DC – I am Batman

The arena had been swept. Someone had been out here before dawn with a broom, working the dust into parallel lines near the edges, and the lines stopped about six feet from center where the stone was too worn and too old to hold anything. The floor was smooth from decades of people fighting on it, the surface dipped faintly in the middle where the most feet had landed.

Open ceiling, natural rock walls on three sides, seating carved into the stone in tiers. The fourth side was open to the valley and the morning air came through cold and thin. It smelled like altitude. The sun hadn't cleared the eastern ridge yet and the arena was in shadow.

Full gallery. Thirty students on the lower tiers. A handful of instructors above them. Ra's in the center of the top row, alone, hands on his knees. Talia two rows below, in armor, braid pinned with all six pins. She'd looked at him when he entered. Once. Brief. Her mouth tight.

Shiva was already on the floor.

Red bodysuit. Hands unwrapped. Short black hair pushed back. She stood in the center of the arena without a stance, hands at her sides, weight even. The students on the nearest tier had left the first two rows empty.

"Eight months," she said. "Show me what they bought."

He stepped onto the floor. The stone was cool through the wraps on his feet. He rolled his shoulders. The right trapezius was still pulling from the week and from Talia's shoulder and from sleeping wrong and it was going to be a problem and Shiva was going to find it inside thirty seconds because that was what she did.

She waited. He moved first. She'd taught him that. First motion was chosen data. Waiting let her accumulate from stillness.

Jab to test range. She slipped it by a half-inch, didn't counter. Reading. His cross came and she deflected it with her forearm, minimal effort, and his front kick was already committed and she checked it and gave back a straight right that rang through his forearm into his elbow.

Seventy percent. He kept himself there. Enough to show growth, controlled enough to not show everything.

Eight months ago the first exchange had lasted about forty seconds before she put him down. Forty seconds against the best fighter alive.

Now he was reading her. The cascade. Micro-tension in the left shoulder before a combination. Hip loading before the kick. The breathing pattern that preceded escalation. Three short exhales and then the gear changed.

She threw a hook designed to pull his guard left. The straight right behind it was aimed at his liver. He rotated his torso and the right glanced off his oblique instead of sinking in. It still hurt. His side lit up and his breath caught and his feet stayed planted.

Two minutes. Breathing hard. She wasn't.

She threw a low kick at his lead thigh. He checked it and used the momentum for a counter, a straight right aimed at her floating ribs, and it was fast and the angle was good and his knuckles brushed fabric before she redirected.

Her eyes changed. He'd grazed her. The shift took about a quarter of a second and then she was somewhere else.

Speed doubled.

Three-layer combination. Lead hand feint that became a real jab that masked an elbow. He blocked the jab and the elbow caught him above the ear. White spike through his vision. He backed up, feet moving, guard tight. She pressed. Two kicks, low and mid, a spinning backfist he ducked under by inches. Wind across his hair.

Four minutes. His lungs burning, forearms aching from the blocking, the spot above his ear throbbing with his pulse. She was faster than him. Had always been faster. The cascade let him read what was coming but his body couldn't always close the distance between knowing and getting there.

Except his body was doing things it shouldn't.

He slipped a jab and his counter came from an angle he hadn't planned. Faster than the setup allowed. His hip rotated before the thought finished assembling. The counter missed but it was close and the speed of it surprised both of them.

She threw a hook and he caught it on his forearm and his arm held. The impact should have buckled his guard. Denser. The same density Talia had found with her hands on his chest in the dark. His forearm absorbed the hook and his feet stayed planted and for half a second they stood there, his block eating her force, and neither moved.

She broke the clinch. Reset.

Six minutes. He wiped blood from above his ear. Scalp wound, shallow, running into his eyebrow. His ribs ached on the left side. His forearms were swelling. The morning air was cold on the sweat across his back and his breath was loud in his own ears.

She came again. Faster. Combinations nesting inside combinations, three moves setting up three more setting up three more. He blocked the first layer, dodged the second. The third caught him.

Open palm to the sternum. Same stop she'd used the first day. Same hand. Same precise force. Except this time it took her eight minutes to find the opening.

He went backward. Hit the floor. The stone was cold on his back and his lungs stopped working for about three seconds and the ceiling was open sky, blue, with a bird crossing it heading east.

Eight minutes.

The gallery was silent.

He was looking at the sky. The bird was gone. A muscle in his left side was spasming and his ribs felt like they'd been squeezed in a vise and the sweat was cooling on his skin and his heartbeat was in his ears and in the cut above his ear and in the bruise forming on his oblique.

Shiva walked past him. Toward the gallery. She was looking at Ra's.

"His technique has improved proportionally to the training investment. That was expected."

Her voice carried. Every student in the gallery heard her.

"What was not expected is his body compensating for a speed deficit it should not compensate for. He blocked a strike that should have overwhelmed his guard. He generated counter-speed his muscle development doesn't support." She paused. He was still on the floor. Stone cold and gritty under his palms. "His body is doing something his mind hasn't caught up to."

Ra's didn't move. His hands on his knees. Face still.

Talia's jaw had locked. The tendon in her neck was showing from across the arena. Shiva had just broadcast the thing Talia had been sitting on. The density she'd logged in private, the healing she'd noticed, the data she'd kept close.

He sat up. Grit under his palms. The cut above his ear had stopped bleeding already. His ribs were going to be a problem for a few days. His forearms were puffy and hot.

"Stay."

Shiva crossed back to him. Knelt. Clinical. Her hands went to his left side where the hook had connected. She pressed along the ribs with her thumb, checking for fracture. No break. Deep bruise, already discoloring through the skin.

Her thumb moved up. Along the ribcage, across to his shoulder. She pressed the bruise on his deltoid, the one from training two days ago.

"This bruise is four days old," she said. Quiet now. Just for him. "It's healing at a rate consistent with two days."

Her thumb kept moving. Over the shoulder, across the trapezius.

She stopped.

The bite mark. Talia's. Left shoulder, below the trapezius. Four days old, still purple because Talia maintained it. But the edges were cleaner than they should have been. Healing underneath the maintenance. Shiva pressed her thumb into it. Measuring.

His skin was still hot from the fight. Her thumb was cool and dry and precise. The bite mark ached under the pressure, bruised skin being pressed, and her thumb was on the spot where Talia's teeth had been.

"This is hers."

He didn't answer.

"I don't care about the girl." Her thumb still on the mark. Her face close enough to see the pores on her nose and a faint scar above her left eyebrow he'd never noticed from sparring distance. "I care about the data. You're healing faster than last week. Your reaction speed exceeded your muscle development by twelve percent during the bout. Your recovery between combinations was four seconds faster than your physiology predicts."

She stood. Looked down at him. Red bodysuit, short hair, morning light behind her now because the sun had cleared the ridge during the fight and he hadn't noticed.

"You're changing," she said. "And you don't know why."

She turned and walked toward the open wall. The valley was gold and blue below the compound and her shadow stretched long across the arena floor. She didn't look back.

He watched her go.

She'd had a daughter. Cassandra. He'd seen the girl train in the east courtyard at dawn, reading bodies the way Shiva did, the same impossible precision. He'd seen Shiva watch from the eastern wall once. Watched a car take the girl away and Shiva standing there, still, watching, not following.

She'd never mentioned her. Not once in eight months.

He got up. His ribs ached. The bite mark burned where Shiva's thumb had been. The gallery was stirring, voices starting, students standing. Ra's was already gone from the top row. He hadn't seen when.

Talia was still in her seat. Her jaw was still locked. She was looking at the spot on the arena floor where Shiva had knelt beside him and pressed her thumb into a mark that belonged to someone else and diagnosed his body in front of everyone.

He met her eyes across the arena.

She held his gaze for two seconds. Then she stood and walked out through the east corridor without turning around and the braid swung behind her and the six pins caught the new light.

He stood in the arena with the grit on his palms and the blood drying above his ear and the sun warm on his face for the first time that morning.

His left side was aching. His forearms were swollen. The cut above his ear had already sealed, the blood drying to a crust, and yesterday a cut like that would have still been wet. The bruise on his oblique was purple going green at the edges and it had been purple ten minutes ago. He didn't know why.

A student on the lower tier was rewrapping a knee. The tape was too tight. He'd told the same student about the tape three days ago and the kid was still doing it wrong. He walked over.

"Looser. You want blood flow, not a tourniquet."

The student looked up. Looked at the blood on his face and the bruises on his arms and the bite mark on his shoulder that the entire arena had just watched Lady Shiva press her thumb into while she diagnosed him.

"Yes. Thank you." Flat. Careful. Six feet of clearance in a voice.