Catwoman Ch. 04: Sleuth

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CHAPTER FOUR: SLEUTH

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Selina took a large suction cup from her pack and placed it on the glass. With a few button presses and a short hiss, the suction cup's indicator light blinked green, signifying it was fully engaged. Selina then extended four sets of rubber grips from the suction cup's center.

With the tool fully deployed, Selina activated a laser cutter, hidden in her right pointer finger. She sliced a hole in the glass, precisely the size and shape needed for her nimble chassis to fit through.

With the hole cut, Selina turned off her laser cutter and pressed another button on the suction cup device. With a steady motorized whir, the four rubber supports dug in around the hole and the suction cup raised the newly separated chunk of glass about two feet into the air.

From the utility belt wrapped around her slender waist, Selina then extended a length of rappelling cord. She clipped it onto a mounting fixture built into one of the rubber supports and squeezed herself down into the freshly cut hole.

She felt the locking mechanism in her utility belt engage as the cord took the full force of her weight. She pressed the DOWN button and the built-in motor silently lowered her from the ceiling.

Selina looked beneath her and her advanced optics locked onto two targets 38.2 feet below. The atrium was large, with vaulted ceilings. She focused in on their distinct golden collars and immediately Bruce's voice came on through the Comms-Link.

"Looks like a few of Joseph Francese's hired thugs. That kid won't be satisfied until he either runs the mob in this town or dies trying. We've got to find out how he fits into all of this."

Selina knew that Bruce could see, and frequently watched, every bit of data that her digital camera eyes took in. No matter how often he did it, her systems frequently underestimated his ability to process the scene in front of her and make observations faster than she. Even in old age, the man's instincts were uncanny.

He continued, "I know that in the past, the mob and Freeze did NOT get along, so I wonder what they're up to. Remember Selina, this is information retrieval ONLY, the last thing we want to do is tip them off that we know what they're up to."

"Understood Bruce."

She refocused her attention on the scene below; each man carried a sidearm, but nothing that would pose a threat to the integrity of the reinforced kevlar mesh that covered her entire body just millimeters beneath her synth-skin.

Selina pulled her incapaciTASER from its slot in her utility belt. She continued her descent, stopping 15 feet above the two armed men she stopped her descent. She armed the high-tech stun gun, disengaged from her rappelling cord, and fell forward with purpose.

The heel of her heavy combat boot made first contact, striking one of the men on the back of his neck. He crumpled to the ground immediately and just as the other thug turned towards Selina she knocked him off of his feet with a low, sweeping kick. She buried the stun gun in the small of his back until satisfied he was unconscious. Then she turned her attention back to the first man who lay on the ground writhing in pain and moaning. She pulled a cat-shaped gag from her belt and fastened it over his mouth, rendering his moans all but silent. She did the same thing to the unconscious thug before binding their arms and legs.

She whispered, "Sorry boys! Nothing personal. This cat's just a little curious about the operation you're running here. I hope you don't mind if I explore a bit more?"

They didn't respond.

Tiptoeing down a near set of stairs, Selina's round derrière wriggled enticingly in her black skintight nanofiber lattice catsuit.

Using her long-range sonic detection capabilities to listen for further noises in the building, Selina continued down several more flights of stairs uninterrupted. Eventually, she picked up on the voices of what her systems quickly estimated to be a group of four thugs.

She tossed a concussive smoke grenade around the corner and pounced the instant it erupted in a flash of blinding white light. Activating her Thermal Imaging Suite to see through the smoke, she leapt upwards and wrapped her legs around one man's neck before spin-flipping his face into the ground.

"What the fuck!?" Another man shouted and began firing at random into the smoke as he shielded his eyes from the dense white cloud.

The bullets he fired weren't even in her direction; Selina saw one of them slice through the thigh of another thug, who crumpled to the ground immediately. That left two remaining threats for Selina.

She prioritized the man still aimlessly shooting his pistol. One shot whizzed by her chest. She ran towards him before sliding feet-first right up to him. She put her heavy combat boot straight through the front of his knee, blowing it out backwards. He twisted down to the ground in an undignified heap.

Just one thug was left standing.

Selina scanned and found him fleeing in a panic. Her incapaciTASER had just finished building its charge so she put a round directly into his back, bringing him down and rounding out the whole group.

Three minutes later she had the four men all gagged and bound together, just like the two from earlier. They were injured, scared, and shocked, but alive. That was a line she couldn't cross, a carry-over from Bruce's days as Gotham's Dark Knight.

"Well that sure was a lot of security for one little pussy, and yet you four let me slip right through. I guess that makes me a slippery little pussy." She blinked several times in quick succession before flashing them a wide, shit-eating grin.

Bruce cringed at his display; he would definitely have to fiddle with her humor settings.

Surveying her surroundings, Selina found herself in front of a massive set of iron swinging doors. She flickered through her various imaging capacities and stared at the doors, approximating their thickness at around 15 centimeters. The locking mechanism was sealed tight and looked equally sturdy.

She flipped her Comms-Link on, "Bruce, I think I'm stuck. I won't be able to get past these doors."

"Hmmm well let's think, little cat. Let me see if I can pull up the blueprints for the building and find you a different way in."

"Understood Bruce." Selina instinctively slipped into a pre-programmed 'standby' subroutine, sexily shifting her weight back and forth between her buxom hips, as she waited for his response.

"Okay, I think I found a path for you into the main gallery. They've got to be meeting there based on the parts of the building you've already covered."

"Understood Bruce. What is my route?"

He chuckled, "Well you may not like this, but you're going to have to crawl through an air duct to get there."

"I don't understand. Why would I not like this?"

Bruce laughed again, harder this time, "Well I did this plenty of times back when I still wore the cape. They're often very warm, and there's not much space to maneuver, they're very tight."

There was a pause on Selina's end, "I'm very warm and very tight. You like me."

Bruce cackled, "You're spot on with that one, little cat! It's okay, I think you'll be able to manage in there."

"Understood Bruce. Where should I enter the air duct?"

"Yes...ahhh...spin to your right and you should see a supply closet on the far side of the room. The duct runs right through there. There should be a grate that you can pop off and climb in."

"Understood Bruce. I'm approaching the duct now."

"Godspeed little cat."

Selina squeezed herself into the air duct.

The fit was tight, but with her breasts compressed flat against the metal ducting beneath, she was able to steadily crawl forward.

Via her Comms-Link, she thanked Bruce for giving her such a lithe chassis. Bruce chuckled anxiously, indirectly alluding to the real Selina's measurements. He steered the conversation away, saying that he had chosen her skinny yet well endowed frame for the sole reason of man-handling her during sex.

Selina's synthetic cunt grew hot at the idea.

However, that wasn't the only thing growing hot.

Temperature alerts began flashing across Selina's HUD as she continued to wiggle her way through the duct. The air around her was 130 F, well above her system's rated maximum. She felt her heat dispersion fans, nestled deep within her plastic chest, rev-up as they struggled to dispel the heat that was quickly building up in her systems. The hot air escaped through her glossy lips in a seemingly never ending exhale.

She disregarded the alerts for now, knowing that she was close to reaching the weapons meeting. She estimated that she could withstand another 2 - 4 minutes of the current heat levels before she would need to begin shutting down critical systems.

After another two minutes or so of wriggling her supple plastic ass through the duct, Selina found herself laying on top of an access grate, which was directly above what she immediately understood to be the weapons meeting.

She used her imaging suite to scan the scene below, applying identifiers and tags to everything and everyone she saw.

There were at least eight armed guards, each equipped with a submachine gun and an electrical baton.

"That's odd, why do they all have electrical batons?" Selina thought to herself.

Each guard also had body armor and a military-grade helmet on. "Hmm, they're going to be tricky."

There were another six men in various attire, some in business suits and others dressed more colorfully. One of the men had his shoulder in a sling. Selina lowered his perceived threat level with that bit of information.

Lastly, there was Mr Freeze. Selina recognized him almost immediately. It would have been hard not to, in his mechanically assisted pressure suit and ruby-red goggles. He was also equipped with an electrical baton and one of the railguns she had previously seen at the jewelry store break-in.

An urgent alert flashed across Selina's HUD and she froze momentarily.

ALERT: system_temperature readouts exceed maximum allowable values in left_primary_power_cell and right_primary_power_cell

Her systems resumed and after an additional ocular search of the scene below, Selina realized she had missed somebody with her initial scan.

Tucked just behind a large wooden crate there was a man who was blindfolded, gagged, and taped to a chair. Selina was lowering his perceived threat level when her facial analysis suite unexpectedly came up with a direct match.

It was Jake Ottlar.

She activated her Comms-Link, "Bruce they have Jake. They must have figured out somehow that he tipped us off." She paused, her Logic & Reasoning CPU Core frenetically working to further understand the situation below, "I think they're going to kill him."

She continued, "Bruce, we have to save him. We put him in this position."

"No! Selina, he put himself in this position by working with Freeze and...."

ALERT: system_temperature readouts greatly exceed established control parameters in this unit's Main Processing Core. System will reboot into SAFE MODE in 30 seconds to prevent permanent damage to unit

The alert cut Bruce's sentence short and Selina didn't fully process his command.

"My systems are in danger of shutting down. I have to stop this meeting and save Jake now."

"Selina, no!"

Bruce's plea was too late. Selina's systems determined she could delay not a microsend further. Deep-rooted in her WayneTech code base, protecting human life was one of the few circumstances that allowed her systems to act independently of anybody's commands, including Bruce's.

She engaged every combat software package she had, used her laser cutter to remove the vent beneath her, and pushed down from her hidden position.

Selina fell, smashing her knee into the skull of one of Freeze's thugs and driving him to the ground. She gracefully rolled out of the encounter and immediately fired off both charges of her incapaciTASER, separately targeting the unprotected necks of two more thugs. Each shot was a direct hit thanks to her advanced targeting systems and impeccably designed gyroscopes. Both men folded over onto the floor as the voltage running through their bodies induced temporary paralysis.

Her systems ticked off each threat as it was eliminated. Three down. Five to go.

A few man raised their submachine guns, but each halted before pulling their respective triggers as the booming, resonant voice of Mr. Freeze called out, "Don't shoot you fucking morons! I want her fully intact."

As one lowered his gun and reached for his baton, Selina put her fist into his throat. He folded over in a wheezing heap with a broken larynx and collapsed trachea.

She spun towards the next thug, who's baton was crackling with electricity, and moved in to engage him. However, just as she pushed off the ground to throw a round-house kick, an error flashed across her HUD.

ERROR: indeterminable coordinate values reported in balance_&_spatial_awareness_subsystem: x_axis, y_axis, z_axis. commencing reboot of subsystem

Selina flailed in the air wildly before forcefully crashing into the cement floor.

Bruce's voice came in over the Comms-Link, "Selina! What was that? I've never seen that error before?"

Luckily, her subsystem quickly booted back into operation just as the thug thrust his baton down at her. She reached up, catching his hand and snapping it violently to the side. The baton's charged end was now only centimeters away from her torso. With a taxing whine from her shoulder's servo motor, she flipped the man over, smashing him into the ground.

"Five down. Three to go."

She pushed off the ground, leaping back onto her feet just in time for another thug to bury his baton into the small of her back. Her electrically-insulated bodysuit deadened some of the charge and her two surge protectors worked in tandem to eat up the rest of the voltage spike.

She reached her hands behind her back and grabbed onto the baton. Then, with superhuman flexibility, she back-flipped into the thug, slamming both of her heavy combat boots intohis jaw with a dull THUNK.

Just as she landed, another error worked its way across her HUD.

ERROR: input from optical_imaging_suite & thermal_imaging_suite disengaged. commencing reboot of affected imaging suites

Selina's vision went black.

Bruce's voice again cut in, "Selina! What is going on?! You need to get out of there NOW!"

She could only stand still as her Main Processing Core, in a frenzy of constantly evolving calculations, struggled to adapt in time to this new variable.

She failed to respond as her audial sensors registered the telltale 'WHOOSH' of a baton being swung her direction. It hit her directly in the side of her neck, the blunt force cracking carbon fiber structural supports. The sudden burst of electrical energy blew her several meters backwards and fried both of her surge protectors. Luckily, they were able to keep the rest of the weaponized electricity from reaching any further into her delicate electronic components.

With structural, surge protector, and imaging suite alerts all now flashing across her HUD, Selina forced herself to her feet and cleverly switched over to her lesser-used LIDAR remote sensing system. The input was rough, and not nearly up to the resolution and accuracy of her other imaging suites, but it was sufficient for her to see the two remaining thugs approaching her, each grasping a fully charged baton.

She reached for her last remaining concussive smoke grenade and threw it at the men. It exploded in its typical bout of bright white smoke and blinding light. The men shielded their eyes and stumbled forward sloppily.

Selina stepped into the smoke, and performing thousands of spatial positioning interpolations a second, wrenched a baton away from one of the men. She shoved it into his side, intentionally avoiding his body armor, and felt him explode backwards in a burst of sparks.

Her optical and thermal imaging suites then kicked back on, and she went to perform a similar baton-reversal maneuver to the one remaining thug, but another unfamiliar error popped up which stopped her in her tracks.

ERROR: activation of orgasm_subroutines is an incompatible action when combat_protocols are engaged. commencing deactivation of combat_protocols to allow for activation of orgasm_subroutines

Selina paused, and with a puzzled look, cocked her head to the side. Her nipples hardened and she felt her sex grow very hot and very wet. "Mmmmmhhmmm Bruce-Bruce-Bruce!?"

The last thug, keying onto her voice, thrust his baton forward. He landed its charged tip against her upper thigh. Her catsuit again absorbed some of the voltage, but it wasn't nearly enough with her surge protectors out of commission.

The flow of energy popped and crackled its way through her exquisitely designed circuit boards, charring some and leaving others untouched.

She collapsed onto the ground, rhythmically grinding her mons into the cement.

"Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-BRUCE-BRUCE-BRUCE-BRUCE FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK-ME-ME-ME-MEMEMEME..." Selina's glitchy voice went quiet as the orgasm subroutine ate up all her unused processing capacity.

She was barely able to register Bruce's solemn voice coming in over her Comms-Link, "Selina. Somebody is in your systems. You've been hacked."

She forced through her orgasm subroutine as quickly as possible, rivulets of her hot lubricant running down the legs of her black catsuit. She sprang back up just in time to acrobatically roll out of the thug's reach.

Reactivating her combat protocols, Selina ran full speed at her assailant. Her software anticipated his swing, and with superhuman speed she grabbed onto his extended arm and broke it in half before he could complete the motion.

The man dropped the baton and swung his other fist at the back of Selina's head. She anticipated this move as well, and catching his wrist mid-swing, she wrenched it a full 180 degrees in the direction it was not supposed to move. The advanced haptic sensors in her hands picked up on the sensation of his bones cracking.

He fell backwards onto the ground, his eyes looking up at Selina's supple figure like she was some kind of sexed up, vigilante demon.

Ensuring he was no longer a threat, Selina picked up the baton and casually threw it against his chest. He convulsed momentarily before falling unconscious.

Turning to face Freeze and the rest of the men, Selina picked her most unwavering vocal setting and spoke aloud, "Is that all you can throw at me?" She sashayed towards them, provocatively swinging her hips inside her silhouette-hugging catsuit.

"I'm stronger than you. I'm faster than you. If you don't want to end up like them..." She motioned towards the eight men behind her, all either unconscious or writhing on the ground, "...I suggest you turn over these railguns right-right-right..."

Selina's systems faltered, her motor functions suddenly inaccessible. She was completely immobilized, stuck mid-step.

Freeze's deep voice boomed out, "Catwoman, FREEZE."