other hand into a fist as he stared into her hateful eyes. With his right foot pinning down the other wrist, she wouldn’t be able to strike at him with it. “You should never have gotten yourself into a fight with me. I’m not your average bounty, so don’t treat me like one.”

“Pendejo,” she repeated, spitting at him.

Slade closed his eye before the spittle could make contact with it. Breathing out his frustration and hoping to remain calm enough to extract some useful information, he opened his eye and glared down at hers.

They had turned from odious to triumphant. He didn’t understand why until it was too late.

The veteran mercenary grunted as he felt her claws cut into his unprotected foot. In some belated defense, Slade shifted more of his weight onto her left elbow and quickly latched onto her remaining glove with both hands. His stance was too light to keep Copperhead grounded, the woman taking the opportunity to roll out from under him and cartwheel back to her feet.

Slade did, however, maintain his **** grip on her glove well enough to pull it off her as she fled. The damage was done, unfortunately, rendering the gloves irrelevant at this point in the fight.

He heard her laughing nearby, but he chose to focus on finding a solution. Antivenom was never a mainstay in his inventory when traveling through urban areas or cities like Gotham. The poison was in his foot, giving him more time to seek out help than he would have if the wound was closer to his heart. He could try to go to a hospital, but in his current state of undress- not to mention the fact that he would still have to fight past Copperhead to get to one- Slade wasn’t optimistic about his chances of finding one in time. Even if he did, he would be too weak to resist arrest, and he would be an easy target in jail for a second attack.

The older man inwardly cursed. In the rush of battle, he had again forgotten that he wasn’t wearing boots. He had failed himself by choosing to face potential threats unprepared, and his sloppiness might have just cost him for the last time. He looked down at the wound and-

Was that a cut after all?

No. Instead of finding an open scratch festering on his heel, he found a small needle pressing into it, the contents of the vial having been emptied into it. Whatever dose had been in that needle, it had been injected directly into his tibial artery.

Confused, Slade glanced up at the self-satisfied Copperhead. Using needles to poison her targets wasn’t her MO. The venom of her claws was her primary killing method; it had been for years. Why would she of all people use a needle to poison him?

“What did you do?” he demanded.

She chuckled again. “Did you think it would be that easy, old man?” She took a sly step toward him. “I need information from you first. Then I shall kill you.”

Without her toxic talons, Slade could afford to get into a normal fistfight with her. Gritting his teeth, he pushed off his right foot and swung his right arm at her smug face.

His leg immediately buckled, causing him to fall nearly flat on his face. Startled by the sudden weakness, Slade attempted to roll over onto his side to inspect his leg, but found that he could not feel enough of his leg to turn it over and get it out from under him. Frantic, he rolled over onto his other side, finding his other leg going numb as well.

His efforts became futile midway through, leaving his legs awkwardly crossed as he tried to sit back and pull them into himself. Then his arms started to give way, leaving him supine and staring directly up at her. “What… why can’t I move?”

She smirked, waving her hand over his upper body. “A toxin from the blue coral snake.” Her voice sounded distorted, his senses telling him that she was speaking from all around him rather than in just one spot. “Very powerful paralytic, and normally would lead to your quick, painful demise.”

His vision swam, now making Copperhead appear to be all around him both visually and auditorily. “You… paralyzed me?” Slade questioned, not able to comprehend the inherent meaning himself.

“Yes,” Diaz confirmed. He thought he could see her nodding and resting a hand on her hip. “But don’t worry; I’ve modified the toxin to be non-fatal. But I wouldn’t get too comfortable, since you’ll still feel everything I’ll do to you.”

“You think… this is the first time,” Slade panted. Breath was hard to come by in his near vegetative state. The most motion he could manage was with his tongue. “I’ve been tortured… by the butchers... of Siberia… the slavers of Angola. I never crack.”

“Hmm, yes,” Copperhead agreed. “It may not be easy, but…” Her forked tongue flicked out of her mouth. “Orders are orders.”

Slade gritted his teeth, trying with all of his might to turn away from her to escape. All his efforts yielded was the uncrossing of his legs, leaving him now entirely flat on his back.

“First question,” she announced, moving to loom directly over him again. “What did you do with Señor Kimble?”

His brow furrowed. “Who?” It wasn’t an attempt to annoy her; he legitimately did not know who she was talking about.

He felt a blow hit him in his right cheek. The impact sent his head rocking to the other side before pendulum-swinging back repeatedly. Her kicks were strong, a fact he decided right there to be true. Even without shoes on, she could kick out with her toes hard enough to stun him.

“Wrong answer!” She raised her foot high behind her, ready to kick him again.

The two of them were interrupted by a pop, followed by several soft clangs. He couldn’t have imagined it, for Copperhead hesitated at the noise. Trying to turn his head in her direction, he believed that he found the source of the noise.

She followed his eyes and saw it: half of a bullet. The silvery shard of metal was one of his rounds, fired into Copperhead’s back earlier. With how the bullet had been fragmented and how she seemed to feel no pain from it earlier, he concluded that the shot had hit her in the leather. This half must have failed to enter her skin, but what about the other half?

Apparently curious herself, Copperhead turned her back on him- displaying complete confidence in the power of her paralytic- and bent down to collect the bullet. Once she noticed that it had been fragmented, she tossed the bullet away towards some far corner of the warehouse.

Then she slipped her arms out of her vest and shrugged it off her body.

Slade would have gaped if he had enough control over his facial muscles. As he was, his jaw still dropped at the woman who so casually stripped off her top in front of her enemy.

She wore no undercovering beneath the leather, though the tattoos that ran nearly all over her back could have counted as a second layer of modesty, maybe. It didn’t hide her most private parts, though, as he could see the outline of her breasts when she raised her arms to hold the vest up to the light. Had she completely forgotten his presence or the fact that he had only lost one eye?

Diaz shook the vest from the shoulder straps up top, trying to find the other half of the bullet. Slade did not see any blood on her back, though with the number of colored tattoos there, it was hard to tell. The light sheen on top of the brown leather of her vest wobbled with her treatment, followed by a flash as a small object reflected the light back at him.

The remainder of the bullet clanged against the ground just as the other half had. Scoffing at it, Copperhead flipped the vest around to inspect the rear. “My favorite jacket,” she announced. “You ruined it.”

Jacket? Had she called that skimpy little vest a jacket?

And had she really just turned to face him without said jacket over her body?

His world spun again, making it appear to him like there were somehow three of her. Three Copperheads standing before him, pert breasts exposed to his unreliable eye. Never the shy assassin, she had tattoos running across the two mounds of flesh each like they were just other extensions of her ink lines. The six breasts each had a mirror of the same image, and as sure as her namesake, they appeared to be of a cartoon snake.

Colored deep brown to differentiate between it and her skin, it bore the same style as an actual copperhead’s face. The two snakeheads on each chest faced each other with their thin tongues sliding from their mouths to the hidden vestige of the cleavage. The two-dimensional figures had some measure of depth in that each one used a nipple- none touched by ink- for an eye.

Like staring into a fairy tale snake’s eyes, Slade found himself mesmerized by the woman in the middle of the identical trio, his instincts telling him that this one was the most likely to be the real one. As his vision self-corrected and the three women resolved into a single one, the “snake eyes” were the thing he held onto to collect his bearings. They were just so beautiful…

Remembering then, the older man looked back up at Copperhead’s face. She had that same infuriating smirk on her face as when she had first shown herself to him, but her eyes were not focused on him. Rather, they were looking at something lower.

He followed their gaze, discovering what it was that had captured her attention: his rapidly tenting pants.

Slade blushed. This was one of the most unusual encounters with **** he had ever faced. He could have avoided it entirely by just putting on his armor before coming downstairs.

“Do you like what you see?” Copperhead mocked. “Not many men get the privilege, and none have lived to tell the tale.”

“Don’t think… you can… touch me,” he returned, his jaw muscles taut, “and get away with it.” Breath was at a premium for him in this state. It took all of his focus to put these words together.

She ignored his threats, instead choosing to inspect her own tattoos. Diaz cupped both breasts and pointed them at her own face. “A man from Suriname specially painted these to catch the eye, and it’s safe to say it works like a charm.” Releasing the two mounds, she smirked back at him. “He practically sat still and stared at them as he died.”

Slade tried again to pick himself up off the floor, but even squirming proved impossible. “I’ve seen… better.”

She scoffed in response. “These will be the last you ever see, old man. I’d enjoy them while you can.” Leaning down, she kicked his top leg out of the way of his crotch. “Let me help.”

Copperhead stepped in between his parted legs and dropped to her knees. He couldn’t see anything below her head due to her position being so low and his inability to turn his head in any direction, but he could sense her leaning over his aching member.

Two hands hooked their fingers under his waistband and lifted his loose garments. Copperhead visibly cocked her head. “I see they tried to take more than just your eye,” she noted softly.

It wasn’t technically true; they hadn’t tried to scar him down there, but they hadn’t been particularly careful with the blade. The cut left behind wasn’t painful- the pain had long since left from that wound- but it was a constant reminder to complement his missing eye that he would never be whole.

Beyond the scar, though, it was an average-sized cock that could still hold up even in his twilight years. There was a hefty amount of hair surrounding the region, as he didn’t often bathe long enough to care for his hygiene. It was just enough for him to keep his hair on his head out of his eye and away from his lips.

“I can make you feel better in your final moments,” Diaz offered, her breath heating the head of his cock. “Or I can make it very painful. You choose.”

The forked tongue struck out of her mouth at great speed. It grazed the tip, making his member wobble in place while he groaned. Copperhead sure knew how to use her unusual tongue, as her first contact with his cock had left him shuddering right away.

It was not about any matter of principle to him, despite what others might think. He didn’t withhold information during **** because he wanted to be known as the man who never broke; public opinion mattered so little to him that he only kept tabs on others in the know to keep abreast of who wanted to hire him.

No, he could resist **** by holding onto his rage against his attackers. Those that dared to hurt him would have the pain returned to them tenfold. The only score that he had yet to settle was with the Bat, but that was mostly because he would rather do it for pay rather than just for ****. No one could make a fool of him and get away with it.

This time, though, his rage was placed somewhere else entirely.

“I’ll ask you again,” Copperhead said, leaning away from his crotch to look him in the eye. “What happened to Señor Kimble?”

Slade strained, eye twitching. “I don’t know who that is,” he **** out through clenched teeth.

Squinting out of one eye and raising the other eyebrow, Copperhead shook her head softly. “Viejo estúpido,” she muttered.

Then she squeezed down on the base of his cock.

Slade gasped, his head lurching forward and his chin tucking in response to the **** pressure. Return breaths escaped him, making the hissing of air leaving his throat sound like her grip was around his neck. Even without the paralytic substance she had used, a grip like hers would completely immobilize any man.

“Learn quickly,” Diaz warned, loosening the pressure slightly as she slid her sealed fist up the shaft. Stopping short of the head, her hand reversed direction and slid back down. “I know you made contact with him last week.”

Last week? He hadn’t been on any contracts last week. “You mean Luthor’s prisoner in Beaufort?” the mercenary asked.

“Yes, him,” Copperhead urged impatiently. “What did you do with him?”

“I never learned his name.” Slade’s head finally landed back on the concrete floor. “I only knew where he was being held when I found one of the policemen on Luthor’s pay.”

He cut off with a grunt at another constriction of her grip. “Answer the question, old man. What did you do to him?”

“Nothing!” the mercenary wheezed. “I left him where I found him!”

She scoffed. “Nothing?” The mockery in her tone mixed with the relish in his **** made it clear that she didn’t believe him. “He was found dead this morning. You expect me to believe that you had nothing to do with that?”

The pressure lightened enough for the elder man to regain his breath. “I didn’t kill him,” Slade insisted. “Luthor’s people must have done him in after I left him.”

Slade recalled his encounter with that man. Kimble, as Diaz called him. He had learned of the shootout from the news and interrogated a member of the local police that had responded to the scene.

When he’d found Luthor’s safehouse, he had decided to go in to see where the prisoner had hid the money, and to find information on whoever employed him. The policeman had also told him about Mercy’s intent to interrogate him for information on the employer, and considering his own recent contract in Gotham, he had had a reasonable suspicion about the two of them having a mutual benefactor. A man who could throw around five-million dollars for simple guard duty could likely command a contract killer with a billion dollar check in his pocket.

Caution had prevented him from acting recklessly, however, his rescue attempt coming short. Had he decided to fight his way through the safehouse, he could have easily freed Kimble. Slade had refrained from a frontal **** in the hopes that Luthor would not be able to find out who had been behind the intrusion.

Those hopes had been dashed by Kimble’s refusal to cooperate, making far too much noise for them to escape undetected. Slade did not know if he had been identified during his exit, but he could not risk fighting back once the alarm had been raised; better to give up a chance at a bounty than to have a bounty placed on his own head.

Those were the hardest to collect.

“Not good enough, old man,” Copperhead decided, snapping him back to the present. “What did you do to him? Why were you there?”

Slade opened his mouth to reply, but stopped himself short. He had almost forgotten about the **** amidst their steady conversation. Throwing himself back into his rage, the ex-soldier narrowed his eye on her. “What’s it to you?”

She smirked. “Your arrogance is a problem. Let me help you with that.”

Copperhead dropped her gaze back down to his member, lowering her head to meet it. Two pointed ends of her tongue grazed the underside, then clung to his skin as the rest of her tongue landed on his cock. Powerful tremors reverberated around his body as her parted lips took a taste of him.

Her mouth opened wider as her quick-striking tongue discovered newly wettened spots around his cock. It seemed to arch right into her mouth, tip pushing past both molars and gums. Her small, thin tongue allowed Slade’s girth to fit easily as she began to slide down to his base.

Slade took in a pained gasp as she alternated between rising and descending down the shaft. Just as agile as she was, her tongue poked its way out of her mouth to caress the inch or two of his cock that was not currently inside of her. Tremors overcame him again when it touched his pubic hair.

He groaned. His preternatural senses told him that he was leaking precum inside her mouth only seconds after she had taken him.

She retracted, leaning forward to bounce one of her breasts against his cock. “Ready to talk, old man?” she mocked.

Hate. He could fall back on his hate for his torturer. It was how he had always withheld. This time, though, he could feel his rage turning elsewhere.

Impatient for his response, she leaned down again. Her pert breasts wrapped around his dick, revealing their suppleness mixed with the rough textures of the tattoos. The ink on her had an actual substance to it that added to the sensation, not subtracted.

The mercenary felt a tightness in his back that increased in pressure as Diaz took her breasts into her own hands to massage his member. She twisted her mounds in rotary motions, her hardened nipples tickling him each time they made contact. When she chuckled low in her throat, it sent vibrations through her chest that in turn flowed into him.

Slade gritted his teeth, clenching his fists. His rage was sustained, but for how long? It was normally always there for the people who hurt him. But this time, his anger wasn’t quite directed at his captor.

No, his rage was directed elsewhere: a place where the blame for his current predicament lied. She was the one who hurt him, but the hrt exposed something else, something worse to him than his rage: weakness. It had been his fault that-

Had he just clenched his fists?

“Tell me what you did with Señor Kimble and I’ll let you die in peace,” Diaz promised, oblivious to his recently awoken fingers. She ducked her head down to flick her thin tongue across his oozing cockhead.

Her ministrations continued without fail as he tried to take stock of his options. Finding it hard to remain focused on both resisting her and thinking analytically, Slade subtly tested at his limbs.

While she remained between his legs, he was able to roll his ankles around in their sockets. His tightened fists could turn over to have his palms face both up and down. His neck could support the weight of his head without the aid of the floor, but his shoulders could not depart the ground.

The aging mercenary was about to try shifting his weight onto his side when he felt Copperhead’s tongue corkscrew around his tip. The tongue felt like it was pasted to his skin with glue, then pressed down by her breasts. Whether it was intentional or instinctual, the tongue tightened its grip around the head, collecting the precum and replacing it with saliva.

A shiver ran down his spine, but he could not replicate the motion voluntarily. Copperhead seemed to notice his spasms, though he could not tell if she saw them as a sign of his nerves recovering from her toxin or if she merely saw him coming close to the brink. Perhaps both were true.

Her tongue quickly retracted into her mouth, her breasts continuing to compress his member to make up for the missing sensation. “Are you getting close, old man?” she mocked, confirming her obliviousness to his recovery. “How long has it been for you? Years? Decades? I wonder if you’ve still got anything left to give.”

She ceased, withdrawing her breasts. As he groaned in protest, he gripped his cock with her left hand in another **** seal at the base. “But we won’t find out until you tell me what you did.”

Slade let out a half-cough, half-pant. Could he just tell her the truth and be done with it? The truth was that he really had done and learned nothing of value. Once his extraction attempt had failed, he had left Kimble behind. It wasn’t like he was protecting anyone by withholding the truth.

No! he internally shouted. He had never broken under pressure before, and he was not about to start now. Holding to his anger had gotten him out of many situations in the past.

He needed that rage now. Where could it bleed? Toward Diaz, obviously, but he could not find enough of it to break free from her control. He needed more anger, more fury.

Her breasts bounced briefly when she leaned back on her knees. She adjusted her position so that she had her center of gravity beneath herself rather than hovering over his crotch. Doing so allowed her to display her tattooed chest to him once more.

Copperhead’s free hand swept across the ink surrounding her right nipple. “Now, one last time,” she said, “what did you do to Señor Kimble? What did he tell you?”

Her hand uncovered the “snake eyes.” The mercenary’s focus broke, his single eye getting lost in the design. All he knew was in those ever-expanding snake eyes, the heads coming closer as if preparing to devour him whole.

****, he forcibly ground his teeth and tore his gaze away from her breasts, slamming his eye shut. His rage was raw, but decentralized. Copperhead may have been his tormentor, but his anger couldn’t all go toward her. She was the one who poisoned him and defeated him and humiliated him and… and…

And exposed him.

It had been his fault, not taking the proper precautions before answering the door. He had fought sloppily against his assailant, putting himself in a position where he could have been poisoned to **** rather than what had actually happened. Then, he had proven exceedingly **** to just the mere sight of her without her vest.

He was to blame. The anger he needed was with himself.

And he could use it!

“Pendejo,” Diaz muttered, slackening her grip on his cock. “We’ll see if you’re ready to talk after I rip it off.”

Roaring, Slade extended his legs up into the air and over Copperhead’s shoulders. The move took her completely by surprise, leaving her no time to get her left arm out of range as he wrapped his legs under it and around her head.

From the bottom, Slade used all of his body strength to pull her in close. His rage gave him power, but his body had not totally recovered from the neurotoxin. This would likely be his only chance to survive. Frenzied, he clung to her in his hastily applied triangle ****.

Hasty though it may have been, it was neatly secure. His left knee wrapped around the nape of her neck, his right knee draped over his left foot, his right arm pinned her left wrist beneath his armpit and his left arm gripped her forearm. Not breaking the ****, he crushed his fingers into her skin and abruptly jerked her arm at the elbow up while he held her wrist down.

Slade both felt and heard the crack in her arm as he forcibly disjointed the elbow. Diaz grunted, trying to scramble away from his hold. He tightened his ****, not letting her lift her head from inside not get enough balance beneath her to stand up.

Grunting again, Copperhead tried to lean on her unique athleticism to roll over him. The topless assassin did find the strength to gain a slight break in pressure on her carotid artery, enough so that she could put her free hand beneath her and attempt a cartwheel.

Acting quickly to prevent her escape, Slade titled onto his right hip, lurching his knees together. They collided against both sides of her head, hitting her just near the eyes. The coordinated blow interrupted her cartwheel as his uninterrupted triangle hold kept her from breaking free. She hit the ground on her knees, returning right back into the ****.

She had to be running out of breath by now, though perhaps her abnormal physiology made it such that she could remain awake longer than most others when caught in a blood ****. Slade inched closer to her, continuing to increase the pressure. He could see her eyes expand wide as fear overtook her. She lifted her free hand up to his left knee, trying to raise it high enough to slip her head out from his grip.

His hold proved too firm, though, leaving her efforts futile as she quickly sought to adjust her strategy. She then threw her hand up high into the air into a fist.

Instinct saved him once more, as his guess about where she intended to strike him was proven correct when she swung her fist directly at his cock. Before it could make contact, however, Slade again turned onto his right hip. His left thigh intercepted the punch, absorbing the admittedly painful strike so that he could avoid a much more harmful attack.

The older man could not get her to turn with him so that he could finish the **** from the mount; Copperhead- whether intentionally or otherwise- managed to spread her knees out wide behind her. Her right hand came down underneath the back of his left thigh, scratching at his skin as deeply as her nails could allow.

Without both the poison-tipped claws and the strength that a breathing assassin could muster, her scratches did not cause nearly enough damage to get him to release her. Copperhead looked at him directly in his eye, seemingly pleading with him. Don’t kill me, her eyes begged.

Slade made sure to spit directly at her face. Fuck you, pendejo! his spittle sent back.

Squinting, Diaz attempted one final time to lift her head, her mouth opening without oxygen able to pass through. His right leg was nearly folded into two neat, parallel halves around his left foot, something that Copperhead could have probably done without the linchpin foot in the way. He ripped her head back down.

And her open lips landed around the head of his cock.

Slade flinched, but his hold did not loosen. He realized she hadn’t been trying to lift her head there, but was trying to get enough height to plunge back down to his erection. He had not anticipated the move, leaving him unprepared for the shudders that followed.

He compensated quickly, applying all of his strength to the ****. He needed to finish her before-

Diaz inhaled again, but this time, it wasn’t only the **** that kept her from breathing. His member felt the suction inside of her mouth, the already well-lubricated rod sliding down past her tongue. Even though only a fraction of his cock was inside her, the portion was sizable enough that when it went into her mouth, the sucking vibrations went all around his cock.

He couldn’t.

He came, spilling his seed down her throat and his limbs constricting as if he was seizing. She was right; it had been quite some time.

Slade’s semen revealed itself in several bursts, shooting forth from his dick in direct tandem with each constriction of his limbs. As if he was being choked himself, he was unable to inhale and **** to exhale with each and every rope sent down her closed throat. Every involuntary crunch **** more breath out of him. Copperhead’s inadvertent gargling of his seed only served to double the vibrations and milk out all of his cum.

Ultimately, her gurgling ceased before his orgasm did, but only just. When it did, Slade felt all of his strength flee him in a rush. His limbs slackened, all of them falling down to the ground in different directions.

Slade panted, feeling his member slowly returning back to its standard size inside of her mouth. Coming down from the high was something else he was unaccustomed to doing; he had no problem with planking for ten hours, but this entire ordeal had left him utterly exhausted.

After a few more moments of recovering his breath, the mercenary **** himself to get up from underneath her. He tried to sit up but- whether it was due to the fatigue, lingering effects of the neurotoxin or a combination of both- he could not rise from the ground. Inwardly sighing, Slade took her captured and dislocated arm out from under his and tossed it to the side.

It flapped back against his right knee, going with it as he turned that leg to the side and shifted his foot underneath her body. He pressed against her gut, straining to lift her body weight off of his crotch.

It took some time, but he ultimately lifted her high enough that her open mouth was removed from his cock. His semen dripped from her mouth and into his lap, splatting against his still-withering member.

Distastefully kicking her off to his left, Slade watched her hit the floor head first, not at all protected by her arm. He concluded that there was no way she was faking it; she was either dead or all the way **** to the point where she wouldn’t be waking up any time soon.

It was difficult to be satisfied about this victory, however, feeling that perhaps she had been the victor and he had just been a deft opportunist after the battle had ended. He had survived, sure, but she had exposed him in a way that no other torturer had ever done to him. He hated her for that, but not as much as he could hate himself for letting it happen. How could he possibly expect to redeem himself for it?

They would know when they found her and discovered his DNA all over her mouth and throat. His shame would be shared around the world, letting everyone know of a new way they could try to break him. It would be on full display as much as he was now, naked of everything except for his eyepatch.

Gritting his teeth, he resolved to finish what he had started. Maybe he could redeem his shame after all; vengeance against Copperhead was a good start, but he needed to go after her employers just to make sure that he could get through it. Nobody could make a fool of him and get away with it.