It was a dark and stormy night…..Too cliché for you, huh? Okay then, let’s dig around in the thesaurus a bit….Ah, here we go
Lightning lit up the night sky and was soon followed by cacophonous thunder.
Ah, cacophonous, nice big SAT word for you. Personally, the second sentence has more vision and paints a better picture, don’t you think? But you’re not here to discuss word choice, you came for a story. Yes the names of some have been changed to protect… (wait for it)…the innocent, but after awhile, caution will be thrown to the wind and the wool will be taken from over your eyes.
Now, where were we? Ah yes…
Lightning lit up the night sky and was soon followed by cacophonous thunder. The rain pelted the windows of the clock tower in Gotham. Barbra Gordon, known to some of the more powerful people on Earth as Oracle, sat in front of her main weapon, her computer. More like super computer that even the best hackers in the world would only dream of, none the less, there she sat, slightly bored on this rather unusually slow night. This bothered her to some extent; rule of thumb was bad things happened in stormy weather, especially in Gotham. But nothing was on her radar; well nothing she could really do anything about anyway. That’s when the reports started trickling in. Power surges were not totally unexpected on a stormy night; however, they are normally sporadic and not concentrated downtown. It was the pattern the reports created that got Barbra thinking. It wasn’t the whole of downtown that was having problems with power surges, it was just the ones surrounding the cemetery, on a hill in the “richer” part to be exact.
“Probably someone playing Dr. Frankenstein,” Dinah Lance chuckled.
“Still, do you mind checking it out Canary?”
“Suuuuuuure, because I have nothing better to do than go to a cemetery. At night. In the rain,” Dinah replied, her voice absolutely dripping in sarcasm.
“Hehe, love you too Canary.”
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The intimidating wrought iron gates to the entrance of the cemetery looked more like the gloomy gates of hell with every flash of lightning and Dinah involuntarily shivered.
“Creeeeeee-ppy!” she whistled through her teeth.
“Scared? That’s so unlike you,” Dinah could hear the amusement in Barbra’s voice and she just rolled her eyes in response.
“This close to Halloween, on a stormy night, out among dead people? Exactly how many chick flicks start out this way again, Babs? None. This is the night of the living dead revisited. Just you wait, hands will pop up from the ground shouting, ‘braaaaaiiiins, braaaAAAIIIiiinnss!’ and I’ll get divided up among them,” she replied, stepping in “the land of the dead” with soft quick footsteps. ‘It always has to be at the farthest point from the entrance, doesn’t it? Just to make it difficult.”
After clearing the mausoleum section, Dinah walked among the elaborate headstones. The many intricately carved marble pieces were a sight unto themselves, like their owners were trying to show off, but for who? It’s not like they had anybody to impress. The farther she walked among the headstones, the more names she recognized. None that were very recent, mind you, but they all were recognizable, some of the most famous names in Gotham.
“Do you know what you’re coming up on, Canary?” Barbra’s voice crackled over
the comm, bringing Dinah out of her reverie. The static latent in the air made the signal cut in and out on Dinah’s comm. Another flash illuminated the entire hill and she saw at the top, the statue of an angel, its arms extended in a welcome embrace. There must have water in her eyes because Dinah swore she saw someone or something in the angels’ arms. The loud clap of thunder drowned out her small gasp as another flash revealed not only the name on the grave, but that Dinah wasn’t hallucinating. There was a limp form of a woman in the angels’ arms.
“This is sooooo not funny anymore. It’s gone from zombie horror to Phantom of the Opera. Oracle, you there?”
“This is………….gone…………zomb………..horror………..-cale? …….there?” the scrambled voice crackled over Barbra’s head set and she winced at the feedback that came after. Then she lost all trace of Dinah. The tracer went off-line, her secondary comm went out and any electronic equipment she had was out.
“What the hell?”
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The ear piece practically exploded in Dinah’s ear as another bolt of lightning lit up
the sky. She shouted mostly out of surprise and jerked her head away out of instinct as a spark and puff of smoke exuded from the shorted ear piece.
“Damn technology,” she muttered as she trudged forth toward the angel. Her skin began to tingle and all the tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck began to stand up. The air was filled with electricity and every nerve was stimulated to the max. Now that Dinah knew she wasn’t hallucinating, she walked up to the limp form of the woman in the angels’ arms. Naked and unconscious, the woman looked no older than 16 or 17 not a woman at all but a girl, very fragile and innocent.
As she went to pluck the girl from the arms of the angel, another flash of lightning lit the stormy skies and snaked its way straight down to the unconscious girl. Dinah was thrown back by the pure energy that emanated from the bolt and feared for the worst. Electricity arched and crackled across the surface of the girl’s body. Dinah slowly got up and walked carefully over to the prone figure again, reaching out touch her.
“Canary, are you injured?”
Dinah nearly jumped out of her skin as the ominous voice asked if she was okay. Her hand landed on the girl and she let out a loud, “YEEOOW!” as she recoiled in shock and pain. Her hand looked as if it had been singed and she could smell the burned fabric of her glove. Movement off to the side caught her attention and the familiar fluttering of a black cape came into view.
“Oracle sent me to check on you after she lost contact. Truth be told I was curious about all this electric activity myself. Any idea who she is?”
Dinah rolled her eyes. That was so like him to just appear out of nowhere like that. They all were like that, the members of the bat family.
“Nice to see you too Bats,” she replied with added sarcasm. “No, I don’t know who she is, I just found her myself. You mind helping me get her down. Your rubber cape should save you from getting shocked.” Detaching his cape, Batman walked silently over to the statue and wrapped the mystery girl up, giving her some decency as he lifted her from her resting place on the statue. Holding her lightly in his arms, he noted the tingling sensation on his left arm where her head rested against him. She was amazingly still alive after a direct hit from a bolt of lightning, so she was most likely the source of the disturbance in the area. Her body carried a powerful electric charge, strong enough to pass, however little, through his rubber lining that ran throughout his suit. Taking her to the clock tower might not be the best idea, seeing as Barbra had all that electrical equipment.
“I’m going to take her to the batcave, I’ll also call Oracle and tell her what happened.” Batman said matter-of-factly.
“No offense Bats, but you’ll most likely scare her when she wakes up. I’d like it if you take her back to my place, if you don’t mind.”
“Fine, just don’t have any electronics on, she might make them go haywire.” Batman said as he turned and began to walk away.
“Duly noted, now if you could-Hey!” Dinah didn’t even notice him walk away. How would he get to her place if she didn’t know where it was?