Love Birds

Chapter Fifty Two

-Athena's POV-

I took a running start and launched my foot into one of the many punching bags I had. It swung back violently, forcing me to duck before hitting another punch. Once again, it swung out of my range. I rolled my eyes and spun around, my ankle hitting the bag very hard. The bag rolled back, snapping the chain that held it and falling to the floor. I swaggered over to the broken bag, tossed it over my shoulder, and put it with the stack of other punching bags that fell off.

It had been nearly a month since my identity had been revealed. All I ever really could do during the day was train. For the majority of the day, I worked on techniques and made sure all my skills were still refined. With the spike in training, I had gotten stronger to the point of where I was almost in the same physical condition I was on Honor Island. I made a mental note to get a three hundred pound punching bag instead of the 150 pound ones I kept breaking.

"Search complete," my computer alerted, snapping my attention away from the beam of wood I was destroying with my katana. I sat down in front of my computer and opened up the file.

Recently, I had decided to start doing what was probably more hero work than anything else. I occasionally took out Black Sharks members -- the ones Batman hadn't tracked down and tried to bait me with -- but I mostly was keeping tabs on the people who I had known. The more I had been forced to think of my past, the more names that came to my mind. I had trained with bad people and glazed over even worse people. Through my time, I had met evil people but I ignored them. Now, it was my time to erase them.

Matter of fact, getting rid of people from my past was much more of a bigger decision than just going after bad people I worked with. I had decided to sever all ties I ever had in my past. Of course I would finish my mission, but not for Ra's Al Ghul, for my parents. Then, I would leave that whole life in the past. My time in Gotham -- even if it had been just a year -- gave me more clarity than almost ten years as an assassin. I was anxious to leave my past behind. I knew it wouldn't be easy to tell Ra's I didn't want to be with the League of Assassins anymore, but I knew I would have to try.

I slipped on my Nightingale costume and risked going into Gotham during the day. Dick would be busy on the Team, Tim would be at school, and Bruce at work -- but I wasn't scared of them. I was more scared that Alfred would track me down. Even though I knew Dick wouldn't forgive me, that didn't mean that the Bat Family wasn't hard at work trying to track me down. Any potential targets I wanted to go after, Batman would round them up and put them in a monitored custody area. There were motion-tracking cameras littered around Gotham designed to pick up my specific body movements. Not to mention, Bruce hung out on the top floor of Wayne Tower. The giant windows gave him access to all of Gotham so I couldn't travel via grapple during the day. However, when night came, it was surprisingly easier to escape. My costume was designed for stealth during the night and the Family was too busy doing work to be looking for me.

My motorcycle rode through Gotham, far too quickly for any cameras to pick up my body. My target -- a weapon maker named Johnny who provided guns to Honor Island -- was taking a vacation in the outskirts of Gotham. He was always on the down-low which meant the Bat wouldn't even know he was here. Apparently, he was going to make a deal with Black Mask. I was going to stop it.

I climbed the side of a nearby building and peered into a pair of binoculars. Black Mask sat at his desk, Johnny displaying all his new gear. There were bombs on the desk with bodyguards holding long sniper guns. Smirking, I reached for my sniper. When my fingers met air, I realized I had forgotten to bring it. Shit, I thought, looks like I'm taking him to the cops.

I swung over to the building and hid behind the metal edge on the window. Out of my utility belt, I plucked out a tiny grenade and attached it to the window. It exploded, causing rubble and smoke to temporarily blind everyone inside.