Don't Look Away update

Tim came up with the plan, but to Steph’s gratification, she had known him long enough to be able to predict the broad strokes. He would break into Coach Bannon’s office and search it for clues. Steph would stand guard; if he came back, she would distract him, easily being the most distracting member of their party. Cass would stay in reserve, invisible as usual, to step in if Bannon got suspicious and tried to hurt Steph.

Of course, things didn’t go according to plan. Bannon came back while Tim was still combing through the office. The coach was a big man, muscular, but not in a way anyone would find attractive. He was crammed with muscles the same way a sausage would be overstuffed, crisscrossing veins showing on his bulging muscles like he was in a perpetual Hulk Smash rage.

Steph placed herself in his way as he made for his office. “Hey, Coach Bannon?”

Bannon stopped, looking at Steph with the mild irritation that he seemed to reserve for anything that pulled him away from exactly what he wanted to do for more than a split-second. “Yes, what is it?”

“It’s about my fitness, sir. I’ve been working out a lot lately—weightlifting and squats and jogging, of course, but I haven’t noticed any gains. You have a lot of muscles; what’s your exercise routine?”

Taken off-guard by the flattery, Bannon’s irritation softened into a self-satisfied recital of his astonishing level of fitness. Like a lot of guys, Bannon was a sterling conversationalist when it came to protein shakes and numbers of reps. Steph listened with a convincing simulation of fascination. It made about as much sense to her as Tim’s forensics skills, or Cass in general, so her skills at pretending to follow along were well-honed.

But her false enthusiasm was too fawning. Whoever Bannon was, he had a sixth sense worthy of Cass, at least when it came to bullshit. His words fell off as his face screwed up, eying Steph with the suspicion of a bloodhound on a scent. “You work out? How much do you bench?”

“Uhh… Pounds or kilograms?”

His face contorted further, until it looked like the bunched muscles of his jaw and the erect veins of his neck were somehow pulling at his features, drawing the skin taut, almost ripping it from bone and tendon. His rage was returning, now fuming over having been lied to. “Are you making fun of me? I can write you up for that! Students are to maintain a respectful and decorous attitude towards the faculty at all times!”

“Did Brenda Jackson maintain a respectful and decorous attitude at all times?” Steph asked. It was a swing in the dark, but she’d always had a knack for knowing just how to piss people off.

Bannon went apoplectic. His eyes bulged. His veins stood out from his neck like garden hoses with the tap switched on. Teeth grinded together like an industrial rock crusher. “Come with me,” Bannon demanded, grabbing her forearm with such force it was like Steph had shoved it under a speeding car. “We’re going to see the principal. We’ll see what he has to say about this attitude.”

An instinct for danger immediately told Steph that he wasn’t taking her anywhere near the principal. She struck at his clenched hand, buying enough slack to wrench her own arm away from him. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”

Bannon’s anger reached the point of coldness, just a blowtorch flame turning blue instead of red. “Did you just strike me? A teacher? A member of the faculty?”

“Uh… Help?” Steph called. “Little help?”

He stomped toward her, so tall and broad that she could’ve laid down on him like a bed, full-length, and Steph involuntarily took a few steps back. The way he held himself, the way he moved, he knew how to fight, not that he needed to when he had that much reach and that much muscle. Steph wasn’t Cass. She didn’t have a chainsaw. She couldn’t cut down a tree.

“Help!” Steph cried, wondering what could’ve possibly been taking Cass so long.

Bannon brought his knotted fists up high into the air, like an ape about to crush something to jelly, and Steph froze, deer in the headlights, wondering how she could possibly take down a guy so big. She told herself she would’ve moved, would’ve struck first, but suddenly there was a pop of displaced air, a sound of something rushing through empty space—an entire blustery day compressed into a few seconds. Then there Linda was, standing between her and Bannon, holding Bannon’s wrists in her tiny hand and easily keeping him in check. It was like seeing a hundred-pound weight held up by a shoelace.

There was nothing human at all about Bannon’s reaction. Confused past the point of comprehension, his anger only grew, becoming a raw, animalistic kind of blunt denial. He roared as if challenging the sheer fact of what was happening. Without even a grunt of effort, Linda tossed him to the side. He smacked resoundingly into the wall and dropped down to the floor. Groaning, Bannon lifted himself up, but Cass was there, almost as suddenly as Linda had been, striking his thick neck and leaving him senseless. And she was, if anything, lighter and thinner than Steph…

Not that Linda was any heifer either. “How did you do that?” Steph asked her, torn between befuddlement and a certain fangirling. The Bat in her insisted she should be mucho suspicious, but a part of her was also sharply proud of what Linda had gone. “Are you a meta? I’m totally cool with you being a meta.”

“I, uh—“ With the threat ended, and Cass’s doing it seeming just as confusing to Linda as her actions were to the rest of them, Linda was just as confused as anyone. “I’m not a metahuman. That was, uh—leverage.”

“Leverage?”

“Tai chi,” Linda said confidently.

“No,” Cass said. “Bull… shit.”

“Cass,” Steph cried. “Don’t be rude! She saved me.”

Cass’s brow furrowed, eyebrows stitched almost as peevishly as Bannon had gotten. “Not human,” she said to Steph, as if telling a dog she wouldn’t let him have chocolate, and then her hand lashed out, striking Linda. Linda’s hair waved with the force of the blow, but otherwise she didn’t move. There was even a gonging sound of impact emphasizing the lack of reaction. “See?” Cass gave Linda another strike that Steph had seen breaking apart cement blocks.

“Quit it,” Linda said irritably, stepping away from Cass.

Tim picked then to come out of Bannon’s office. “What’s going on?” He saw Linda. “What’s she doing here?” He saw Bannon. “Who did that?”

“I did,” Cass said proudly.

“I helped!” Linda argued.

Tim scrutinized her. “Supergirl?”

Steph broke out into a furious stream of verbiage, Linda filled the air with denial, and even Cass seemed to be on the verge of gesturing when Tim quieted them all with a sharp, Batman-y look. “Linda, pick Bannon up. Steph, Cass, keep quiet. We need to go somewhere quiet.” He held up a folder. “The coach had files on all the missing girls.”

***

Two minutes later, they were skirting the edges of the school, walking to one of the private little recesses that would hopefully be deserted during school hours. Linda hefted Bannon’s huge, unconscious body like it was papier-mâché. As if self-conscious about that, she was in a rush to explain. 

“I wanted to go to a normal school and have a normal life. But it wasn’t like I wanted to stop helping people or anything. I figured if I was in Gotham, then I could learn about biology and maybe stop any crimes I happened to see going on.”

“That is so smart!” Steph enthused. Cass made a digestive sound.

“Can we focus, please?” Tim said. “Just because we have our guy doesn’t mean we know where the girls are. We need to make him talk.”

***

A hundred feet out from the school, a disused sewage drain jutted out into a dried ravine. They carried Bannon inside it, through the winding pipe, now only used by animals and the occasional homeless person. Stopping where the pipe widened into a junction, Tim produced nylon cord from nowhere and bound Bannon hand and foot. He also used his cell phone to scan Bannon’s fingerprints. It didn’t take long to get a match.

“Lyle Bolton,” he announced. “Alias Lock-Up. You can buy a new face, but you can’t afford new fingerprints.”

With some animal instinct, Bolton came around under the weight of their scrutiny. Groggy, blinking, his lips working in a bleary roil, he eyed Tim, then Cass, then Steph. “You… just like all the others. Disobedient. Ungrateful. Little shits--!”

Tim rapped him on the head, a brisk chop of two joined fingers. He stayed out of Bolton’s field of vision, leaving himself just a voice. “Lock-Up. I thought you wanted to put all of Gotham’s criminals in a hole in the ground. What are you doing teaching PE?”

Bolton sneered, shaking his head sluggishly. “Gotham’s too far gone… too many criminals… have to wait for them to die out… make sure the new generation doesn’t have criminal scum infesting it… these stupid little girls… just waiting to be criminals. Shoplifting! Talking back!”

Another strike from Tim stung his ear. “Where are they?”

“You wanna put them back in school? Might as well drop piranhas in a swimming pool. I won’t talk. I’ll die first!”

Tim mercilessly slugged Bolton, knocking him out but needing more force than Cass had used. Steph still noted the Asian nodding with approval.

“We’ll let Batman interrogate him,” Tim said. “If it comes to that. Knowing it’s Bolton narrows the field considerably. He could only have so many resources. If he’s stowed the girls somewhere, they’re probably nearby.” He eyed Linda with misgivings. “As long as you’re here, can you hear anything, see anything?”

Linda shook her head sadly. “There’s a lot of lead around here. Like, so much lead. It explains a lot, really…”

“Then take Bolton to Batman. I’ll conduct a search of campus. Steph, Cass, you go look in on the Penguin.”

“The Penguin?” Steph asked. “Seriously?”

“This is his place. If anyone knows where the hiding places are, it’ll be him. Get it out of him and radio the coordinates in to me. And be quick about it. Who knows how long the girls have with Bolton out of commission.”