With Commissioner Gordon's arrival, the "ladies' duel" naturally came to an end. Barbara could now gracefully declare that she hadn't lost—though anyone with eyes could see the truth—but at least her dignity was intact.
She didn't even have the strength left to talk to her father. The moment the spar ended, she collapsed on the ground, arms and legs spread out like a fallen cross. Another minute and she'd have been done for.
Though the Gordons weren't exactly devout, Barbara suddenly found herself whispering, "God bless me."
For a split second, she even imagined some higher being gazing down on her from beyond time and space, mercifully allowing her to survive this mortifying ordeal.
Maybe, she thought deliriously, this was destiny—perhaps that "calling" she'd been waiting for.
Thea, for her part, felt no divine epiphany—only mild awkwardness. She'd been about to offer Barbara a sportsmanlike handshake, or perhaps clasp her hands in a polite martial-arts salute and say thanks for the match.
But one look at Barbara—hair plastered to her face, sitting on the floor in a sweaty, disheveled heap—and she decided against it. Any gesture right now would just look like mockery.
"Hey, are you guys still there?" Felicity's voice buzzed through the earpiece again. She couldn't see what was happening from afar; the drones had long since returned after the fight with Killer Croc. To her, the eerie silence on comms was suspicious.
"We're here, everyone's fine," Robin replied quickly. Normally, Barbara would handle the talking, but she was too exhausted to move, and neither Thea nor Catwoman seemed eager to take the lead.
"Oh," Felicity said uncertainly. "Okay, then… shall we begin?"
And just like that, Gotham's version of the Six-Party Conference officially commenced.
The agenda? Not peace in the Middle East—just what to do with a certain frozen bachelor reptile.
Thea, as the visiting "senior partner," waited politely for her teammate to open.
Felicity, taking the cue, jumped in brightly.
"Well, if you Gotham folks don't want him, we'll take him off your hands! The Queen Group's Applied Sciences Lab would love a specimen like that. We've got everything—saws, drills, containment pods. I bet our scaly friend will feel right at home there!"
She wasn't done.
"And don't worry about transport! We've got fifteen hundred factory workers on call. No need for cranes or tech—just ropes, logs, and good old-fashioned manpower. We'll haul him back ourselves. Simple!"
Barbara, having caught her breath, immediately objected.
"This thing eats and terrorizes our people. He dies here, on Gotham soil! If you're that desperate for… whatever's left, maybe we'll share some samples later—as a token of friendship. But you're not hauling him away."
Thea could only sigh. There was no winning against this kind of logic.
Superheroes had their quirks, and one of the biggest was territorialism: Your monsters, your mess. Outsiders had no say.
If they wanted to keep the overgrown lizard, fine. Frankly, she wasn't that eager to dissect the thing anyway. Judging by his grotesque physiology, any "serum" extracted from him would probably come with side effects like "spontaneous limb mutation" and "mild homicidal insanity."
Barbara was quietly relieved by their easy acceptance.
In truth, she'd felt a little guilty about refusing. After all, she and Robin hadn't exactly carried their weight in that battle.
The taunting strategy? Felicity's idea.
Their contribution? Basically shouting whatever she told them to. You could replace them with two street performers and probably get louder results.
And that finishing blow?
Completely Thea's doing.
So when the Star City duo simply nodded and let Gotham claim the frozen monster, Barbara felt as if she'd just won a diplomatic victory. Her opinion of them ticked up a notch.
"Dad, what do we do with him?" she asked at last. Truth be told, she didn't care anymore—just as long as the creature stayed somewhere in Gotham. All she wanted now was a shower and twelve hours of sleep.
Gordon rubbed his chin. He was a cop, not a mover. Handling criminals was one thing, handling cargo was another.
But then Felicity's earlier boast—"fifteen hundred workers"—gave him an idea.
"Manpower," he muttered. "We've got plenty of that."
It was a crude plan, but a plan nonetheless.
He rallied over a hundred men from the campus and surrounding precincts. Thea towed from the air on her hoverboard while the others pushed, pulled, and rolled the massive ice block over wooden logs and ropes.
An hour later—after a chorus of groans, scraped palms, and a lot of swearing—they finally managed to get the one-ton block onto a truck and haul it back to Gotham University.
"Mommy, what's that?"
"Hmm… probably a Christmas decoration, dear."
The arrival of the giant ice block caused quite the stir on campus.
Curious children ran circles around it, wide-eyed, peppering their parents with questions.
The adults, ever imaginative, threw out random guesses:
"A new weapon prototype."
"Commissioner Gordon's treating everyone to shaved ice."
No one realized there was a very real, very frozen crocodile-man inside.
With the "mission" officially done, the group disbanded.
Thea and Barbara both headed home—to separate homes, thankfully—to sleep off the exhaustion.
Robin bolted straight for the showers.
Meanwhile, Catwoman pulled Felicity aside into a quiet corner.
"Hey," she whispered. "You got any tools for… art authentication?"
Felicity blinked. "What for?"
Catwoman gave a mischievous smile. "Oh, nothing serious. Just thinking of, uh, borrowing a few pieces. You know how it is—Gotham's jewelry scene is frozen stiff these days. Nobody dares wear diamonds outside. Art's where the money's at."
She was only half joking.
Catwoman had been eyeing Thea's hoverboard ever since she saw it in action.
It wasn't just the design—it was the freedom it symbolized.
But gadgets like that didn't come cheap. And though she wasn't broke, her soft heart (and occasional habit of slipping cash to struggling neighbors) meant her savings never lasted.
Bruce's fortune? Irrelevant. They weren't exactly sharing bank accounts, especially now that Talia al Ghul had stormed back into Gotham—baby in arms, fury in eyes, clearly ready to reclaim the Wayne name.
Selina Kyle—no, Selina Wayne, she still corrected herself—wasn't about to give up. If she wanted the name, she'd earn it.
But first… she needed funds.
With the city gripped by chaos and its upper crust hiding behind locked doors, Gotham's luxury markets were in freefall. Jewelry, once her bread and butter, was now unsellable.
So she turned her eyes toward a new line of business.
Art.
If Gotham's rich were too scared to flaunt their diamonds, she'd simply give them something else to covet—paintings, sculptures, "acquired" masterpieces.
After all, business was business.