<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 is forced by Spoilers attack to set Captain Tightpants down more "delicately" than he would have otherwise liked, but notices Batwoman at the last moment. Deciding to stop “playing around,” he launches into a fierce counter-attack flurry designed to negate any further threat from her.<br/><hr/><hr/><br/>Fortunately for Captain Tightpants, it appeared that his invisible ally - who had wisely remained concealed up until that point - had managed to gather the stones necessary to close the distance and reveal their presence. He heard them approaching, of course - they weren't even trying to be stealthy at that point - but given that he was at that point occupied with lifting Tightpants off the floor, there was nothing much he could do besides try and finish dealing with Tightpants before she reached them. Alas, even with his superior strength and speed, the Invisible Mask proved to be in much better shape than he had dared to hope and covered the relatively short distance in a good time - for a human, that was; it was nothing on his own speed - and from the sounds of her footsteps and her breathing, had even managed to flank him. Had he not been tied up with dealing with Tightpants, she would never have gotten that close, but that was the advantage of working in a well-drilled team...they always managed to cover each other when it mattered. Just as Deathstroke was about to power Tightpants down into the concrete again, the Invisible Mask - who, as she uncloaked, he realised was actually another female and (from his estimation based on height and body build) was actually surprisingly young (though he supposed he couldn't say anything about age; he joined the military when he was 16, after all) - materialised beside him. He heard the weapon as she uncoiled it, an exotic, unique weapon that he knew from experience was very difficult to control at times, even when he used it, and braced himself for the impact. With Tightpants on his shoulders, he couldn't do much regarding defences without risking losing even his considerable balance except simply brace himself for the attack that was bound to at least sting, even through the woven mesh of his join armour. Whilst also laced with woven Promethium, it was significantly thinner than his plate, and was the logical place to attack...if she was even halfway decent, she would target his knee to try and take him to the ground.<br/><br/>And, as it turned out, he was correct; even as he pushed his weight forwards to drive Tightpants down, he felt several sharp, stinging strikes to his knee that, despite the armour, forced him to bend his leg to best resist the obvious attempt at breaking his joint. If he locked his leg, the strikes would do far more damage than if he simply went with their momentum, and as good as he was, a broken bone was a broken bone and fighting four halfway skilled opponents with a broken bone? You were never going to win. Not even he fancied those chances. Of course, the sudden kneeling posture of his left leg took a sizeable portion of the force behind Tightpants descent away, and instead of crunching him down and hopefully knocking him out, Deathstroke ended up throwing him to the ground with about half of the intended force. Whilst more than enough to at<em>least</em>leave a series of nasty bruises and possibly break a bone or two, it was by no means a "killing blow." The concrete cracked again, though only to the same extent that it had when he had thrown Tightpants over his shoulder on his first attack. Given what he had seen, it was likely that after a brief "winded" period, he would be able to stagger to his feet again...though hopefully his acrobatic nonsense would be at an end. The thing about doing all those flips and handsprings was that you couldn't do them if every part of your core and upper body hurt like a bitch. At least, that's what he hoped. If the moron tried jumping on him again, he'd just put a bullet in his brain. If you tried the same used-and-countered tactic three times in a row, you obviously weren't smart enough to be allowed to reproduce. He pushed upwards on Tightpants legs and flipped them over from his shoulder, sending them sideways onto the ground heavily as his eye flickered over towards The Kid. She'd managed to flank him<em>and</em>successfully hit him...whilst it wasn't down to martial skill and more down to accurate positioning and timing...those were things that were even harder to learn. Skill, you could get. Intelligence and tactical awareness? A sizeable portion of that relied on spacial awareness and common sense, most of which came naturally. Or not, as the case may be. He found himself, surprisingly, somewhat impressed. Though young, she at least had potential.<br/><br/>Still, he had a job to do; even as he looked up, he could see from across the room that Fem-Bat had discovered....<em>something.</em>She hadn't leapt to the attack while he was distracted, though she could – he estimated – make up the distance rather quickly given her relatively high speed, instead opting to turn and retrieve...something...<em>Damnit!</em>He had let himself get distracted by the fight too much, and now his prize was almost out of his reach; if she so desired, she could run now and put him at a serious disadvantage in needing to get past the three other heroes to get to her...and then he would be attacked from behind by the three he left in the dust as he and Fem-bat fought over the device. His damn hubris had – for once – caught up with him and bit him in the ass. No matter...he would get the box back, then escape. He had played around enough, and it was time to start evening the odds. They thought he was good before? Now, he was serious. He needed to end this farce of a fight quickly, and that meant taking them down one on one. Hopefully, Tightpants was temporarily out of commission after that most recent drive into the floor – as weakened as it was, it was still plenty strong, after all – and he could – he assumed – take out The Kid quickly...and then he would just need to deal with SuperMask; that could be a problem, though he had already shown a susceptibility to unorthodox attacks...so perhaps instead of a pragmatic, simple attack, he could take him unawares by trying something flashy. Something to consider. Still...The Kid was the closest one to him, and she needed to go down first, before the others could come to her aid.<br/><br/>He tensed up slightly and, without further delay, launched into his counterattack before she could mount any further assaults. Pushing off of his now-bent left leg, he jumped up with surprising strength and speed and brought his right leg singing through the air in a jumping side-kick, designed to at least push her off balance as she avoided or parried it...but if it hit, so much the better. She was more stunned for what was to come next. He didn't put much power into it, of course - enough to stun her or stagger her, but not his full strength...if his full strength hit, he wouldn't be surprised if he ended up decapitating her outright. As he landed, he quickly brought his right leg down and stepped onto it, placing his weight onto that foot instead as his left leg - the one that had been struck - lashed out in a twisting back-kick, designed to push her back or make her double over or at least throw her off balance again. As his body turned to follow the leg back into a forward stance, he scooped down and snatched up his discarded Promethium staff, twisting it into a vertical grip as he brought it around and into his left hand, which pulled it back as his right hand thrust it upwards in a bottom-to-top arc, aimed directly at The Kid. He didn't let his momentum go to waste, however, using it to twist his body around, taking the end of the staff that had ended the previous motion pointed out behind him and using it to stab at the Kid from a reverse-facing back stance. Shifting his left leg - the one that was now closest to The Kid - forwards, he pushed his right leg back around in the opposite direction so he started to twist back the way he had come, twisting and spinning the staff as he went so that when he lashed out for the final time, it was the end that had directed a jab at her that arced around to strike towards her body, hopefully being the closing strike that put a lid on her involvement in the fight. He turned his head to the side slightly to keep all of the heroes in his field of vision...divide and conquer. A well-oiled team was tough to take down together, so he needed to neutralise them individually, if at all possible.<br/><br/>Of course, everything had moved a little too quickly for even him to actually see which strikes had missed, hit or been parried - the entire counterattack had taken only a handful of seconds - but if she was still standing at the end of this flurry, he would be surprised. Then again...this fight had been full of surprises, so who knew? He hadn't initially expected Tightpants to get up from being flipped over his shoulder, but he had. Who knew how durable these heroes were? He'd have to do some research if he ever came to Gotham again...he wouldn't want to run across these four a second time without knowing exactly who he was dealing with, especially since they were likely to go home after this fight and try to figure out who he was as well. Well...if he could take even one of these combatants out of the fight, perhaps it would force the others to withdraw. Or maybe they'd fight harder to avenge their fallen comrade...either or. Masks that he didn't know were always so unpredictable. It made him a little twitchy when he wasn't certain what was going to happen...but it also invigorated him as well. He liked not knowing, being uncertain, having to try to predict the unexpected...it kept him on his toes, that's for certain, and he could always use the practice in improvising and thinking on the fly. Of course, he would have preferred to do that with the Cube fixed to his back; it was exactly that rush that had endangered his contract, and that was not a good thing. He just needed to make sure that not doing his homework properly and then deciding to show off didn't cost him that job, or he would be most unhappy. Unforeseen circumstances were all good and exciting, but he had a job to do...and he had to make sure that it got done.