July, 2168 CE – Nevos
Rylia threw herself backward into a flip, managing to launch a crude biotic push from her foot that almost hit Bruce. Somehow, by virtue of Utter Bullshit™, fuck-you-I’m-really-still-Batman-no-matter-what, he managed to shift in such a way it barely clipped him. Even as he followed her through the flip, continuing to attack, the bastard had the sheer gall to be capable of talking.
“Good. Much better. Every unexpected or dirty trick you can leverage is to be exploited. While Yaoyorozu did an excellent job of teaching you to defend yourself until help arrived, you need more than that.”
Clipping him with the biotic attack had at least slowed Bruce down, even if it hadn’t forced him to back off the way she’d hoped. The small fragment of space was just enough to allow her to reset and weave around his follow-up jabs, but nothing more. She more than expected he was taking it easy with those same jabs, the man not even breathing hard even as she desperately panted and pushed the limits of her endurance. Damnit, the regen treatments had only returned him to his early forties physically, how was he doing this?!
“While you’ve chosen, correctly given the importance of the Marketplace, not to take a field role, you also already acknowledged the truth that you will be targeted eventually. Your steps to address that with a bodyguard droid and self-defense training were well chosen, but not enough. Not with your plans for the Terminus Systems. Once you truly kick those off, even using a patsy will only slow down dangerous people identifying you as the backer.”
Stamina was not an Asari strong point like it was for humans. Despite being in extremely good shape by this point, Rylia was flagging, and one of Bruce’s shots landed. She managed to take it on a shoulder, but it was not a pulled blow, causing her to flinch at what she knew would be a spectacular bruise. Short lived due to Asari regeneration, of course, but spectacular.
Knowing that, unlike Momo, Bruce wouldn’t stop just because he’d landed a solid shot, she forced herself to keep moving, managing to narrowly slide under the follow up blow with an instinctive action that was more dance move than martial art. Of course, somehow Bruce knew Capoeria, and had been teaching it to her. Which meant that her instincts for both were blending together in a way that was, admittedly, making her a lot better a lot faster than she’d imagined possible.
Which didn’t stop her from resenting this a bit! She’d intended him to mentor Lucy, not the whole team! Especially not her, since she wasn’t intending to go out and punch slavers and Reapers in the face! Unfortunately, Bruce had persuasive arguments, some of which he was drilling into her again, as he continued to casually talk while nearly planting a side-kick in her gut.
“Your current measures are solid. You’ve improved your personal shield to the point even an anti-material rifle won’t punch through in one shot, and worked on the reflex to immediately add a biotic barrier when under attack. Against ordinary attackers, that and Kix would be enough. But once you are identified as connected to the affairs you’re planning in the Terminus, or as the source of all the new weapons, you won’t be dealing with ordinary any longer.”
Desperately using the last of her energy to go on the attack, mustering her faltering biotics to produce a speed boost similar to a Charge but limited to one arm and one leg, she pushed her fist forward. The move was lightning fast and practically wrenched her arm out of its socket, but she actually managed to force Bruce to disengage…for a few heartbeats. In the opening caused by the pain of the trick afterwards, he ruthlessly moved in and she found herself somehow flying across the sparring mat, landing on her back with a ‘oof’ of lost air. She tried to get back up, knowing he could be ruthless, but couldn’t manage. Thankfully, he didn’t follow up, even if he continued to lecture.
“When that time comes, it will be either dedicated veteran assassins from Terminus powers, or groups like the Salarian STG, Turian Blackwatch, or even the Citadel’s Special Tactics and Recon. The first out of fear your puppet will be after them next, the later because governments hate instability. They’ll want you either dead or working for them.”
A water bottle appeared next to Rylia, held in Bruce’s hand. She accepted it with a shaky hand of her own, even as her breathing settled into something vaguely normal, instead of ragged gasps. He squatted next to her, leveling her with a serious look.
“Those groups aren’t stupid. Kix and other measures might deal with one attempt. A dedicated sentient bodyguard, which I strongly recommend you have in place by then, might stop a second. But they will adapt, study your defenses, and work around them. Sooner or later, you will be caught fighting someone serious, without being able to rely on just holding out for help. You need to be capable of fighting and winning against a serious opponent when that happens, no matter how dirty you have to be to pull it off. If you die, the chances of the galaxy surviving the Reaper threat drops significantly.”
Sucking down the water in shallow gulps, already having learned the hard way that too fast could just end up with her vomiting it back up, she nodded. She was not happy with this turn of events, as she did not intend to be a combatant if at all possible. Unfortunately, she was forced to admit that Bruce was right. It wasn’t paranoia if they really were out to get you, and sooner or later a good chunk of the galaxy would want her head. For a wide variety of reasons.
She would learn what Bruce had to teach her, even if she really hoped to never need it, and was very unhappy repeatedly going home too sore and exhausted for sexy times with Momo. Even Asari regeneration could only do so much in the fact of Bruce’s version of ‘mentoring’… You are reading on novelping dot com, the official source.
… … …
Bruce had to admit, in the quiet of his own mind, that Lucy might legitimately be his most gifted student yet. A conclusion he’d come to despite still not being an official mentor to her. The girl was, understandably, prickly. Yet he’d dealt with worse cases of that before, in both those he’d mentored and in some of the more morally grey members of his Rogue’s gallery. The fact that she was also professional meant working with her was easy enough in the meantime. He could take his time in sanding off her rough edges a bit.
That professionalism also meant that he’d gotten a very good feel for just how talented she was, as they’d both spent time first breaking, and then shoring up, the security around T’aani’s various companies and projects. It was a solid way for them to get a feel for each other’s abilities, while also doing some good in hardening their little group’s defenses. To T’aani and Yaoyorozu’s credit, those defenses had been admittedly quite solid even before he and Lucy got to them.
Those R3 droids she used as cybersecurity were far more creative and clever than most of the AI he’d run into over the years, and they’d done a solid job of physically securing Maiden’s Mercy and the R&D blacksite. The constantly updating holofield showing the ‘salvage yard’ being slowly emptied by workers had been a particular nice touch. The sort of attention to detail that Bruce appreciated. Yet, for all that attention to detail, the existing setup hadn’t been enough to keep either him or his newest protegee out, even individually. Let alone when once they’d started working together.
Lucy was an even better hacker than his version of Barbara had been, which was saying quite a lot. That she was also a remarkably good and experienced fighter, with every bit the talent there as she had on the cyber side, only left him more impressed. Mind you, she was far too used to using lethal force for his peace of mind. But then, that was part of why she’d been paired with him in the first place. Something he noted again as she carved through the Commando Mechs that would make up the bulk of their force against this ‘Shadow Broker.’
The mechs were good. He could and would freely admit that. Yet, as he’d seen time and time again with robotic enemies of League, they still lacked somewhat when fighting a living person with good combat instincts. Lucy had been convinced to act as a combat test for them and was proving able to deal with whole squads on her own. Though that was becoming less and less true as the things built better and better combat algorithms. He was, frankly, reasonably confident that they would do the job against the majority of the ‘Broker’s’ internal security. The issue was the Broker himself and any close-in bodyguards.
T’aani had admitted she didn’t know who the current Broker was. In a decade, it would be a Yahg. In all likelihood, however, that Yahg had probably not killed the previous Broker yet, and who that previous Broker had been was an unknown. T’aani suspected either a Salarian or an Asari, and either was honestly more trouble than the Yahg would have been. One likely wouldn’t hesitate to use any weapon, even things sane people would shy away from, and the other was likely not to be operating fully alone.
Which is part of why Bruce had convinced them to modify the plan a bit. Yaoyorozu, himself, and Lucy would all take part in the actual strike, instead of just going in afterward. T’aani, despite her own latent talent and progress, was both too valuable and not of the right personal disposition to go out in the field. But the three of them, plus the commando mechs and Kix, should be enough to do the job. They had to keep the team small, to contain the secret, so it would have to be enough.
Shaking his head, Bruce returned to looking through a catalog of options T’aani had given him. It was far from a complete representation of what she could get through the Marketplace, but it was a solid cross selection of technological tools he could use to enhance his own contribution. He might not have Lucious around, but T’aani and Danvers certainly made up for that, when it came to making a new suit for himself.
Even if he didn’t intend to take on the Batman mantle fully again, it would be best to have a version available. Both for the assault on the Shadow Broker’s base, and as a ‘just in case’ for future use. After all, he was now young and fit enough to make use of it again, if it proved sufficiently necessary…
… … …
“Good. Excellent, even. This is a very solid step for Maiden’s Mercy, which will eventually produce an in for you with both the Turian Hierarchy and the Systems Alliance.”
Nodding, Momo had mixed feelings about the glow of accomplishment she felt at Mr. Wayne’s approval. The entire vector of providing improved cybernetics for both groups had been his idea, even if she’d executed it, and he’d calmly nudged her a little at various points on things that would get them the best combination of influence and credits. Momo was not used to feeling like an amateur when it came to running a large-scale business, but damned if Bruce Wayne wasn’t making her feel like it.
Of course, the man had apparently run a multi-national company just as large as Yaoyorozu Industries, and done it for decades longer than Momo had in a world that was far more cutthroat than hers had been. All while also, somehow, still making time to be either a full-time hero or the administrator and mentor of multiple hero teams. The final one being an organization nearly on par in scale to the World Hero Association, only without a fraction as much government support and almost entirely self-funded and internally supported.
Seriously, the more she learned about Mr. Wayne, the more deeply she understood why Rylia had selected him for their needs out of tens of thousands of options. She was learning things about running a corporation from him, when that wasn’t even why they’d wanted him. The sheer degree of multi-discipline mastery concentrated in one individual was almost absurd. Would have been absurd, honestly, if she hadn’t known that he was seventy-three, rather than the fifty he now appeared or the forty he now was physically.
“It does risk bringing military attention to our companies sooner than we had planned, but I have to admit the connections seem to justify it. Particularly with the Systems Alliance. They are going to be the hungriest for new ideas to help level the playing field, once we start marketing combat equipment. For that matter, someone on their side was on the ball and is already asking about our labor mechs for their shipyards.”
Mr. Wayne leaned back in one of the comfortable chairs she kept in her office, nodding along with her statements. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
“There is a certain amount of risk with the military attention, obviously. But you aren’t providing weapons technology, and the truth has always been that the military is one of the absolute best testing grounds for medical technology. They can and will push things forward without half the red tape of the civilian sector. Sometimes that’s detrimental, of course. But in the case of technologies you know are legitimately safe, and which can help to the degree of what Maiden’s Mercy is offering, it’s a useful vector for early mass testing. Which, in turn, shortcuts approval processes for civilian use down the line.”
Momo nodded, having looked into it once Mr. Wayne had brought the idea up. Yaoyorozu Industries hadn’t had a lot to do with medical technologies, and she hadn’t realized there were ways around some of the red tape as a result. Let alone a way that would end up giving them those connections that Mr. Wayne had mentioned.
“More, there is an additional advantage that’s more political, one I suspect your girlfriend will recognize instantly when she sees this.”
Frowning a bit, Momo tried to see what he was getting at. If anything, she’d counted the politics involved as likely one of the downsides. Particularly with the Hierarchy. While they were pragmatic almost to a fault, which had seen them legitimately evaluate what was brought to them and decide they were interested, what they had for the Turians was mostly cybernetics. Which was going to sting, given that the Turians themselves had previously been the best in that field. An Asari company producing better results was going to both sting their pride and hurt their bottom line.
Mr. Wayne’s lips twitched as he saw Momo trying to puzzle it out, but he didn’t just give her the answer. It was something she was already getting used to, though it oddly made her feel like she was back interning under a Hero in her early career again. Certainly, she might have been the one to realize this man was almost as much a mentor as he was a hero or administrator, but she honestly hadn’t expected it to end up aimed at her.
Mentally both exasperated and invigorated by the challenge, she dismissed the Turians from the equation, not seeing how it could be a positive with them. Relations between them and the Republics were always a bit of a mess because of how organized one was and disorganized the other was. So, if not the Turians, then what about the deal was positive politics for the Systems Alliance? Slowly, a thought surfaced, then more rapidly she started connecting the dots with a frustrated lament that both Rylia and Miranda Lawson had expressed previously.
“It…the Asari and humans actually have better Synergy that any other pair of species. The humans haven’t properly realized that, because their politicians dislike trying to deal with the dispersed polity that is the Republics. On the flip side, the Asari likely do realize it, at least at the top levels. But they are so patient by nature that they are content to wait until the humans realize it, not wanting to push so ‘soon’ after a First Contact war situation. Not helped by the fact that humanity is a comparatively small market for them.”
The longer she spoke, the more she didn’t need the approving expression on Mr. Wayne’s face to realize she’d hit on the right point. By making a serious connection to the human medical establishment, Maiden’s Mercy was going to start subtly making that point to the mid-levels of the Alliance. A mid-level whose observations would filter upwards, given time. Which didn’t even mention the more recently created Sprocket Technologies Inc that was handling the new labor mech designs.
If the Alliance started using the labor mechs in their shipyards and saw a significant boost to their rapid growth, that was going to get attention from the major political factions of humanity. A positive showing for making connections with the Republics instead of the more rocky relationship they’d been trying to form with the Turians. There were risks there, as the Republics could practically swallow humanity and end up with them accidentally becoming a near client-state. But that was a long-term issue, because of how slowly Asari took action on a political level.
Given that long-term, as the term applied to Asari, meant well after the conflict they were preparing for? In that light it was almost a meaningless risk. If they all survived long enough for that to even be a problem, it would be a victory.
“Very good. Of course, that does mean we need to start considering politics of our own. Nevos is relatively neutral within the Republics, due to being primarily a corporate world. Yet, eventually, we’re going to need to wrangle some connections within factions of the Asari Republics as well. Which means understanding those factions in the first place. An area we currently lack somewhat in. I suggest we make investigating the whose-who of the various Matriarchs a next step. We can start on that even before replacing the Shadow Broker, then use his captured information to verify what we’ve found.”
Momo nodded instantly at that. In truth, it was something she’d already begun to do, but was having some trouble unscrambling the byzantine connections. The Asari political structure was bizarre to her in many ways, and trying to navigate it as a non-native wasn’t easy. Worse, Rylia hadn’t been interested at all in the past, as Maidens rarely cared about that sort of thing. Meaning they didn’t have a native expert. Perhaps it was time to try and find someone who could fill that role…
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A/N 1: Ambush mentoring! As a number of people observed, Bruce has a lot to teach the entire team, not just Lucy. We'll see more of his mentoring Lucy specifically in the future, but I wanted to show that 'mentoring the whole team' bit first, since he won't be spending as much time physically around Momo and Rylia in the future.