<div class="floatleft">(http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/14/147508/4593900-1.jpg)</div><hr/><strong>Name:</strong>? ? ?<br/><strong>Nom de Guerre:</strong>Deathstroke "The Terminator."<br/><strong>Affiliation:</strong>The Highest Bidder.<br/><strong>Time:</strong>Saturday the 17th of October 2015, 20:25 - 20:26<br/><strong>Location:</strong>S.T.A.R Labs, Gotham East.<br/><strong>Tagging:</strong>Superboy, Nightwing, Batwoman, Spoiler.<br/><strong>Theme Music:</strong>The Wild Card by Really Slow Motion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4o94jEXUmA)<br/><hr/><hr/><strong>Summary:</strong>Deathstroke ignores the impotent batarangs headed towards him, and focuses on his objective; retrieving that box. He uses his Super Hearing and Vision to navigate the smokescreen and take off towards Batwoman in an attempt to resecure The Package, sending a spray of bullets out in an attempt to at least slow down pursuit. He sprints across the room and launches himself in an aerial attack on Batwoman, hoping to catch her off guard and off balance...<br/><hr/><hr/><br/>Unfortunately, the throw to the ground hadn't gone quite the way that Deathstroke had hoped; it had only mildly inconvenienced the acrobatic Tightpants, who simply sprung back up to his feet as if nothing had ever happened...perhaps his previous estimated injury of a cracked rib was too hopeful, if he was that spry on his feet. Well...in any future clashes with Tightpants, he would have to make<em>absolutely</em>sure to break at least two of them; if you had a broken rib, there was no way that you were going to be doing any acrobatics of any kind. A broken rib would even give Deathstroke pause until his healing factor had dealt with it; it didn't matter how good you were, how skilled you were, how much training you had or just how well conditioned your body was...a cracked rib was a cracked rib, plain and simple, and any exertion that resulted in the movement of that area of the body would likely have you writhing in pain. The image of the Tight-Tighted Acrobat trying to do a somersault and ending up on the ground clutching his side amused him; it was impractical, risky, unnecessarily energy-intensive fighting style and that sort of thing just rubbed him up the wrong way. You use energy when you have to, and save it for emergencies. The more energy you waste on showboating the less you have to actually engage your opponent...and in the case of Tightpants, if he were going up against Deathstroke one on one and it became a battle of attrition...Deathstroke would win, pure and simple. Why? Because he had more stamina, and didn't waste energy on unnecessary movement. But, that wasn't the time to muse on such topics; he had a job to complete, and SuperMask and Tightpants were in his way.<br/><br/>Tightpants - in a surprisingly tactics-savvy move - deployed some kind of smoke bomb that enveloped the immediate area in a thick plume of smoke, thereby obstructing Deathstrokes vision past a few feet in front of him. His enhanced vision could still see clearly ahead of him for two or three feet and could still detect basic shapes - whilst a normal human would be almost blind in that cloud without the aid of specialist equipment, Deathstroke's vision was more than capable of penetrating at least to a passable degree; it couldn't make out fine details, but as long as his subject was within twenty feet of him, he could still make out their outline and shape...and that was enough to be getting on with for the time being; the sooner he got that thermal imaging sensor in his helmet, the better - but it was less acute vision than he would have liked. Thankfully, his vision wasn't the only aspect of his senses that were Enhanced; he concentrated for a moment, focusing as much of his hearing as he could, and eyed the pair of shapes. They paused for a moment...and sprung into action. Tightpants shape - he remembered their relative positions before the smoke went down and Tightpants was of a more lithe build than SuperMask - made a throwing motion and a split moment later, he could hear the whistling of something moving at high speeds towards him. He focused a bit more and - unable to detect any extra sounds that might have indicated an explosive (he'd been hit by an explosive arrow before, of all things; it hurt like a son of a bitch) - elected to ignore them. His armour wasn't entirely indestructible of course, but it was damn near it; he doubted that a set of fancy boomerangs or throwing stars would even scratch the chrome finish in any serious way, so there was no point spending unnecessary energy in avoiding them. Sure enough, the first one hit and glanced harmlessly off to the side, not even earning a flinch; there was no advantage in faking a flinch, after all, so why do it?<br/><br/>He did, of course, need to get moving; As soon as Tightpants shape threw the weapons, SuperMask's shape took off at a run, his own super hearing detecting the direction and speed of the footsteps even as the shape passed out of his sight. He heard the Mask skid to a halt, possibly preparing for an attack, but Deathstroke wasn't about to give him the chance; he had seen Fem-Bat headed towards the exit, and if she escaped with his prize, his job would get a lot harder...and not least of all because he would have to fight SuperMask at his full strength, and he doubted that he wanted to do<em>that</em>unprepared without doing the rest of his homework. In retrospect, he shouldn't have come in unprepared. He should have made certain that he was up to date with all of the heroes in town and had a way to neutralise them instead of just charging in and hoping to get lucky. It was the first time in a while that he had done little to no prep...and look what it was costing him. New rule: Never go in without contingency plans. He set off at a sudden, sharp sprint, kicking off of his dominant leg and gathering as much speed as he could as quickly as he could; he could go from 0-30mph in about three seconds - give or take half a second - and that's exactly what he did; he didn't have time to play with Tightpants and SuperMask any more...he needed to neutralise Fem-Bat and get his Target back. He angled himself towards the gap that SuperMask's movement had left, dashing towards the new opening...and not a moment too soon, it appeared; he felt a searing heat pass just behind his leg, apparently just missing its target...he glanced back in time to see a powerful red beam splitting through the fog before dying off.<em>Heat vision?!</em>Just who the hell was that Mask? He would have to seriously research him, and he would definitely not want to be around a full-powered version of him. Best to keep close to that device, in that case.<br/><br/>But he didn't have time to consider the implications of SuperMask's eerily familiar powerset; he had a Target to secure. He managed to run through the gap left by SuperMask, then angled around and pointed himself back towards the exit of the foyer, breaking out of the mass of smoke in a plume of fresh air, his vision clearing up in an instant. He grimaced; she was further away than he thought...he'd need to at least try to suppress Tightpants and SuperMask long enough to get a heads start. He was already up to speed and he<em>knew</em>that Tightpants couldn't match him in speed - whilst an experienced, world class sprinter might be able to, a gymnasts muscle structure was far, far different and trained different muscles in the body in different ways; a gymnast would never beat a dedicated sprinter in a race, full stop, unless they had super powers of their own - but better safe than sorry. Besides, at that point, he just wanted to cause Tightpants and SuperMask as much trouble as possible. Because of their distraction, he might just have lost his contract. He turned his body towards the plume of smoke - just about able to see Tightpants's silhouette in the smoke - and quick as a flash, pulled out the firearm at his waist. It was a custom built weapon able to fire high-calibre, high speed rounds of varying types - armour piercing, tracking, explosive, incendiary, shrapnel, etc etc - at the push of a button, able to fire in automatic, burst or single shot rhythms with an inbuilt silencer to boot. It was long, sleek and fairly minimalistic in a similar colour scheme to his own armour and with an extended magazine clipped to the front to give more ammunition to his attacks. It was a very nice piece of equipment, and one that he was very fond of...if not fond of<em>using.</em>It usually meant that he was attempting to kill somebody, and that always brought a whole boatload of problems with it. Still, he wasn't trying to kill Tightpants....just injure him seriously. He opened fire into the smoke cloud on automatic sending a full magazine of 40 bullets spraying into the smoke in little under a single second, before he reholstered his weapon. One of those bullets should have hit<em>something,</em>at the very least, especially since Tightpants was in the middle of his spray.<br/><br/>He turned his head, then, in time to see Fem-Bat almost reaching the exit of STAR Labs. She seemed momentarily confused by something, and he took his chance; he sprinted harder, tearing across the room towards her, shifting his staff from his left to his right hand, drawing it back and ready for a swing...she evidently avoided his first attempt to hit her, but his next attack wouldn't nearly be so wild. As he drew close, he launched himself into the air towards her, using his momentum to close the distance rapidly, twisting around in a corkscrew in midair to gain momentum. He swept around, bringing his staff down in a targeted arc right down on where she was standing....if she didn't move out of the way or block it, she would be in serious trouble. Hell, even if she blocked it, the energy pulse carried by the staff could very well have ended up knocking her off of her feet....especially with only one hand available to fight. If he could engage her properly before Tightpants and SuperMask arrived behind him, he might still have been able to get the Package and retreat...he just needed to be fast and efficient and stop playing around. Now? Now, it was serious. His contract was at stake, and he was not about to report a "Mission Failure" to his employer. Deathstroke didn't fail. It was as simple as that.