"Looks like someone had the same idea we did."

  Su Ming pumped the pedals of his unicycle like a madman, both pistols drawn and safeties off.

  Cindy mirrored his movements. In close quarters, you couldn’t rely on a shotgun slung across your back—sidearms were faster, more reliable.

  "Well, we can rule out Harley. She and Ivy were both hammered, like college freshmen on dolr shots night. No way they got here before us."

  "Doesn’t really matter who it was," Su Ming replied coolly. "We just need to get in there and take out whoever's stepping on our turf."

  In Gotham, there was never a shortage of crazies who thought it’d be fun to tangle with the Bat. Who knew which lunatic had taken action first this time?

  The brawl with the circus freaks earlier had flipped a switch in Su Ming. He no longer clung to the idea that he was just a passenger in Deathstroke’s body. No—he was Deathstroke now. Sde Wilson might’ve been the previous tenant, but this house? It belonged to him.

  And like any new owner, he pnned to rewrite the legacy—only this time, it’d carry his name.

  He would use his own mind to drive this body. As for keeping the name “Deathstroke”? Habit. A nod to where he came from. A little souvenir from the East.

  Cindy couldn’t guess what kind of mental journey Su Ming had just gone through, but she could feel it. Something in the way he moved. Like a man who had finally stepped fully into the world around him, no longer detached or hesitant.

  She didn’t comment, just holstered her pistols again. She had a hunch she wouldn’t need them.

  They reached the edge of the park quickly. From here, Deathstroke’s enhanced vision gave him a crystal-clear view of the Gotham City Police Department’s front entrance.

  The building itself was old—probably one of the first structures erected when Gotham was founded. Despite countless renovations and additions over the years, its original fortress-like design remained: thick walls, tiny windows, a ft rooftop with reinforced rails, and an assortment of HVAC units and water tanks. Oh, and of course, the Bat-Signal. Couldn’t forget that.

  The cracked sign above the entrance still read GCPD, weathered but intact.

  In the rain-soaked parking lot, a fleet of bck vans sat in sloppy formation, like jagged rocks jutting out from a stormy shore.

  A handful of cop bodies y strewn across the stairs, their blood mixing with the downpour as it trickled down the concrete.

  Near the shattered main doors stood several figures in bck suits, holding SMGs and nervously scanning their surroundings. Every so often, one would gnce over their shoulder, as if waiting for someone.

  “Bck suits. Bck fedoras. White silk scarves. And what’s that—Tommy guns? Real Chicago typewriters? Their boss must have a Godfather fetish,” Su Ming muttered.

  They crouched behind a cluster of wet shrubs. The rain masked their presence, but Deathstroke’s enhanced vision pierced the gloom. The gangsters, on the other hand, couldn't see squat.

  Cindy didn’t quite get the reference. In Gotham, the mob had dressed like this since forever. Outfits alone didn’t tell you which family they worked for.

  She gnced at the distance to the front door, then looked up at the sky. “Weather’s on our side. Darkness too. We can go in loud or sneak in—your call.”

  “They’re probably pnning to use Gordon to bait Batman. If we hit them hard and fast, we’ll split their focus. Make it harder for them to hold the precinct. If Gordon’s in their hands when they dig in... it’s going to be a mess.”

  Su Ming didn’t wait for her to respond. He burst from cover with both pistols raised, raining bullets as he sprinted.

  His brain had begun delivering precise spatial data without effort. Ballistic calcutions? That wasn’t just a Deadshot thing—he could do it too. No aiming required, just raw mathematics and deadly instinct.

  The range was just over a hundred meters—technically outside a pistol’s optimal range—but since accepting his new identity, Su Ming had stopped questioning his limits. Mind and body were in sync now. The results were terrifying.

  Wind direction. Angle. Gravity. Refraction. Energy loss. Every variable accounted for, every shot fired with purpose.

  One by one, the goons near the steps dropped, each hit clean and lethal.

  He sprinted across the flooded street, boots spshing through puddles, his pace relentless. Before the bck-suited thugs even figured out where the shots were coming from, he’d vaulted the perimeter wall and made it into the parking lot.

  The vans blocked his path. He grabbed the edge of a cargo door, using his arm strength to yank himself on top.

  From his new vantage point, he raised both guns again. Bullets sparked against his armor, but he didn’t flinch. Every shot he returned dropped an enemy. Headshots. Heart shots. Surgical.

  Within seconds, silence fell over the lot.

  “Damn,” Cindy muttered as she climbed up beside him. “You took off like a rocket. I didn’t even get to answer.”

  “They looked like they wanted a fight,” Su Ming shrugged, reloading with an easy grace. “So I gave them one.”

  “You gave them a massacre, not a match,” Cindy said, hopping down from the van. “We’re not getting reimbursed for ammo this time, you know. Couldn’t you use your sword for once?”

  “Why waste effort?” Su Ming dropped down beside her, scooping up a submachine gun. He popped the mag. “.45 ACP. One round of mine traded for forty-five of theirs. I call that a win.”

  Their banter came easy, as casual as if they’d just snagged a Bck Friday deal at the local supermarket, not butchered a dozen armed criminals.

  They headed toward the precinct.

  At the doorway, Su Ming suddenly paused. Someone was still breathing. Despite his pinpoint aim, one unlucky—or lucky—mobster hadn’t died instantly. The shot must’ve missed her heart.

  Statistically, one in a thousand people have their heart on the right side. Apparently, she was that one.

  "Who sent you?" Su Ming asked, kicking away her weapon and crouching beside her. His voice dropped low, cold, deadly. The single crimson lens of his mask glowed like a demon’s eye in the storm.

  She was trembling, a ragged wheeze escaping her lips. The bullet had shredded her left lung, and the blood gurgling from her mouth told the rest of the story. Still, when she heard his voice, she ughed—a choking, bloody cough of a sound.

  “Our boss… won’t let you get away with this… Deathstroke.”

  Su Ming raised an eyebrow behind the mask. Delusional. Everyone else was dead. No witnesses. It was a perfect hit. Who the hell was she talking to?

  "You seem loyal," he said ftly. "Then your boss must’ve told you the golden rule..."

  In a fsh, he drew the katana strapped to his back. One smooth motion, and the bde punched through her right chest, pinning her to the wet concrete.

  “Don’t. Fuck. With. Deathstroke.”

  As he yanked the sword free, a fountain of blood sprayed from the wound, soaking his armor in red. For a moment, the warmth cut through the chill of the rain.

  And in that moment... he wanted more.

  He shook his head, hard. No. That was wrong. That wasn’t him.

  Cindy sauntered over with a mischievous grin, totally misreading the gesture.

  “Told you,” she said, smug. “Knives are better.”

  They were definitely not talking about the same thing. Su Ming was grappling with the disturbing hunger for blood. Cindy was just making a point about melee weapon efficacy.

  “Fine. Next time, you handle it. I’ll rate your technique afterward.”

  Su Ming cleaned the bde with the rainwater, then sheathed it with a practiced flick.

  Cindy raised her hands in mock surrender. “Nah, I’ve got no interest in grunts. Just save their boss for me.”

  Apparently, the dying woman’s st threat had hit a nerve. Cindy didn’t take kindly to being threatened—especially not by some third-rate mob boss.

  No one threatened the world’s deadliest assassin and lived to brag about it.

  Su Ming didn’t say another word to her. He took the lead and stepped into the police station. There was no need for directions anymore—just follow the sound of gunfire.

  The main lobby was a war zone.

  Bodies of officers were scattered across the floor, blood smearing across shattered desks and overturned furniture. Only a handful of the bck-suited attackers y among them—this had clearly been a blitz assault.

  But what stood out was the source of the noise. The gunfire wasn’t coming from the third floor, where the commissioner’s office was—it was echoing up from the basement.

  “What’s down there?” Su Ming asked Cindy, eyes scanning for movement.

  “If I remember right… the morgue, the electrical room, maybe the comms center,” Cindy replied, gncing up the staircase that led to the upper floors. Not a single bck-suited corpse there, meaning the attackers hadn’t even tried going up. Their objective was down below—and they were dead set on it.

  “Weird…”

  Su Ming muttered under his breath, but his stride didn’t falter. He stepped over corpses and debris without pause, making his way toward the origin of the sounds.

  Not all the dead in the lobby were cops or bck-suits. A few bodies bore the ragged clothes and gaunt features of street criminals or homeless people. It didn’t matter who they’d been in life—dead, they were just more meat stacked in a corner like sacks of garbage.

  Rain was pouring in through the broken front doors, mixing with blood and grime and spreading filth across what used to be polished hardwood floors. From above, the lobby would probably look like a grotesque mural from hell.

  Neither of them were the artistic type, though. They found the entrance to the basement easily enough. The scent of gunpowder got stronger at the top of the stairs—thick, choking, like standing next to an erupting volcano.

  At the bottom was a security door—completely destroyed. Beyond it stretched a dim hallway, lit by the flickering white of dying fluorescent lights. Su Ming and Cindy peeked in, mapping the positions and distances of the combatants.

  In the sickly light, bck-suited attackers and police were locked in a brutal standoff. Both sides were ducked in and out of office doorways, trading fire like a macabre game of whack-a-mole. Bodies dropped with every burst. But it was clear the cops were losing—outgunned and outcssed.

  “That room at the far end is the comms center. Looks like the cops are holed up in there. Could be Gordon’s inside, trying to call for backup.”

  Cindy adjusted her helmet, cracking her knuckles as she threw out the theory.

  Su Ming didn’t agree. “Doesn’t feel like Gordon. He’s not the kind to sit safe in a bunker while his people die at the door. Still… you know Earth -11 better than I do, so who knows?”

  “Either way, there’s someone important in there. Let’s clean this up and crack that door open.”

  “So—kill the bck-suits, leave the cops alive?” Cindy asked, patting the small box on her belt and pulling out a cigar. She twirled it between her fingers and grinned. “Bet you one cigar Gordon’s in there.”

  Su Ming chuckled behind his mask, pulling out his own cigar. They pced them on the doorframe like a pair of poker chips.

  “You’re on. I say he’s not.”

  Their voices dropped to a whisper as they talked, then Cindy darted into action. Though she bore the name Deathstroke, Cindy had always favored close-quarters combat.

  Her katana blurred in her hands, fast and deadly. By the time the bck-suits realized she was among them, it was already too te. She tore through the rooms like a wolf in a henhouse, swift and merciless.

  One of the bck-suits—a woman—actually managed to block a strike with her gun and tried to rally others to fnk Cindy. Admirable, but hopeless.

  There were thousands like her in Gotham’s endless sea of gangs. But Cindy? Cindy was Deathstroke—a weapon perfected. And she wasn’t in their weight css.

  Steel rang against steel as the woman parried the katana—but before the echo had finished, Cindy had already pulled the shotgun off her back and fired point-bnk.

  Gunfire and bde cshed in a single, synchronized crack.

  The small-time boss flew backward with a look of stunned disbelief, a gaping hole in her chest. The shotgun bst ripped into the wall behind her, sending chunks of concrete flying.

  Cindy kept moving, a blur of bck and yellow death, painting the hallway in blood and fear.

  Su Ming, meanwhile, handled the cops.

  He didn’t want to kill them. These were just regur people—not Batman, not even Nightwing. No armor, no insuted gloves, no real combat training.

  He wielded his electrified staff like a boiler worker shoveling coal. Jab forward—crackling sparks—and a cop dropped. Sweep back—another one down, shoved into a room to keep them from catching a stray round.

  Every move had to be controlled, restrained. Not too much voltage. No strikes to the throat or heart. Hell, even tossing them into rooms had to be done with finesse—don’t want to break someone’s spine.

  Someone might scoff. It’s not a spear, how’s a stick gonna kill anyone?

  But when you’re as strong as he is, the difference is academic. Gun or no gun, a strike at full power could punch through a man like paper.

  Worse than that, he had to keep a tight leash on himself. The adrenaline, the thrill of combat—it lit up the worst parts of him. The hunger for violence. The whisper of bloodlust cwing at the edge of his mind.

  Control was everything.

  Still, they got the job done.

  Just over two minutes ter, forty-something bck-suits and a dozen cops were down—none dead, at least on Su Ming’s end.

  Cindy finished just a hair before him. She looked pleased with herself.

  “Guess I’m stronger after all,” she teased, fshing a grin. “I took down twice as many.”

  Su Ming just shrugged.

  She wasn’t wrong—but he had been going easy. It took effort to not kill someone with every strike. Timing the shocks, gauging their weight, making sure he didn’t fling someone into a wall hard enough to sptter.

  Someone unfamiliar with that kind of restraint wouldn’t get it. But Cindy, predictably, was basking in victory like a cat with a fresh kill.

  If she had a tail, it’d be waving triumphantly in the air.

  She did a slow circuit around the hallway before stopping in front of the comms room door.

  “All right, time to open the present,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s see what’s in the big mystery box.”

  She crouched down and began rummaging through the pouch strapped to her thigh, pulling out a small block of pstic explosive. Humming a tuneless little melody, she looked for the perfect spot.

  The door was solid—thick steel, practically tank armor.

  “Go easy,” Su Ming warned. “Whoever’s in there probably isn’t combat-trained. If the bst doesn’t kill them, the shockwave might.”

  He wasn’t being dramatic. In a narrow hallway like this, even a small charge would hit like thunder. Best case, it’d blow out eardrums. Worst case—concussions, panic attacks, maybe even heart failure.

  Cindy didn’t answer—just gave him an ‘OK’ gesture with her fingers and stuck a tiny sliver of C4 on the lock, carefully inserting the timed detonator.

  The countdown had begun.