TDBB: Tuff Wars 2.13
The wind pulled at his cape while Batman looked down at the street that had disappeared under green. The vines had swallowed every inch of the road below and they wove through the broken bones of the dropped buildings, threading up the cracked walls in ropes heavy enough to crack mortar.
They reached toward the waterline where the river moved beyond the collapsed block and they stretched into the next street over, a living carpet that turned stone into something soft and hungry.
Nightwing landed beside him, his boots scraping the ledge as he balanced. His eyes tracked the tendrils that crawled up the nearest facade. "This is new."
Robin dropped to the gravel-covered roof behind them and moved to the edge, his own staff snapping open with a sound that carried over the wind. "We need to cut the climbing vines before they anchor the upper floors."
Batman dropped toward the thickest cluster where the green met the grey stone of the eastern wall. "I'll sever the main runners."
Nightwing swung on a line that carried him across the gap and he kicked off the remaining wall to plant his sticks into a tendon of green that had wrapped a cornice. The vine split and sap sprayed the broken brick below in a burst that smelled of copper and wet earth.
Robin hit the slope of debris at street level and his staff whipped through a lower runner, the wood catching fibers that snapped with a sound like tearing cloth. He spun and caught another before it could find purchase in a window frame.
Batman's ceramic blade bit through a tendon of green that had reached the gutter. He cut again and a coil of green fell away from the wall and thrashed against the ground like a severed snake.
The clearing opened without warning and the vines that had been a solid wall of green parted down the middle, the root mat pulling back to reveal bare earth where a building had stood. Two figures walked out of the gap and the smaller one moved with her bare feet pressing the soil while the taller red-haired woman followed.
Batman felt his jaw tighten and he tapped his comm with a finger that left the channel open. "There. Stop them."
Nightwing dropped from the wall and Robin vaulted over a heap of debris and they converged on the clearing as Batman launched himself from broken concrete, his cape spreading into a glide that carried him toward the two figures who had already turned toward the sound of their approach.
Toph raised her fists and the ground beneath Nightwing erupted in a wall of broken road surface that caught his boots as he descended, sending him twisting in the air while he threw his sticks out and caught the edge of the rising block, flipping over it as the mass sailed past him and crashed into the remains of a storefront. He landed in a crouch and looked back at the girl who kept her feet planted on the soil.
"You sure she's blind?" he called into the comm.
Toph was moving her hands in a circle and the bedrock beneath the street groaned and lifted a boulder the size of a car. She squeezed her palms together and the stone cracked into a jagged mass that she hurled toward Robin before he could close the distance.
It caught him square in the chest and the impact drove him backward through the air until he crashed to the ground and the boulder rolled over him, burying him in a cloud of dust.
Nightwing shouted and ran toward the spot where the boy had vanished. "Robin!"
The boy pushed out from under the boulder with his cape torn and his breath coming in hard bursts that shook his shoulders. He got to his knees and spat blood onto the ground, his hand pressing against his ribs while he glared at the girl who stood with her arms loose and her head tilted toward the sound of his pain.
"You'll pay for that, mean girl," he wheezed.
Toph's mouth pulled into a smirk and she turned her face toward the sound of Batman's breathing while her feet read the displacement of his boots on the soil. She shifted her stance so her heels dug deeper into the dirt.
Ivy stepped past her and her eyes found the two boys who were closing in. "Get him. I'll deal with these two."
Her vines surged from the ground in a wave that split the air and they raced toward Nightwing and Robin with tips that hardened into wooden spears. Ivy rose on a column of green that lifted her above the wreckage and she stood on the shifting mat with her legs spread and her hands weaving patterns that made the tendrils dance around the boys in lashing arcs.
Toph turned back to Batman and she twirled her palms in a slow wave before her chest. The earth answered and lifted in a sheet that she broke into discs with a clap of her hands, the stone plates spinning toward him in a rapid succession that filled the air with whistling edges.
Batman drew his sidearm and fired and the shots punched through the leading discs, shattering them into dust that hung in a cloud between them. He moved through the haze with his body low and his arms weaving a guard that deflected another disc with his gauntlet, the ceramic plate cracking from the force but holding long enough for him to slip past the spray.
Toph spun on her heel and dropped into a stance that sank her weight into the ground. A slab of bedrock tore free from the street and tilted into a ramp that carried her upward at an angle, the stone sliding beneath her feet while she rode it toward him.
She pushed off the lip and landed on the ground where he stood, her knees bending as she called another block from the soil and drove it toward his face with a thrust of her palms.
Batman leaned back and the stone passed close enough to brush his cowl, and he read her weight shift and fired a rope from his wrist that snapped toward her ankles as the block turned to silt around her fingers.
She had been closing for another strike and the rope came in low and fast. Toph felt the air shift and she rushed to stomp the ground, pulling a thin shard of rock from the dirt and raising it between her ankles so the rope struck the stone and wrapped around it instead of her flesh.
She kicked the shard aside and looked up to find that Batman had already fired his grapple gun, the line carrying him in an arc that swept around her flank while he drew his legs up for a kick.
She read the vibration in the air and she swayed left, then right, her palms coming up to meet his third kick as he descended. She caught his boot and twisted her wrists, throwing his momentum off course so that he spun past her and hit the ground with his knee, his cape spreading behind him in a dark pool. He controlled the spin and rose in a single motion.
Toph was already smiling and she stomped her foot. A ring of stone erupted from the ground in a cage of boulders that rose to close around him. Batman jumped and rolled through the gap before the last stone could seal the top, coming up with his weapon drawn and firing rounds that thumped into her chest plate.
The rubber bullets struck the metal she had shaped in the tunnels and she felt the impacts ring through her ribs. She gritted her teeth and raised her hand, calling the rebar and pipes from the broken buildings around her. The metal lifted and sharpened at her command, the tips narrowing into points that she fired toward his position in a storm of iron arrows.
She heard the grapple gun fire and she felt his weight leave the ground. The metal arrows struck empty air and she pulled them back, surrounding herself with a spinning wheel of steel that hovered at every angle while she turned her head and listened for the sound of his breath. "You can't hide from me in a fight," she called out. "I hear your lungs working. I hear your heart. I hear the cloth moving over your skin."
A rope hissed behind her and she felt it race toward her ankles. She jumped and the cord passed beneath her bare feet and she turned the entire wheel of metal toward the source, the points seeking the spot where the sound had come from.
But Batman had dropped from his glide and he landed behind her with his boots hitting the dirt in a thud that reached her a heartbeat too late. His hand found her shoulder and he kicked her legs out, driving her down to the ground while her hands scrambled for the dirt that was now too far to reach.
She snarled and she rolled her palm against the dirt, lifting a shard of rock that shot toward his face. Batman flipped over her, his legs scissoring through the air while his hands kept their grip on her wrists.
He landed on the other side and the rope he had prepared was already coiled around her ankles, the line running from her legs to her wrists in a loop that he pulled tight. She thrashed but her small frame had no leverage against the bind and he lifted her off the ground entirely, holding her in the air so her toes hung above the earth she needed.
"Is this any way to treat a little, blind girl?" she snapped.
Batman grunted and he checked the knots with a tug that made her hiss. He fired his grapple gun and swung away from her, the line carrying him toward the fight where Ivy was standing on her living column with her hands weaving the vines in complex loops that kept Nightwing and Robin at a distance. The boys dodged and weaved but every time they closed a gap the tendrils closed it, and every time they cut one down more rose to take its place.
Batman watched her from the air and he saw what had changed. Ivy stood on top of the vines with her feet planted wide and her knees bent, the stance holding her steady as though she stood on solid ground.
Her weight shifted in small movements that widened her base and her hands flowed in patterns that directed the green with a precision that looked less like command and more like conversation. She was toying with them, keeping them back when she could have wrapped them both in a single surge.
He drew the explosive batarangs and he threw them before she could turn toward the sound of his approach. The devices struck the vine column where her feet were planted and the blast ripped through the green in a flash of fire and splintered wood. The support vanished and Ivy dropped, her arms flailing for a moment before she hit the dirt hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
Batman landed before her and his cape settled around him while he looked down at her. "It's over, Ivy."
Ivy pushed herself up on one elbow and she looked at him with a smile that cut her face against the shadowy sunlight.
Nightwing and Robin closed in from either side, their weapons ready and their boots crunching the broken stone as they surrounded her.
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