In the top-tier ward of Gotham Hospital, the former Nightwing, now known as Muhammad, was in a deep sleep. The Gotham outside the curtains was pitch black today, with only the moonlight providing illumination.
But the person on the hospital bed had no idea why he was here or why he was in this city. He was merely a taxi driver from Paris, not an American, nor anyone named Dick Grayson.
However, the day's experiences left him utterly exhausted. A group of various monsters had confined him in this ward, and there were guards stationed outside.
He was no match for those spandex-clad lunatics. Hungry and tired, his head continued to spin as if he'd been in a car accident.
This body was strong, but now it was his body, he couldn't just hand it back to those weirdos, could he? Fortunately, after he struggled and resisted vehemently, they gave up their torment and research on him, and he could finally sleep.
There were faint sounds outside the door, like a body being gently laid on the ground. Then, the ward's door was pushed open, and a tall figure walked in.
She wore high-heeled long boots with red bottoms and an orange and yellow tight outfit. Her full chest pushed the spider emblem into a fierce display.
The eyes beneath the mask glinted. She glanced at the fallen, unknown superhero in the hallway and gently closed the room's door.
She walked towards the bed with model-like steps, first checking the monitoring instruments to confirm Nightwing's health level. Then, she pulled a syringe from the small pouch bound to her thigh.
Facing the moonlight outside the window, she gently pushed the syringe, and a bit of green liquid emerged from the needle.
Inside the room, only the occasional beeping of the heart monitor could be heard. She suddenly jumped onto the bed, pinning Nightwing down and plunged the needle into his neck.
The driver, startled awake from his dream, wanted to struggle but found his limbs were beyond his control. Except for his eyeballs which could move normally, his body was stiff like a rusty machine.
A strange woman was straddling him, her face adorned with a mask resembling compound eyes. Although her figure was shapely, and her skin smooth, her tight outfit revealed her identity.
She looked down at him, smirking as she raised one corner of her mouth.
"Oh, little bird, I'm here to pick you up from school."
"Mmmmm!!!"
The driver wanted to ask, to speak, but his tongue wouldn't cooperate, and his jaw couldn't move.
"Relax, relax, you've been poisoned by me. I'll make sure to torment you well for the rest of the time..."
The woman placed her forefinger on his lips, slowly sliding it down, brushing past his chin, Adam's apple, chest, feeling his skin's texture as she moved downward in the darkness.
This should've been a pleasurable act, yet it made the driver roll his eyes because the woman's gloves were adorned with dagger-like nails, slicing through his hospital gown effortlessly like cutting through potato chips.
The woman licked the corner of her mouth with her tongue, laughing eerily as she continued.
At that moment, the ward's glass suddenly shattered. A silhouette flipped into the room, hanging upside down, accompanied by several fang-like darts thrown forward.
The woman who entered the room initially arched back to dodge the darts, then backflipped and landed on the ground.
The night breeze lifted the curtains, revealing the intruder's form: a young woman cloaked in a metallic-colored bodysuit, her face smeared with bronze paint.
The first woman flicked her hair back with a reverse hand move, drawing two daggers from a holster by her thigh, assuming a combat stance.
"Copperhead, you ambushed me?"
The woman who jumped through the window was not weakly intimidated. She leaped onto the ceiling like a beast, sticking there with anti-gravity-like ease.
"Aren't you the same? Wolf Spider, kidnapping Nightwing once wasn't enough? Now you're here again?"
"My personal habits are none of your business!" With her eyes narrowed, Wolf Spider instantly launched several toxic darts.
But they merely left a row of small holes on the ceiling, as Copperhead slithered through the gaps as if she had no bones.
"Don't be impulsive. There's someone in the city willing to pay a high price to borrow Nightwing, you can join us." Copperhead stuck out her tongue, hissing like a snake: "Maybe I can even help you film the process for you to savor slowly later on."
"Shut up! I'm nothing like you!"
Wolf Spider also leaped onto the ceiling, and the two women began to brawl, hanging upside down. One excelled in jujutsu, the other in freestyle fighting, evenly matched, with neither gaining the upper hand.
The patient on the bed couldn't even discern their movements, seeing only two lumps of black shadows in the dimness, hearing only whooshing sounds and the dull thuds of impacts.
After exchanging more than a dozen moves rapidly, Copperhead was flung away by Wolf Spider, but she quickly grasped the ceiling again, steadying herself.
"What's different? Oh, I'm a mercenary, and you're a super girl hero? Heh..."
"We don't have much time; Batman will soon arrive. How much did you get paid? I'll match it, or neither of us will leave."
Wolf Spider calmly rubbed her two daggers together, evenly coating them with a purple venom, much like a spider handling its fangs.
Copperhead stuck out her tongue, saliva dripping to the floor: "Honestly, cash is indeed more valuable than a promise, but I'm not trying to trouble you. It's because Nightwing is personally requested by Joker, and I can't afford to offend that lunatic."
Wolf Spider licked her lips, charging towards her adversary: "I won't hand him over to Joker; today, you'll learn that I'm not easy to deal with either!"
The two women began a new round of confrontation, daggers, claws, boots, two different colors of venom, leaving traces of carnage in the room.
However, after a brief all-out clash, Wolf Spider was scratched by Copperhead's nails, and Copperhead's skin was cut by Wolf Spider's poisoned dagger, both of them poisoned.
They fell to the ground, staggering due to the toxins, but Wolf Spider's physical condition was clearly better, or perhaps Copperhead's venom was taking effect more slowly.
Although she was seeing stars, with double vision wherever she looked, and her heart feeling like it was on fire.
She still retained the ability to move.
She staggered over to Copperhead, kicked her over, and began searching her belt for the antidote.
Typically, those skilled in using poison carry the antidote with them, in case they're accidentally scratched by their own poisoned weapons without the antidote, wouldn't that be suicide?
Many in Gotham are skilled in poison use, including Wolf Spider and Copperhead. In fact, they weren't strangers; on the contrary, one could say they were acquainted, as the circle of chemistry enthusiasts isn't large.
But in Gotham, the most adept at using poison is still Poison Ivy, whose venom doesn't harm herself, which is extremely convenient.
Upon finding the antidote, Wolf Spider first gave herself an injection, then, seeing Copperhead writhing in pain on the ground, took out her own antidote and injected her.
The antidote invented by Copperhead worked faster, while the antidote Wolf Spider administered to Copperhead was slower in taking effect.
But there was some effect; although Copperhead was weak and could only lie on the ground gasping, her life was no longer in danger.
Wolf Spider walked to the bed, wrapped the whimpering Nightwing in a bed sheet, slung him over her shoulder, and headed for the window, stopping by Copperhead to bid her a concerned farewell.
"Have you had your surgery?"
Copperhead sighed helplessly, lying in a motionless 'T' shape on the ground: "I haven't yet decided whether to go to South Korea or Thailand for it, and I haven't saved enough for the surgery fee."
Wolf Spider adjusted the burden on her shoulder, revealing a smile: "Then keep at it, remember, you owe me your life, you don't need me to teach you what to say to Batman, right?"
"Just get lost, you were still playing in the mud when I started out." Copperhead naturally knew what to say, but she wouldn't admit it out loud.
"Remember what you said."
Wolf Spider carried Nightwing, jumped out the window, ran along the wall to the ground, made a few quick moves, and disappeared into the roadside landscaping.
Having caught her prey, she naturally had to drag him back to her lair for a good time; Nightwing's robust physique had always been unforgettable to her.
And this time, the time had come again.
She was indeed a superhero, but she wasn't American; she was an immigrant from Africa, a Kamatu.
Every year during the Sweet Potato Festival, Kamatu women can capture men to spend the night, which is their cultural custom, and after the festival, she'll send Nightwing back.
And on regular days, she could even be considered extremely conservative, with a stark contrast in personality.
With the help of toxins, Nightwing wasn't her match, or perhaps he wasn't intending to resist, after all, Wolf Spider was very pretty, her skin not too dark, with a taste of a Latin beauty.
Anyway, he had never told Batman about this, just silently endured it himself, probably for almost five years now? It happened every year on this same day.
He couldn't cooperate; he had to put up some resistance, be knocked down by the poison, otherwise, it wouldn't count.
As for whether Batman knew of his experiences over these years, uh, hard to say... Batman didn't seem intent on stopping Wolf Spider, perhaps only thinking that young people tended to play a bit wild.
This year she planned to start the festivities early, so she arrived in the middle of the night, unexpectedly running into the Joker's men.
She didn't care what kind of trick the Joker was planning; she let Batman deal with it, as a second-line hero, why bother with such a racket when she could go home and enjoy Nightwing.
Ssss...
...................
Copperhead originally lay on the ground dumbly looking at the moon, the broken glass beneath her suit making her uncomfortable. She was a woman trapped in a man's body and had been saving money to become a true woman.
But Deathstroke and Death Shooter significantly squeezed her living space. Besides those two, there were a heap of various roles above her in the assassin rankings. In Gotham, her level could probably rank in the twenties?
Simply put, there was usually no business, just scraping by.
The Joker contacted her this time, being very generous, and the target was simply to capture the now dim-witted Nightwing, which seemed like easy money.
But after encountering the unexpected, Copperhead also calmed down, feeling that she might've been deceived, likely a deliberate setup by the Joker to get her captured by Batman, thus using her to convey certain matters to the Bat.
Batman was very suspicious, and the Joker would package these words wel, so that Batman would believe them because they were true in the first place.
The Joker really had returned and was preparing a big plan.
Just as she felt the numbness gradually subsiding from her body, a sharp-eared black shadow covered her moon, and a gigantic fist slammed down instantly.