Issue #14: Rime Of The First Winter

'To understand what I'm about to say, you have to believe in the impossible. A haughty little bugger just got teleportation powers!'

My hands are still shaking from standing atop death's door and ringing his doorbell. The large swathes of oxygen entering my lungs helps, but that could have gotten worse than I could have anticipated.

It was right there in front of me. All the clues were leading to that damnable mad scientist. The fact that Samantha was working for DARPA in Antarctica and her work on that human corpse.

It was stupid. No, it was idiotic of me not to realize that we would be battling one of Batman's more dangerous foes. 

I know they're synonyms, but having more syllables feels like it's more severe.

Anyway, we're not out of the woods yet because, for reasons beyond me, Mr. Freeze is right behind our trail in what appears to be an icy blue truck with a curved roof. It has five pentagonal lances that look just like miniature drills attached to the front of the truck. 'Like the one they used for the trapped Chilean miners.'

I remember watching it with my mother and I loved it because who doesn't love Antonio Banderas.

"Another one!" The prostitute's shriek snaps me out of my reverie as the van swerves and takes a hard right, enabling us to dodge the frigid beam of cold energy that Mr. Freeze has fired from the large cannon-like turret atop the truck's cabin.

Hectic as it is with Olgar driving like a madman, the prostitute being our look-out, Dick handling the map as to not drive into a dead-end, and with Samantha holding onto dear life, I can not help but feel at peace.

Sure, any moment now we could be frozen into a globe of glacier with our only solitary companion being the warm embrace of death, but there is something within me that is keeping me calm.

I couldn't even feel the sweat dampening my forehead mask, so did my slightly rising heartbeat. Even my stomach feels weak, grumbling while we are in a high-stakes situation.

"Uh, guys. I don't feel so good." I mumble, patting my head in a vain attempt to wipe away the wetness.

"Focus up, Sparrow!" Olgar suddenly yells. "There's a murderer on our tail and he just let loose another goddamn thing!"

As I train my gaze towards the ice truck, the central drill suddenly rotates as if coming to life before it shoots towards us with a trail of flames on its tail.

Before I could even say, "What?" The missile is right on our tail, moments away from breaking the glass panel and my skull. It's then that the world slowed to a crawl. Just like the last time it happened, information processed by my brain quadrupled in speed. The missile touches the glass, breaking it in slow motion. But before it could completely enter our van, my hands were already up with my palms facing straight.

A line in the center of the very space appeared before me, opening up its electrifying maw and allowing me to view into the dark space beneath reality. I already know what needs to happen next as my eyes scanned the road before me and picked one building that is closest to Mr. Freeze's truck.

Another portal appears on the front of the building, its hole matching the view of the missile, breaking through the glass panel and entering our van before its entire length disappears inside of the portal. 

The missile slips through the secondary portal and misses the fucking truck.

"What the fu–arugh!" I couldn't even complete my curse when the bile rose up in my mouth and ejected itself out of my body.

I can feel the portal closing and, with it, any sense of comfortability as pain assaults my body, agony firing up my nerves as bile, blood, my last meal continuously crawls out of my mouth.

"Shit! Another one, Sparrow!" Olgar's voice brings me to tears.

Still, I wipe away the remnants of my dignity as I grab hold of anything to keep me steady. My eyes catch the sight of the cold energy running through the truck's ice cannon.

"I-I don't t-think…" It takes all my concentration to not vomit once more. My head, once a tapestry of evaporation, is now completely soaked with perspiration.

Yet, time and time again, the moment Mr. Freeze fires an ice beam at us, the world slows to a crawl, which allows me to scan the surroundings with haste. I can feel the gnawing inside of my body, signaling me with this indescribable sensation that enough is enough. I could no longer control what was about to happen.

With what I fear being my last bit of energy being sucked into a funnel of space and gravity, a portal, small enough to fit inside of my palms, emerges a meter away from me and stands at the path of the beam. Before I can make the secondary portal, the beam hit the void in the middle of the eye.

The beam coats the portal in ice as it hovers in the air before it cracks in response to the massive amount of energy released by the portal, collapsing in on its own as I cut off its supply.

Once the ice melts, the resulting hit of air caused an explosion that sends Mr. Freeze's truck flying into the air and ridding us of our pursuer.

Robin gasps at the sight, exclaiming loudly, "Holy shi–"

Before he can finish his expletive, however, the explosion continues on towards us. Its speed matching and accelerating at a pace I can't even calculate.

For a brief moment, a red-hot blaze engulfs the van with its fiery embrace as my body floats in the air before bouncing up and down the van like a rag doll in a test facility. My ears, ringing from the blunt damage of hitting it repeatedly against the ceiling of the van, can only hear the echoes of my companion's dreadful screams of the van, now bereft of its momentum, settle upon the sidewalk.

My ears were still ringing, eyes blurry from the blood and sweat that drips from my forehead, when darkness welcomed me with its icy embrace.

•••

From what I understand of superhero physics, it should have just disappeared like the last two times I did it. Unfortunately for us, the reaction between the ice beam and my portal caused an explosion that rocked our world. That was a very dangerous thing to do, even now I can still hear their deathly screams and cries.

'Actually, it is weird how it feels like they are still doing it.'

I try to open my heavy eyes; the colors spreading to my blurry surroundings. Although it has subsided greatly, the ringing in my ears is still a pain in the ass, especially when my other senses are topsy-turvy. 

"Duck!"

"Smoke Bo-augh!"

"Brat! Olgar, we need-chk…"

"Fuck! Я з'ем тваё сэрца і зраблю тушонку з тваіх костак!"

The sounds of battle reverberate louder once I remove myself from the destroyed van. Heavy smoke and flaming rubble has engulfed the destroyed street, intermittently interrupted by an icy beam and a hail of gunfire.

As my eyes grow accustom to the heavy smoke, I catch the sight of Valentine frozen from the waist-down, Samantha hidden behind a trash can and engulfed in a glacier, and Robin's left arm covered in thick blue ice as he crawls towards Valentine before another beam hit her torso.

I don't even know what to do. My friend is crawling to his death, our damsel-in-distress is already dead, the prostitute's moments away from hypothermic death, and Olgar is so angry that he just lost the moment to escape relatively unharmed.

My stomach is gnawing at me, as if I've been starving for weeks. Blood dripped from every part of my body. Pain coursing through every nerve and every step. For a second, I swear, I can hear mad laughter ringing alongside the blood in my ears. I guess it was stupid of me to think that we could handle Gotham's criminals.

My ego merely extended Samantha's time on Earth for a few minutes and I just added the deaths of my closest friends and one prostitute.

"Man, you all look like crap!"

The voice startled me, earning my attention amidst the storm brewing within my body. As I turn around to see whoever said that, my eyes witness a red and yellow blur go past my sight. The wind blasts forth like a cannon, making me stumble back a few steps and on to my ass.

The blur flits from one person to the next, removing them from the battlefield and onto the curbside on the other side of the street. When it's my turn to be carried, a groan escapes out of me as the Flash's face nears my own.

"Hey, are you hungry?" He asks, the scenery changing from a choking environment to that of normal Gotham smoke. He then takes out a nondescript bar out of his belt and gives it to me. "Eat that. It's like two million calories, so just one bite!"

With that, he was gone.

"Dude, w-was that the Flash?" Robin asks me, his arm now bereft of the ice that had threatened to kill him.

Before I can answer, a familiar voice from echoes behind us. "I'm disappointed with you."

We turn to the alleyway as Batman reveals himself to us with a terrifying glare. I cower under his shadow as it looms over me with a judgemental light.

"S-sorry…" Dick tries to apologize, but Batman merely walks past him and the rest of us.

A blast of wind hit our bodies as Flash places Olgar's bloodied and ice-blue form next to Samantha's glacier. The man's face, although hidden behind the cowl, is set with a grim contemplation.

Flash gazes towards the others, checking their vitals and condition through his eyes before fixing it towards Batman's form. "The big man and the kids can tough it through for a few hours, but the ladies aren't gonna make it soon. Especially the one in the glacier. I'm gonna give her to Star Labs since it has a department specializing in cryogenics. Any hospitals around for the others?"

The Flash spoke weirdly fast, as if he's out of breath, but, at the same time, it's like he's speaking normally.

"Gotham Central for the two. Take the kids to the base. I've already patched the coordinates in your GPS. Come back as soon as possible." Batman replies unhurriedly as he stares down Mr. Freeze.

The Flash shrugs his shoulders, carrying Olgar and Valentine on each of his hands and leaving us in the dust for a few seconds.

Honestly, I couldn't even lift my head to look at what Batman is doing. The pain and hunger swirling around me in the void of chaos, so much so that every sound feels like it's made from inside of a tunnel.

I could hear Robin protesting, his shouts louder than ever, "Wait! N-n-no, no, no, we can help–"

Unfortunately for him, Flash returns as soon as he left and grabs both of us as we dash off towards Wayne Manor. I didn't see when we came home, only feeling the warmth of the couch and the fireplace. The flames relinquish the cold of its control over my body as darkness creeps up to me and takes me into its fold.

•••

"Well, look who came to play?" Freeze's voice grates on my nerves. "The Bat."

I resist the urge to grunt, as the pain from the earlier fight against the Appelexian invasion pulses in my veins.

"I don't have time for this, Freeze." I say, stepping closer towards him. "Since you didn't kill any of them, I will give you a chance to surrender. Throw away your gun and put your hands behind your back."

I can fight him to a standstill–of course, I could–but that would be detrimental to my failing physical health. Plus, the speedster would be here any minute now and his help, no matter how obnoxious, could end this farce quickly.

"Ja! If I don't?" His voice slithers past my bleeding ears, hidden only by my cowl.

He must have noticed how out-of-place and empty my armor is as the grin inside of his oval glass helmet grew bigger. Freeze would have done wonders of medical science, if not for his obsession over his wife's death. Not that I can fault him, it was clear to me, even from the get-go, that rehabilitating him to use his intellect and experience for the greater good would be an uphill battle. 

'But who am I to resist a good fight?'

I throw a smoke bomb in front of me, just as a freeze beam is released from his gun. My body naturally evaded the shot, but not without accruing further wounds. Every step feels like a jog as I use the thick smoke in the surrounding to circle around Freeze's form.

As I pass the destroyed upturned van, I take out my last two Batarangs and throw one at Freeze while the other next to him. Freeze blows the first one into ice fragments, but the second one strikes the asphalt near him and releases a pink bubblegum-like mold that rapidly decompresses when it's been hit by the oxygen in the air.

Superman thought that it was like the Elephant toothpaste that he used to make when he was a kid, but, no. This thing is far more dangerous and rapid in its assertion to expand, going so far as to stick to whatever is near it.

In this case: Freeze himself.

"Bubble-what? Oh, I see," Freeze's innate physiology is resisting the effects of the mold, but that's fine for it's merely a distraction as I run towards him and place a momentous knee to his stomach.

His body stumbles onto the ground, cracks appearing on his glass helmet. Despite my injuries and his unique physiology substantially mitigating the blow, it still managed to knock the wind out of him. I take out my grappling gun and fire at his Freeze Gun, knocking it out of his hand and disabling his long-range attack.

"You arrogant–" I remove my cape from my armor and leap towards Freeze as he tries to stand up, only for my body to bear against his back. 

Using the memory cloth cape to withstand his freezing ability, I pummeled Freeze until I could not feel him resist anymore. I jump away; the cape ridden with rime and frost. Being unconscious, his body's ability to produce bone-freezing ice halts, which would make carrying his body more agreeable.

"Hey, you done?" The speedster's voice echoes beside me. It takes every fiber of my willpower not to elbow him in reflex.

"Yes. Take him to the police station. Ask for Lieutenant Gordon." I order.

He seems perplexed as he looks at me. "I'm not your-"

I glare at him.

"Jeez, fine. What are you gonna do while I do the dirty work?" He asks the obvious.

"I'm going to scold some kids."

•••

I awoke in inky darkness.

No sounds could be heard, save for the beats of my heart and the breaths I take.

I stand over a pool of jet-black water. No, not water, but something more viscous yet runny. The water does not make me wet, nor does it dampen my clothing.

Is it really water? I guess not.

I turned my head around, looking for any sense of familiarity but found none. At least in a physical sense. After all that head bumps and fainting in the past few months, I guess it was due time that I get familiar with the darkness that is always welcoming me.

"Hello!" I say into the void, expecting nothing to shout back.

"Hey, kid!" My skin shuddered when the voice reached my ears. My instincts take over as I dive into the pool of inky liquid in a futile attempt of escaping whomever is behind me.

"Whoa, nice reflex, kid." The voice praised.

I lock eyes with the voice, a man–maybe early 30's–looking at me with warmth and hints of acceptance.

I raise my arm and inquire, "Who are you?"

He just smiles at me.

"Oh, you've gone deaf, now, huh?" I click my tongue at him. "C'mon, man. Are you some kind of interdimensional being? Wait… Bat-mite?"

The man guffaws, quite loudly at that. He wipes away the tear on his left eye as he shakes his head. "No, I'm, uh, I'm no whoever that is. Wait, maybe with this, you can guess."

A black line appears before him, one that encompasses his whole length. It opens up to a view of my back as the man enters the familiar portal and taps my shoulder in mirthful exuberance.

My body just stood still the moment he did. The memories of my recent misadventure with Mr. Freeze overlapped that of the resurfaced memories when I gazed at the caged man which the Court of Owls took the blood from.

"You… you're a soul within me?" My mouth was trembling when I spoke my words. My hair is turning upwards–not in fear, mind you–but in something else. A more primal emotion.

The man introduces himself with a smile. "I'm a metahuman. Name's Jake Sandurksy. I can generate short-range portals. Nice to finally meet you!"