The insecure man raises from the ground, perceptibly shaking. His mind is an anxious mess of rambling thoughts that I do not bother to listen to. The reprehensible being grasps one of the few oil lamps he was using to see despite the absence of electrical current.

"Who are you?! This is a private proper..!"

Foul Play teleports on his desk, a peculiar curved glass sculpture topped with a wooden surface, convincing him to shut up and, also, set his lantern down in terror. Recoiling and slouching into his leather armchair, he shields his sweaty, bald head with his sweaty, beefy arms, sticking to his undersized dress shirt's inside.

He blurts out, "W-who do y-you work for?!"

Cheryl folds her legs, lowering her rear end with her entire body remaining almost vertically aligned. Her heels are pressing down on an arrangement of paperwork, but she is able to delicately pick up the document he was working on before our arrival.

The young woman bursts into electronic laughter, startling the businessman to the extent that the pallor of his skin increases and his dry lips twitch uncomfortably in fear.

/Come see this!/ she bids me, lifting herself up again to stand in her slim splendor above the small, horrified man.

My friend holds the sheets between her fingers and shows them to me in her back, slightly digging her long black French tip nails into the paper. I cease walking, and my brown eyes land on the writing. David Merc was poring over his... Last will and testament? I would almost pity the guy, if he were not a major drug supplier.

The vigilante whips the paperwork back in front of the man to remind him of their significance, sneering, "Oh, David... How fitting."

Laughing some more, she throws the sheets at him, and the papers flutter and twirl into the air. While he scrambles to catch them, Cheryl telekinetically steals his three cellphones, dropping them at my feet. She swiftly revolves around, decidedly sitting down on the desk to watch me, her legs hanging off the surface.

/Break those./

I raise my left foot over the closest phone, but my partner intervenes.

/Not like that, hon./

I chuckle awkwardly.

/Right, my mistake./

I take four steps back and open my hands, directing my palms at the devices. I inhale. Exhale. Inhale... On the awaited exhale, two blasts, rays of blue kryptonite energy, shoot out of my hands. Bursting onto the pile of portable phones, they reduce the cellphones to chips of melting plastic and silvery dust, within fifteen seconds. The wooden floorboards are barely scathed by the combustion with a light outline of sooth and flickering blue cinders.

Wow. I did that..!

I swallow softly, switching my attention to the other people in the room. From our hostage's point of view, a stranger wearing an eery mask just obliterated a pile of electronics with either magic or an unknown powerful technology and is now staring at him intently. This perception prompts his reaction.

"Please don't kill me!" he hysterically screams, grabbing Cheryl's left arm with both of his clammy hands.

His arms, moving unnaturally, are forcefully pried off her and snap behind him, as though she applied transparent handcuffs to his chubby wrists. The rotund male tips backwards and falls in his seat.

I close up the space remaining between the desk and I, as foul Play spins on her buttocks and scatters his documentation further. She violently stabs her high heel boots into the arms of David's leather chair, inciting him to sputter in sheer panic:

"What do you want? Do you want money? I got money! Tons of it!"

His despair and greed are revolting, yet I cannot stop myself from feeling sorry for him. What does he even live for?

Cheryl leans closer to the man, drawling mockingly, "Oh, Chairman Merc... That's exactly the problem."

"What?" he whimpers, looking around himself in a frenzy.

"I already have what I want... What do you want, Dave?" she calmly taunts him.

Then, she quickly proceeds to inform me, /The USB drive is in a safe, the code is 25 19 14, and the safe is in the top left drawer of that awful beige cabinet to our right. Get it now, so he realizes he's in trouble./

While I follow Foul Play's directives, she is humoring the criminally-inclined CEO.

"I want t... To live. Please. Whoever you are, I'm a reasonable man, we can talk."

"Isn't that what we're already doing, Davy-Dave?"

My gangster friend slips off the desk, pacing in his back.

"Uh... I won't tell h... Him, about you... Just don't kill me, ok? I'll skip... Skip town, yeah! Sounds good?"

"Aren't ya sweet..? How about you give us a little parting gift, too? Wouldn't want anyone to hear about your lil' beach house in Acapulco, now, do you?"

"How do you know about..?"

David ceases muttering, noticing that I am turning the combination lock of his safe without hesitation.

"A hundred thousand seems fair, wouldn't ya say? For our troubles. Just some pocket change, y'know."

The performer struts in front of his desk, David and I both gaping at her. Is she seriously coercing this corrupt older man into giving us some kind of... Payday? I did not sign up to blackmail unlawful individuals..! However, considering that the captive is agreeing to her terms, I guess maybe I did.

With the contraption Foul Play was searching for and a cheap forest green plastic suitcase containing $100K, we left David tied up in a closet - with openings to breathe - and are driving away from Coast Lane. In the car's sideview mirrors, I watch the entire neighborhood light up, at the exact moment it escapes from sight.

Inside the Porsche, parked in the deserted and conspicuously idle parking lot of a 24-hour supermarket, Cheryl is busy cracking the code that protects the access to the drive's information. The stolen drive... I prefer to tell myself we just "purloined" it, to rid our actions of their negative connotation. Fancier words have a way of doing that. David Merc, The Penguin and the likes of those two have all perpetrated far worse crimes than stealing; I feel more guilt in regards to her shady deal.

/Why did we take his money?/

I wish I had brought my watch tonight... I glance at the time, in the lower right corner of her laptop's screen: 7h48 PM.

/To do something better with it than he would. I'm sure you'll find a few charities that could use it./

/Do you usually do this?/ I inquire.

/No. It's a perk of having you as a partner.../ She stops typing and turns towards me. /I know you want to do more than annoy a couple of entitled dicks./

If I have felt like a useless burden all evening, Cheryl definitely solved that issue. I never imagined someone would comfort me while mentioning dicks.

/Thanks. I didn't expect to become a modern-day Robin Hood./

/And I didn't expect to have so much in common with Batman. You're the only Robin I wanna be fighting crime with, though./

I nod, letting a smile paint my lips.

/How are we doing on the USB?/

/I have the location we are looking for... I'm just adding a little surprise for our feathered friend./

I aimlessly follow the dance of her manicured fingertips across the clean keyboard. The computer seems to be a recent model with sharp dark silver edges and keys that light up in the sunless atmosphere. The artist opens up a pair of quotation marks and types the following message into it: "Looks like you hit an iceberg". She erupts into loud, unadulterated laughter, a sound that is eery and grating because of the radio-like effect of her mask's voice filter. Leaning back into the driver's seat to calm down, she ejects the USB drive and shuts her laptop abruptly, giggling half-audibly, which results in a dissonant assortment of creaking high-pitched breaths.

Ignoring her obscure pun, which I am not certain I truly grasp, I ask her, "How do we know The Penguin is going to see that?"

"Because we're sending this baby to him." She pivots the data drive between her fingers, mischievously concluding her thought. "What's the point of destroying that hangar if he can't wallow in the remains of what he's lost?!"

On that note, we drive out of the parking lot, and the dashboard clock is displaying 7h48 PM.

~

Over the blaring and chirping of sirens, I raise my voice to address Leah.

"Thanks! Find an ambulance that can bring her to the hospital, please."

My fellow EMT releases her hold on the patient she was helping me transfer onto a stretcher. Hearing the wounded woman's thoughts of discomfort, I swiftly lift the back of the stretcher and lock it into place. From the corner of my eye, I watch my colleague walk hurriedly towards the nearest vehicle, walkie-talkie in hand. I smile at my patient, attaching an IV fluid bag to the stretcher and piercing it with the sharp end of a supple plastic tube.

"What's your name?"

Tears are streaming out of her hazel eyes and she stammers, "S-sylvia... Is my baby going to... To b-be... Okay?"

"I'm going to do everything I can for your baby to be just fine. Now, Sylvia, inhale deeply for me."

I press the needle of the IV line against her left inner forearm.

"Like this," I inhale, purposefully puffing my chest to enhance the action. "You won't feel a thing, exhale..."

I simultaneously insert the pointed end of the contraption under her skin, blowing out air as I effectively smooth down a piece of tape across the exposed plastic at the injection spot.

"My baby," she repeats, sobbing.

"We're trying to get you to the hospital, okay? Right now, I'm going to look at your injuries." I calmly tell her, gathering a few supplies from my first responder bag.

The pregnant woman's right arm is stuck with her elbow facing me and her fingers pointing behind her, twisted and broken into place. A severe tear between her neck and shoulder contributes to her pain, spewing blood on nearly every surface of her upper body and causing the disformed arm to dangle loosely and lower than it should be, as though it is unfastened from her shoulder blade.

From the size of her bump, she should be approximately seven and a half months into her pregnancy, give or take a few weeks, justifying Leah's welcome assistance earlier.

I cannot believe that I was standing more or less in this exact spot last night... And, now, such an unpredictable and horrid tragedy has occurred. Twelve hours is all it took for this to happen.