I Believe I Can Fly

[The next 2 chapters is for not uploading for the past 2 days]

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"I found her, Friday."

The glowing holographic screen in front of Charlie flickered as a girl's image came into focus. Her face, delicate and doll-like, was highlighted with a vibrant lock-frame that tracked every subtle shift in her expression. Beside her image, a bold message read, "Identify and match."

Batman's propulsion engines, still roaring from his high-speed pursuit, cut out immediately as the location lock confirmed. The momentum carried him forward through the air, his cape rippling in the wind. For a few moments, he glided like a silent shadow over the sleeping city. Then, just before reaching his destination, he folded his cape tightly against his body, entering a controlled dive.

The wind whipped past him as he plummeted down, freefalling with his cape tucked in, reducing drag to gain speed. The ground rushed up to meet him, but at the last moment, the cape snapped open, catching the air like a bat's wings, slowing his descent just enough for a seamless, silent landing in front of the girl in the black dress. His boots hit the pavement with a soft thud, barely a whisper in the quiet night.

"Target confirmation, sir," Friday's voice hummed through the comms, precise and unperturbed. "Facial recognition worked perfectly."

Charlie smirked behind the screen. "Seems like these old relics haven't caught up with modern tech yet. She probably has no idea what 'facial recognition' even means."

Indeed, the girl couldn't have known that the moment Batman's sensors recorded her face in the old building's corridor, the data had been fed into a citywide network of surveillance cameras. Friday's analysis had scoured footage from dozens of locations, tracking her movements across the city until the final pinpoint was complete.

Batman's silent landing took her by surprise. She stood still, her small, delicate frame framed by the decaying facades of the abandoned street, her dress fluttering in the breeze. Her eyes, large and shadowed beneath dark lashes, regarded him with an inscrutable expression.

She broke the silence first, her voice carrying a strange, hollow resonance. "You feel... different."

Charlie, observing from his station, tensed. It wasn't often that their adversaries spoke first.

"You are human, but not like others," Leila mused, her voice lilting with an eerie curiosity. Her gaze roamed over Batman's armored form, her eyes gleaming with a faint, unnatural light. "Your emotions are human—obsessively so. They burn inside you, much stronger than most. But unlike others, you possess the ability to shut them off, to ignore them entirely at will."

She tilted her head, her dark hair cascading over one shoulder as she studied him with an almost childlike curiosity. Above her, the shadows shifted as Batman's cape settled around him, his form blending into the darkness.

"No, humans don't work like that. At least, not as I understand them," she continued softly, more to herself than to him.

Her gaze lingered on the shadowy outline of the bat that loomed above, like a specter blending into the night sky.

"What... exactly are you?" she whispered, the question laced with a rare note of genuine wonder.

It was the kind of question Batman had heard countless times from criminals, victims, and even allies—yet there was something different in the way she asked it, as if the question itself held a weight far beyond mere curiosity.

The usual pre-recorded responses from his suit—gruff quips about "vengeance in the night" or being "the shadow that stalks the guilty"—didn't trigger this time. Instead, Charlie chose to respond directly through the mic, letting his voice carry through Batman's helmet.

"What are you?" he asked, his tone just as sharp, cutting through the tense night air.

"Me?" Leila's gaze drifted downward, as if seeing her own form for the first time. She studied her small, human-like body with an expression that bordered on detachment, her voice distant and tinged with something like melancholy.

"...I don't know."

Even as the last syllable left her lips, a shadow shot forth from beneath her dress—a tentacle, sinuous and dark, lashing out with lightning speed toward Batman.

But Charlie had anticipated such a move. His fingers were already poised over the controls, and the instant the attack warning flashed across his HUD, he triggered a side roll. Batman's armored form twisted with the fluidity of a serpent, evading the tendril by inches as it cracked the air where he had been standing.

No sooner had he completed the roll than the propulsion systems on his back roared to life. Blue flames burst from the exhaust ports, propelling him forward with a thunderous rush. Batman became a blur of black against the night sky, closing the distance between them in the blink of an eye, his fist cocked back for a devastating strike.

The power of the punch, enhanced by the strength of the suit's servos, would have shattered concrete. But Leila met the blow with an eerie calm. Her arm moved with a grace that defied logic, catching the strike in a sweeping motion, redirecting it harmlessly to the side. Despite her slight frame, she moved with the effortless fluidity of water, turning Batman's power against him.

Charlie's instincts kicked in, and he immediately had Batman raise an arm to block the expected counterstrike. Yet, even through the suit's enhanced strength, he felt the shock as her deceptively small body unleashed a force that sent him flying sideways. Batman crashed into the crumbling wall of an abandoned building, the bricks exploding outward from the impact.

A lesser human would have been crushed by the blow, but Batman used the momentum to his advantage, flipping midair. His cape crackled with energy as it stiffened, transforming into a pair of wings that snapped open with a sharp, echoing sound. The propulsion systems reignited, stabilizing his flight and allowing him to execute a high-arc somersault over Leila's head, landing behind her with a thud that reverberated through the alley.

He crouched low, sweeping out with a kick aimed directly at her calf—a strike powerful enough to topple a truck. But it had no effect. His reinforced boot met the girl's leg, but she absorbed the blow as though it were no more than a passing breeze. Without even turning to acknowledge him, another tentacle erupted from her back, its dark red hue contrasting sharply with the shadows. It whipped across the air and sent Batman hurtling back once more.

"Friday, why is this loli so damn strong?" Charlie grumbled through the comms, his fingers darting across the controls as he maneuvered Batman into a recovery roll.

"Preliminary scan results complete," Friday replied, her tone as precise as ever. "Her body structure appears to be composed of materials similar to the 'Tis shield.' Purity estimates suggest a composition nearing that of Lytos, the ancient entity you encountered earlier."

"Her entire body?" Charlie's mind reeled.

Even Commander Ross had only integrated portions of the Tis shield into his body as an external weapon. He still needed to manipulate the shield into physical forms for defense during combat.

But this girl didn't just wield the Tis shield—she was the Tis shield.

Charlie's thoughts raced as he pieced together the implications. Ross had once spoken of four others like Lytos—beings he called "the ancients."

Was Leila one of them?

But the ancients were supposed to be like Lytos—hulking, grotesque, their bodies twisted with inhuman appendages. Leila's appearance—delicate, human-like—seemed to contradict everything he'd learned.

"What do you think I am?" she said suddenly, as if reading his thoughts. Her voice was softer now, carrying a note of introspection. "Humans thought we were eternal. Some even worshiped us as gods.

But those were lies. They were always lies."

Her eyes glowed faintly as she spoke, their depths reflecting a strange, shifting light that seemed to dance like embers beneath water. Another pair of dark red tentacles shot out toward Batman, but he activated the thrusters on his back again, launching himself skyward with a burst of flame. His cloak spread wide like a shadowy bat's wings, and he twisted midair, evading the strikes by mere inches.

"...The irony is that even we began to believe those lies," she continued, her voice drifting through the darkness like a lament. "We thought we had found a way to live forever.

When our bodies died, we cast off the shells that imprisoned us. We entered a long slumber—sometimes centuries, sometimes only decades. But eventually, we awoke again..."

As Batman soared above her, he hurled a shock grenade down, aiming for a direct hit. But the device exploded harmlessly against the air, the arcs of electricity failing to disrupt her in the slightest.

"...Each time, we called it rebirth," she went on, her voice tinged with a sorrowful nostalgia. "But it wasn't true rebirth. We kept the memories of our past lives—of who we were, of what we could do. But those memories felt... borrowed, like they belonged to someone else."

Charlie clenched his jaw, focusing on the battle but unable to ignore the eeriness of her words.

But why was she sharing this with him? Was this a trick? A distraction?

Leila's voice dropped lower, taking on a haunting quality. "Of course, that wasn't the worst of it. Losing our identities with each rebirth was one thing. But what truly made us suffer was realizing that we had lost something vital...

...something we could never recover..."

Her eyes glowed brighter, the blue light reflecting off the shadows around her.

"Life. That's what we lost," she whispered, a note of quiet anguish creeping into her tone. "With each awakening, we become stronger... but inside, we are empty husks. We know, deep down, that we are already dead."

For a brief moment, her expression faltered, a flicker of sadness crossing her face. Her movements slowed, and in that instant, Batman seized the opportunity. He fired a grappling line, the reinforced fibers wrapping around her slender arms.

The thrusters roared to life again as Batman launched her skyward, swinging her above his head like a rag doll before slamming her down toward the pavement from over thirty feet up.

But instead of crashing into the ground, Leila arrested her fall with a burst of radiant energy. A pair of shimmering, multicolored wings unfurled from her back, glowing with ethereal light. She hovered in midair, her feet barely touching the ground as if suspended by invisible threads.

"It seems," she said, her voice echoing in the stillness as she hovered above Batman, "you're not the only one who can fly."