Don't know when to quit

The check arrives. Your date pulls a shiny black credit card out of somewhere, but you wave her off. “It’s the least I can do,” you insist as the waiter runs your card. Diana is nonplussed, but shrugs as if to acknowledge it’s the closest to an apology she’s likely to get.

Neither of you say a word as you rise and head for the elevator – what is there to say? You ignore the other diners’ stares as you cross the room. Only three people get up to shake Wonder Woman’s hand on the way out.

The elevator door opens and Diana precedes you inside. You stand side by side, awkwardly staring at the door. (At least it feels awkward to you.) The car starts moving upward, but after only a couple second it starts slowing down again. Your companion tenses and shifts her weight into a more balanced stance as she realizes it’s far too soon to be at the surface. She shoots you a look, which you ignore as the car stops and the doors open to reveal…

…a parking garage. “My car is here,” you mutter as you step out of the car into the small, mostly empty garage. You turn back towards the superheroine. Her face looks relaxed and unthreatened, tho her body is still poised like she’s ready for a fight.

You reach out and press the call button to hold the door open and say, “If you’ll permit, I’d like to make you a promise,” and nod towards the lasso on her hip. The Amazon gives you an appraising stare, but you can’t risk looking her in the eyes so you keep your head down, doing your best to look hangdog. She nods and removes the lasso from her belt.

The moment the golden rope is in her hand, you press the button that triggers the old H.I.V.E. security system you restored. Diana’s athletic body stiffens as she’s hit with enough high voltage current to fry a normal person. She throws her head back and lets out an pained cry.

Which means the gas sprays right in her face and she sucks in a lungful before realizing it. Her expression goes from agony to horror as the oily smoke coats her lungs.

Yet despite all that she somehow manages to flick the lasso at you. It connects with your chest and for a split second you’re hit with a fraction of the voltage surging through her. It’s enough to send you flying back into a support column, but not before the current passes through you and down your finger to the security system controls. The system overloads, several lights blow out, and the electrical and gas attacks short out with a loud bang and a shower of sparks.

You find yourself sitting on the floor leaning against the column, your head and back in agony. The elevator is beeping sadly and there’s a clicking noise from somewhere. You watch the Amazon warrior stagger drunkenly out of the elevator, the gas already affecting her nervous system. One hand tries to wipe the stinging vapor out of her eyes. The other hand goes to her neck as she struggles to breathe through the crap in her lungs. Her black hair whips back and forth as she shakes her head to try and clear it, but she loses her balance and falls to her hands and knees.

Your plan had been to snatch the lasso and tie her with it while she was incapacitated. But that would require moving, which doesn’t seem to be a thing your body can manage just now. You’re pretty sure she’s going to recover before you do and there’s not a thing you can do about it.

The clicking sound gets louder and a figure walks into view. A woman, tall, slender but unmistakably shapely. Long dark hair piled atop her head held up with two long pins. Slinky red dress slit way up the side and a bare midriff. Snake tattoo running up one leg, across her stomach and up to her bare shoulder. Expensive heels clicking on the pavement. Wearing sunglasses in a dimly-lit underground garage.

Just how hard did you hit your head?

The woman walks – no, she slinks – over to the kneeling Wonder Woman and casually tosses a small metal disk at her. The Amazon’s instincts somehow kick in and she raises a bracer to deflect it, but the disk magnetically attaches itself to the bracer. Wonder Woman raises her head to look at the newcomer and coughs out a word, it sounds like “Roulette?” Then the other woman presses some kind of remote and with a shimmer the Amazon vanishes. Teleported away?

Slinky Lady turn to you and says, “Thank you for the set-up there, friend. When I saw the two of you in the restaurant I wasn’t sure how to go about capturing her. But while your attempt to take the Amazon down yourself was supremely ill-advised, it did slow her down just enough for me to close the deal.”

She holds out a card for you and you reflexively take it. “You should come by and watch. Least I can do. I promise it’ll be a fight to remember” She turns and sashays back into the shadows.

You look down at the card in your hand: “The House. One Free Admittance.”

“The House wins again,” the mystery woman’s voice floats out of the shadows.